This is my first post in almost three years. Life happens - and having a parent with Alzheimer's changes everything.
My mother, Verna Caryl Brodsky Moidel, died on December 23, 2016. It was a sad end to the saddest of all times in her life - almost two decades with Alzheimer's disease. I've written about my mother before, but this is so final.
There is a positive that came from this sadness: we created a fund in her memory at Camp Laurelwood, which she attended on a scholarship in 1940. She never forgot that magical time there, as I discuss below. We thought it would have the most meaning for her. I wish she could know that other children will be at camp this summer because someone cared for them, too.
Here's the link: www.camplaurelwood.org/forverna
Thank you for helping us help others.
This was my eulogy:
My mother was right about
everything.
And probably so was
yours. We have become our mothers, and the older I get, the more her wise words
haunt me. Worse, that Verna voice emanates from my lips towards my daughter
Erica, now an independent young adult. And she reacts just as I did when I was
her age: OK, Ma, sure, whatever you want…said with a roll of the eyes.
How to distill a life into
a few minutes? By reviewing what mattered most to mom. The thing is: she didn’t have a mother around to tell her these
things, so she learned them the hard way: she lived her life…a life bookmarked
by sorrow and pain: the first two decades, by hard times and the loss of her
mother to the stigma of mental illness; the last two decades, by the scourge of
Alzheimer’s.
But in between, she made
plans and lived her life in a meaningful way. She loved and was loved. And for
that, we are grateful. I’d like gratitude to be the word of the day, because
our mother was a good mother, and we are who we are because of her.
When you have a family
member with a serious illness, life becomes smaller. You decline invitations,
reserving energy for just the essentials. At times, our family cared for multiple
parents at once so, over the years, I spent so much time managing their needs
while trying to pursue my own goals, I forgot that indeed, time marches on.
I realized this when the
notice of my mom’s 60th college reunion came in the spring of 2012.
I was jolted by how much time had passed since I first became her advocate in
1997. I remember when she went to her 50th in 2002. She was young
then; ten years later, she was old. It was painful to think that she would not
be going that year. I wanted her to be represented, and so I wrote an essay that
told her story:
Mom was born in New Haven
in 1930, four years after her sister Norma, who she adored. Her father David owned
the local hardware store. They were very poor – it was the Depression. These
were difficult times, and she was deeply affected by her home life, especially
when her mother, Isabel Nusbaum Brodsky, was institutionalized, as they said
then, when mom was in grade school. She said it was schizophrenia, but I’ve
often wondered if it was undiagnosed post-partum depression, not something known
then, and a reaction to having two small children during dire financial
straits. Except for occasional visits, some at home, my grandmother, who I
never met, was now essentially gone forever. This affected her deeply. The loss
of her mother and the lack of resources was the force that pushed her to work
and make a life for herself.
Mom adored her father,
who was old by the time she was born. He was born on the boat, as they said, of
poor Russian immigrants, in 1888. He was self-taught, read constantly and could
fix anything. He had a happy disposition – amazing considering what his life
had been. She learned that from him: she was positive and determined. In the
summer of 1940, she had the time of her life when the New Haven Federation sent
her to Camp Laurelwood on a scholarship.
She always worked, first
in the hardware store, and then in a factory sewing shower curtains. Even then
she had drive, and expressed a desire to go to college. With the help of an
uncle who helped her navigate the admissions process, Mom proudly joined the
freshman class of the Teachers College in 1948. She lived at home and worked each
afternoon. In the summers, she waited tables in the Catskill Mountains. Her
annual tuition was $100, a lot of money, she would tell us, and she made it on
her own. She loved college and though challenged by circumstance, she made the
grades to succeed, as well as life-long friends whom she kept in touch with for
years.
When she was a senior,
her dream of living in Hartford came true when she was offered a job as a
second grade teacher at the Mark Twain Public School. I have the kind but
formal letter, dated January, 1952, which states that her annual salary would
be $2495! She was so proud!
The summer after
graduation she and three girlfriends piled into a car and drove to California
and Mexico on an adventure. She loved it – she had freedom for the first time
in her life. (1952, no air conditioning…no highway system…think about it…she
never complained.)
My parents met in 1955 at
what was the jDate of its time, the Hartford Emanuel synagogue dance. Dad was
swept away by how pretty she was, but she wasn’t so sure. She told me she dated
a bit, including a cousin of Einstein’s and one of the Lender Bagel brothers.
