Goodbye
I was at work in my Chester office at around 2 p.m. on Tuesday, June 27, 2006, when I got a call from my sister who was with the hospice nurse at my mother’s bedside at her condo in Manalapan.
I had visited the day before and my mother was barely conscious and speaking very little other than to periodically twist her now emaciated body and scream out in pain from the cancer with a voice calling for help that I had never heard before.
It was a warm, sunny day with a high temperature of 79 degrees. My sister said the end was likely to come very soon and that I should hurry. I jumped in the car and drove to the condo an hour away.
I was too late. I saw her where I had seen her the day before, in a supine position in the hospital bed we had borrowed to make her last days less uncomfortable. She had never been a big woman but the cancer forced her to lose a lot of weight.
I touched her cool, clammy, lifeless 92-year-old skin and saw her contorted face as if she was calling out to somebody that she wasn’t ready. I kissed her on the cheek and had a vision that as she died, her soul was a cloud of vapor that passed from her mouth to be dispersed in the air, ultimately resettling around the world.
A few weeks earlier, she had been diagnosed with cancer that had metastasized to her brain. Under the circumstances, she wasn’t doing very badly, other than fairly mild headaches. Until the doctor suggested she begin chemo and her three children, grasping for any straw to prolong their mother’s life, agreed.
Less than two weeks after the start of the chemo, she was in a coma and her body was preparing to die.
My mother lived her last days largely with the hospice worker. I wonder if she would have gotten better care and understanding from an end-of-life doula. A doula is a nonmedical professional trained to care for a terminally ill person’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs during the death process. They are also known euphemistically as “end-of-life coach,” “soul midwife,” “death midwife,” or “transition guide.”
For years, I had thought that I would feel helpless after my mother’s death and I had a nearly paralyzing fear that I would not be able to function without her in my life and that when she left for good, she would take away all the security and safety I had known.
I cried but I was surprised at how well I handled her death, probably because I knew I had to keep it together for my 10-year-old son and my wife and because I was not nearly as emotionally fragile as I had thought.
She was buried the next day at Riverside Cemetery in Saddle Brook, next to the graves of my father and my grandparents. I remember cleaning out her stuff from the condo and finding receipts for all kinds of donations to animal rights groups. She loved animals. We cleaned out the refrigerator and it was obvious that she had not been eating very well even before the cancer got bad. But for a life of 92 years,there was really not much to clean up.
She was deeply religious but had a difficult life, raising three children after my father died of a stroke in 1960. She successfully fought off three bouts of cancer and somehow managed to keep the seriousness of her illness away from me. My sister did not fare as well as she had the unenviable task of cleaning my mother’s unsightly and odorous colostomy bag regularly.
My father died of a stroke in 1960. My mother had no option but to find full-time work and a few years later she started dating. One suitor would bring me a new pair of expensive and utterly unstylish shoes every time he came over.
My mother later remarried to Stanley Fraites, a friendly soul who looked like Uncle Fester of the Adams family TV show. Stanley had been a bartender and insurance salesman and I believe my mother was happier with him than she had been with my father. Their life was quiet as they would both enjoyed reading and having a nightcap.
They had a dozen good years together until Stanley died of a heart attack in 1983, at the age of 76. His parents, Joseph and Alice, were born in the British West Indies. An inveterate cigarette smoker, Stanley died unceremoniously with a cigarette in hand, that left his indelible signature burn mark when he fell off his chair onto the kitchen floor of their Bergen County home.
After she moved to Manalapan, I used to visit my mother on most weekends, especially after my son was old enough. She was so in love with her grandson and later with my daughter, who we adopted from Bulgaria.
She had sold her home in Paramus and moved to the condo feeling it was too much to keep up the home. It was a mistake as she had left everything familiar by moving and it took her a long time to reach out and become a member of her new community. There was a pool and bingo and other senior citizens but my mother never full integrated into the new life.
My mother was born Sylvia Gottlieb on March 31, 1914, in West New York, to Emma Cahn and Philip Gottlieb. Philip, my namesake, emigrated with his parents, Hersch Tzvi Gottlieb and Sara Schechter, came to the U.S. from Russia. They came to the U.S. in 1892 when Philip was 14 years old. Emma was born in Ile-de-France, Paris, France, on May 2, 1878. She came to the U.S. in 1886 when she was just 8.
Emma’s parents, Alphons and Chana Anna Marcus, emigrated to France from Poland, most likely to escape from the pogroms against the Jews. They were like thousands of other Jews who came to the U.S. from eastern Europe in the early 20th century and before World War II. We had cousins who were not so lucky and stayed in Europe only to later be murdered by the Nazis.
Before they were married, Emma worked as a cap maker. Philip and Emma were married on May 9, 1904, and he first managed a dry goods store and later ran a five and dime in Staten Island, N.Y. Philip died on Jan. 9, 1949, 11 months before I was born.
Emma died at the age of 83 on April 10, 1961. She had become senile and for the last few months of her life, she spoke only in French as she was shuffled off to stay for a few months at a time with my mother and her two sisters. My recollection is of a woman who wore flowery dresses and high-top, blacklace shoes and feeling grossed out from her false teeth that she kept in a glass of water on the bathroom sink.
My mother married my father, Jerome, in 1939. She was 26 and he was 25 but he had already served in the Merchant Marine and was too old to be drafted when the U.S. declared war on Germany on Dc. 8, 1941.
My mother had two sisters, Bertha and Frances and a brother, Leo, who was a lawyer who lived in California.