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February 20, 2004
When the circus leaves town
Mother-in-law's lessons in grace, forgiveness and love offer comfort
to family members trying to help her deal with the effects of Alzheimer's.
SHARON MELNICER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Juggler, high-wire artist, acrobat and the memory of an elephant
... a circus-act amalgam in a diminutive, square, bustling bundle
of energy wrapped up in a "Jewish mother's" body. She
had an encyclopedic file of recipes that she carried around in her
head and could prepare a 10-course meal without a single printed
word in front of her. She worked 14-hour days, seven-day weeks at
the little, west end Winnipeg grocery store that she ran with Dad,
where she was a one-woman corporation: cashier, counsellor, manager,
stock-taker, bookkeeper, cook and janitor. She raised her two children
without benefit of nannies, looked after a house without maid service,
cooked every meal without ever once ordering in pizza or Chinese
food, did the laundry, which included ironing everything,
and never forgot to linger over, love and pamper her husband.
In all the years that I've known her, I have never heard an angry
or unkind word pass her lips. Rather than offend another, she's
swallowed the malice aimed at her, quietly, smilingly deflecting
the barbs and the arrows. There is not a more generous-hearted woman
that I have encountered; none more polite or affable than this woman
who came to be my mother when I married her son 33 years ago.
Each day, there's another death. It began with her cooking. None
of us chose to believe it. It was too ridiculous, too fantastical!
Instead, we concluded that, after cooking so many meals for so many
years, she wanted others to take over. It was the children's turn
to make the Sunday night family dinners, prepare the seders for
Passover, break the Yom Kippur fast, cook the latkes, gefilte fish,
borscht, bean and barley soup with noodles, and bake the honey cake.
All staples in her kitchen, all mixed and blended in her head, then
perfectly cooked and served on her meticulous, white-starched table,
these were her signature dishes, traditional offerings that were
learned at her mother's knee.
Until the Passover came when she stood in her kitchen, unmoving,
blankly staring at the stove, hands lying still and flat on her
counter top like dead birds, apron hanging from her neck like a
loose scarf, unknotted at the back, the two ties fluttering like
ribbons over her hips. On the phone, in despair and confusion, Dad
said to us, "Mama's forgotten how to cook!" Numbly, my
sister-in-law, Brenda, made the gefilte fish that year. I bought
the honey cake at Gunn's Bakery on Selkirk Avenue. Ironically, it's
the street to which the tiny Melnicer family, three worn and weary
Holocaust survivors, came when they arrived in North End Winnipeg,
their countless memories and images spilling over, too full of pain
and anguish to contain. Brenda, my husband's sister, who was to
come in 1952, was their new foothold, their first child to be born
in the safety of Canada.
Then, the long, sleep-filled hours started to consume the days.
Dad would report that he couldn't get Mom up in the mornings, that
he had to make his own breakfast, unheard of in all the years that
they had been married. Dazed and lethargic, Mama complained of nagging
back pain, said she had to lie down and, so, naps would overtake
sunset and last through the night.
Dealing with a host of ailments himself, Dad struggled to understand
the earth-moving changes taking place in his life that he could
neither believe nor accept. Never an angry or bitter man, I saw
him become impatient, irritable, scared ... emotions that seemed
to rise proportionally with my mother-in-law's fading memory and
her unknowing neglect.
Tevye's wisdom from Fiddler on the Roof flutters in my heart,
makes it ache with heaviness: "Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow
the days...." Things happened with surprising speed. My father-in-law
died, lying in my husband's arms on the floor of their living room,
my mother-in-law looking on. The paramedics were unable to revive
him. Mama went into Rosewood, an assisted-living facility for seniors,
was formally diagnosed after a battery of tests with Alzheimer's
disease and a hopeful specialist prescribed Arisept. It worked for
a little over three years.
Tomorrow, my mother-in-law is moving again. She's taking even less
with her than she took to Rosewood. No furniture, seven changes
of clothes, a TV if she'd like, some photographs. That's all. Last
night, she snapped at me again, something she's been doing in the
last couple of weeks, something unthinkable in her previous 83 years.
She called me a "tuchas," the Jewish word for behind
or bum‚ the mildest of insults among a colorful array of Yiddish
curse-words, but shocking to hear from her affable mouth, and searing
to my heart.
Last week, Mom didn't know my name; she didn't smile sweetly in
recognition when her eyes met mine. She simply sat in her chair
looking into a space somewhere over my left shoulder. Dreaming,
I hope, perhaps remembering how good it felt to juggle all those
balls without dropping one, as she lightly tripped over the lofty
high wire.
As I visit with Mom, many things go through my mind. I try to balance
her diminished capacity with the past fullness of her life. I focus
on the amazing skill and courage with which she has lived it, the
lessons she has taught me about grace, forgiveness and love. I compare
her rich legacy with the meagre shell that she is now and I think:
balance this with the rest, fit it into God's universal equation.
It is part of the journey, after all, part of the cosmic plan. Life
and death, beginning and end. The value and the meaningfulness of
this beloved lady's life is not merely measured by the hollow echoes
of these last few years, but by the remarkable, inspiring whole
of it. And this is where my heart chooses to dwell; this is where
I draw my comfort. It's the whole of it that I will cherish and
forever remember.
Sharon Melnicer is a freelance writer, visual artist and
teacher living in Winnipeg. She is a regular contributor to the
Jewish Post and News, the Winnipeg Free Press and
other publications.
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