(Oh, imagine the possibilities!) But Dad’s European yiddishkeit and
intelligence won out, and they married on Washington’s Birthday (you got it –
she had a day off from school). That summer, they moved to Miami – the Goldena
Medina at the time – where yours truly was born. They started a clothing store,
and when the first Cuban families began to arrive in 1959, they went to night
school to learn Spanish so they could help these new customers. When Mom went
back to teaching in 1961, the Cuban parents loved that she spoke Spanish and was
a very serious and strict teacher. Her students loved her because she was fun,
especially when she cooked and played games with them. Every Christmas and
June, in gratitude for her kindness, the parents brought her gifts of powder,
perfume, and those big boxes of little chocolates.
Mom continued to teach,
on and off, in 3 states, for more than 25 years, in spite of the fact she
didn’t learn to drive till 1968. She was
a most devoted, responsible teacher, and I have vivid childhood memories of her
in a dress, or a blazer with a bowed blouse (skirt in the early years; slacks later
on), going off to work in the early morning by bus, coming home to make dinner,
and then every night sitting at the kitchen table, and mind you, this was the
stone age, hand writing report cards and grading papers. On weekends, she would
write next week’s teaching plans that were given to the principal on Monday
mornings. She loved the kids, and had wonderful stories of the things they said
and did. I calculate there are 1,000 adults today who can read because of mom.
One small coincidence: In
1985, right after we became engaged, I was perusing Steve’s Conard West
Hartford High School year book when I came upon the picture of one Jan Jacobs.
I asked him if he knew her, to which he replied that he had lived next door to
her. Jan Jacobs had been a student in my mother’s class in Hartford, and when
it came time to name me a year later (my parents had married by then and moved
to Miami), she decided that Jan was the name she wanted for her “smart, sweet,
Jewish girl.” Fast forward, I was able to meet my namesake at Steve’s 25th
high school reunion in 1990, a few months after Erica was born. Jan had no idea
of the impression she had made on my mother, her teacher Miss Brodsky…but we
discovered we both had daughters named Erica. The tradition continues!
During my childhood, Mom
always said her mother had died – until one day towards the end of my senior
year in high school, we learned about mental illness in “health” class. For
some reason, I went home with the mission to ask my mom what happened to her mother.
Mom answered the door in black clothes – those were not fashionable then – and
said she had to tell me something. Her mother had died the day before and the
funeral was the next day. In answer to my shock, she explained her mother had
been in a “home” all these years, and she had visited her. I never knew – and she
wouldn’t let me go to the funeral – she said I couldn’t miss a day of school. I
was young – 16 – and as with so much I don’t know, I wish I had just asked more
questions.
Mom was very proper and somewhat
naïve. But she had seen a lot in her life, so you couldn’t fool her much. She
also was very personable. If she met you, she would ask questions, and
suddenly, you were into a good conversation which she love. Dad always wondered
how she could talk for so many hours with a friend. She didn’t entertain, but
was always up to go out. She read constantly – books, newspapers, which I think
made her a great speller. But Gd forbid she’d tell me how to spell anything! And
yes, Steven, she was a goodie two shoes – and I’ve followed right in her
footsteps.
Like most girls, my
mother drove me crazy. She could be rigid and relentless, and as I got older,
she would constantly nag me, ask questions, and offer sure fire advice,
gathered from a lifetime of hard knocks. Some of it was nuts, like when I was
going to a dance, she said, “Wear something red and stand near the door. “ We
had our battles, some serious and some silly: about school work, about boys,
about cleaning my room…and about my clothes, which she bought at thrift stores.
I was mortified. Like Second Hand Rose, I never got a single thing that’s new. Yes,
she was right – there are gems in those stores. It was tough to be her child –
she had very high standards, and wanted us to have what she hadn’t – but I know
she was driven because she cared so much about her students, and about David
and me. I know she would be proud that my daughter Erica, a Brandeis graduate,
works with children.
In 1969, when we moved to
Jamaica Estates, she taught on Long Island in Valley Stream, and had to learn
to drive. These were some of her happiest times. My parents started to go out
more - to theater and to comedy shows.
By now, you can imagine she
was very brave. The bravest act of all was having a baby at age 44. It was 1973
and she was one of the first women to have an amniocentesis. My brother was a
complete surprise to me. I was already at college (that’s a story for another
time) and totally shocked. I’d wanted a sibling…but now? My friends all thought
it was great; I wasn’t so sure. But Mom knew, and today, David (named for her
beloved father) is a mensch, with two sons, a wonderful career, and my friend
for life. She would be so proud of him.
My mother did a lot for
me: She wanted life to be better for us than it had been for her. She taught me
to sew and cook; encouraged me to try new things; She gave me my Jewish
neshamah, a caring soul, and insisted I have a Jewish education even though she
hadn’t had one herself (both Yiddish and Hebrew School, bat mitzvah, Hebrew High
School, Israel, and as I
was an only child at the time, she gave me Camp Laurelwood). She shared
her love of books. She loved her summer in Boston in 54 and decided I should
come for college; 4 decades later, I love it still. She was my first editor, “Read
it out loud,” I heard in my head as I wrote this yesterday. And this is really
special: She taught me to love Barbara Streisand.
Mom moved back to her
beloved Hartford area in the late 80s, after our parents’ divorced, and began
to teach again. When she retired at 67, she took cooking classes, thinking
she’d open a takeout café. Sadly, this
was just the time she was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, the precursor
to Alzheimer’s. We watched as the woman who could do anything began to slip
away, so we quickly moved her to the Summerwood community near her home. She
had five wonderful years there – going on trips, playing games, and schmoozing
to her heart’s content. It was camp once more.
I never heard my mother
swear until her 70th year – that was when I was convinced that Alzheimer’s
had now taken hold, after a few years of weird episodes and cognitive testing. When
we started this journey, I could never imagine it would be twenty years. She
was so self-reliant. The thought my mom wasn’t in charge never occurred to me.
It turned out, as I took over her finances, she had saved for years, thinking
she would have a long retirement…yet it all went now to care for her through
these many years. I don’t know how we did it all – but I knew she couldn’t be
out there on her own. There were some heartbreaking moments along the way, and
I came to know my mother needed us as we had needed her.
Always resourceful, she
never threw anything away. You know the type – maybe you are the type! It took
nine months to clean out her house. Every corner had a bag with some precious
chatzkah. She was a squirrel – jewelry hiding in the sewing machine console,
silver in the attic, the statue of Mozart under the sink. It wasn’t rational
and it got worse over time. These things were her future. Inherent in this
hording were the seeds of her illness, and indeed, in retrospect the signs were
there in the volume and randomness of all she saved. I remember looking around
and not knowing where to start. To make order out of chaos, but knowing she had
thought she was safe.
Mom often said, she had
no mazel, luck. It was terrible luck to be stricken with Alzheimer’s so early
in her life. Alzheimer’s is known as the “long goodbye.” She has missed out on
so much, especially getting to spend time with her grandchildren Erica, and
David’s sons, Jesse and Bailey. And
indeed, it’s been almost 20 years – of managing her life in her home as long as
we could; at Summerwood; and then a short time at Newbridge Memory support,
which ended when she fell and broke her hip six years ago. A surgery, rehab…and
a 10 week stint at McLean, trying to manage her pain and her confusion. After
just two weeks, we knew she was now nursing home bound for Newton Wellesley Alzheimer’s
Center. We deeply thank all of these organizations for their devoted care and kindness
towards her.
One story from this time:
She was a romantic and loved the old songs, which she sang in a nice voice .
Eight years ago, the last time I took her out in W. Hartford before moving her
to Newbridge, we went out for lunch and stopped into Barnes and Noble. I saw a
book with the 100 top songs of the last 100 years. Mom, I said, you’ll love
this. She found a chair to sit in, and began to belt out song after song. She
knew the melodies, and sang with abandon, without regard to who was around.
People stood and listened and, instead of being mortified, I smiled. Twenty minutes
later, she stopped and closed the book – and was so surprised when people clapped
and cheered. Some of you know I haven’t visited my mother much this past year
because it was too painful to see her in the end stage of her disease. I would
rather remember the smile she had on her face that day.
I have often thought that
all the years I have cared for her has wiped out all the years I struggled with
her. I think it’s Gd’s plan - to see in our parents what we now have become.
When my father died 10
years ago, I recognized what he had taught me as what our Rabbi Gardenswartz
calls a person’s “Torah,” a legacy. So
here is my mother’s Torah:
· Be persistent and resilient;
·
Appreciate the value of work;
·
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Have
fun. Despite her difficult life, she loved to laugh and found humor and
humanity everywhere. She never felt sorry for herself, or complained; she was a
realist, an especially good way to live.
·
Education is the key to everything. (Yes,
Ma, I should have gone to grad school.)
·
Always have a job (I’ve done that for the
most part) and never leave a job until you have another one (sorry, Ma, that’s
not always possible).
·
That blue was her and my best color
because of our eyes (she was right about that, too)
·
Finally, save money and always have a
dollar in your pocket. It’s easy to spend it, but hard to make.
·
My penance for not always listening to her
on this last one? It’s being married to an accountant for 30 years! Verna’s
voice has ricocheted with every sage finance word Steve has said. OK, OK, I get
it!
Over these many years, it
did indeed take a village. When in this situation, your best bet is to share
the news. This can be a lonely journey, this taking care of parents – but it
can be eased by community. We were lucky to receive good advice and support,
medical care and maintenance for my mom. My family will always be grateful for
the kindness of strangers, and all of you, and the many friends and family
members who cared. Alzheimers is a terrible disease, and one we must find a
cure for.
I want to thank my dear
Steven for his constant support and wise advice, as we traveled this long road
in the care of Mom. At times, we had both mothers and my dad, in different
states, and in different states of wellness, and he was there for them, and for
me.
Thank you, David, for
your support and confidence in me as I took on this task. It wasn’t always easy
for you – to be so young and in NYC, having two parents in Boston, who aged early,
but you were there for me…like when we moved Mom from Hartford to Boston, you
took the train to meet us, helped Steve schlepp the furniture into a truck… then
got back on the train to NY. It was a stressful and sad time for you, so many
yet to be, but you showed up. I am so grateful to my mother for giving me a
brother.
Since second grade, Erica
has been a witness to the care of our parents. She has been kind to them,
independent when we needed her to be, and helpful over many years when their
welfare took precedence over hers. It has not been easy, but her menschlekeit
makes me proud every day that I am her mother.
Our heartfelt love and
thanks to our cousins Merrie and Mark, and Nancy, who did so much for Mom – visiting
her, taking her to lunch, on trips, and mostly, for never forgetting her. She
loved you all, like she loved your mother, her sister Norma, and your
kindnesses will never be forgotten.
Boston has been good to
me these past four decades, and then it was good for mom. I was humbled to have
the advice of “older” members of Temple Emanuel when I was one of the first in
my generation to be dealing with aging parents. They shared their wisdom and
experience, navigating elder care for their parents, a generation earlier.
I feel blessed to live in
Boston with our richly woven social service fabric. I received countless hours
of help and advice from professionals at these agencies, which will always be
remembered.
Thanks to those in West
Hartford who helped me navigate the first years of this obligation with courage
and patience: dear friends and family, and Steve’s longtime friends and their
children, all who gave us valuable legal, real estate and tactical advice, and
sometimes, just a bed for the night. While both Steven and David grew up there,
I did not, but came to feel at ease because of their kindness. And there were
wise strangers, too: those in line at Starbucks and the lovely lady at the Crown
kosher bakery, who always asked how Mom was doing; I ate a lot of Black and
White cookies driving back to Boston.
My deepest appreciation To
the caregivers, activity directors, rabbis, social workers, doctors, nurses,
and maintenance professionals, who helped us keep Mom at home as long as possible,
at the four places she lived and was cared for during these almost 20 years of holding
on…thank you for your compassion and capacity to see yourself in another
person’s shoes. You honored my mother and I have been blessed to know you. David
and I share the sadness that comes from the loss of such a vibrant life to this
dreaded disease, but I believe we have no regrets – we did all we could to make
her last years vibrant, comfortable and meaningful. And when you care for your
parent, they are revealed and you understand. She was a good mother, the mother
she never had.
In closing, I want to
acknowledge all of you today, and with gratitude for Rabbi Robinson, and Cantor
Sheni Dan Nesson, from Temple Emanuel, for being here for us today, and every day.
This old song says it all: I know
that I owe what I am today / to that dear little lady so old and gray / to that
wonderful Yiddishe momma of mine.
Mom, you did well. Rest
in peace. Grandpa David is on the other side waiting for you. Shalom.
