Yahrzeit

So tomorrow marks the anniversary of my Mom's death -- she died April 27, 2013. It was six years ago tomorrow.

The death of a very old person is strange -- no one is shocked it's coming, and yet when it finally comes, it's still, for some reason, shocking. I guess as much as you prepare for it, when you accept the loved one is actually, truly gone, it hits hard.

Two weeks before she died, we celebrated Mom's 93rd birthday. Most of her Florida family was there, except for her beloved first born grandson, who, I'm told, found her decline "too creepy" to handle, and thus didn't see her once during her time in the nursing home.

But we ate cake, and brought in pizza. It rained hard at the Miami Jewish Home, and Mom seemed to think we were celebrating New Year's Eve. Still, she responded nicely to seeing her three granddaughters, three great granddaughters, and one great grandson.

Her decline after that birthday day continued in earnest. Mirta, who took on the role of a loving watch dog for her care at the nursing home, stayed with her late into the night before she passed. I had been there, and went home to sleep, and Mom was mostly out of it, but still had breathing problems, and Mirta used her aggression with the hospice staff to get Sunny the morphine she needed.

Mirta was going to stay over night that Friday, but I made her go home -- I was coming back early Saturday.  And indeed I was getting gas at the station right next to MJH when the social worker called me -- Sunny had just passed.

I was there in about 2 minutes, and went to her room. The staff had already cleaned up, but the sickly sweet smell of the disinfectant they must use when the dying lose their bowels was heavy in the air.

Wifey was due a bit later, with her friend Edna in tow, and per usual, didn't answer her phone. I knew Wifey was fetching her father from another part of MJH and would be coming over, and Richard was totally freaked out by death.

Barry came by. He had planned a final visit with Sunny, and missed seeing her alive by an hour or so. Barry waited in the room with me -- I had already called the Neptune Society, and they were sending out an attendant. I guess they had called ahead and learned Mom was tiny -- only one fellow showed up.

I heard Wifey and Edna coming down the hall, and I went to meet them -- telling them Sunny was gone. Wifey returned her Dad to his room, and then came back with Edna.

The fellow from Neptune came, and we watched as he used care in putting Mom into a blue body bag. Wifey and I kissed her forehead. That was the last we saw of her.

My parents had three kids, and fate, or the Big Man, decided that I was the only one of us to be there when both our parents died. 

We went over to Soyka. D1 and her friend from Brickell joined us. We talked of Sunny -- there would be no funeral, per her wishes, and that was our modern shiva time. I thanked Barry -- he was there to support me when my Dad died, and now, 31 years later, was still by my side. I KNOW the Big Man directed that to happen.

My sister and brother in law came the next day to fetch Mom's few belongings. And with that, we were finished with our dealings with Miami Jewish Home, where she had spent her last 11 months.

I got word from Neptune Society a few weeks later that they had done the cremation, and were sending the "cremains" to me by FedEx.  D2 had arrived home from UF -- and on that Saturday she and Wifey and D1 were out together.  The FedEx guy arrived, and I met him at our gate, to accept the box.

I set the wooden box up on a desk. Wifey and the Ds came home, and I said to them "Hey! Don't you think it's polite to greet your Grandma!"  They looked at the box and were startled. I don't think my morbid humor helped the situation.

Fittingly -- the next day, Sunday, was Mother's Day. Wifey, the Ds, and I drove to Matheson Hammock. We parked in a corner of the lot, and took the box to  Biscayne Bay -- a lagoon of the Atlantic Ocean, where Mom was to have her ashes join her beloved husband's.

I opened the box, and struggled a bit with the heavy duty plastic bag inside. Cremains are sort of like concrete mix.  We walked through the mangroves and committed Mom to the sea. I was thinking of the scene in "The Big Lebowski" where the wind blows Donny's cremains back into Walter and the Dude's faces, by the Pacific. Thankfully no such thing befell us.

And then a small miracle happened. As we put in the last of the ashes, beautiful white butterflies appeared. I've never seen them at Matheson before or since. Wifey smiled and cried -- she thought it was definitely a message from another place.

And then life went on. D1 married Joey, an amazing man from an amazing family. D2 is to marry another amazing man from an amazing family soon -- January. D2 got her Master's degree and moved to NYC with Jonathan -- D1 and Joey bought their first house in NE Miami.

My sisters and I have lived our own lives -- I haven't seen my California sister in three years. But that changes soon -- 6 years after our Mom's death, we're having a family reunion, in Half Moon Bay, where my nephew and niece Henry and Val live.  My Florida sister and brother in law unfortunately won't be there -- they booked a Carnival cruise instead.

But we plan to talk about Sunny -- a lot. My sister was born in 1948 and was mothered by Sunny when she was much younger than the 41 year old lady who gave birth to me in 1961.

We each inherited a lot from her -- her charm, and usually bright and friendly disposition. I also got more of a highly defined passive aggressiveness.  But hey -- what are ya gonna do?

My Dad declared he wanted to be in the ocean because he hated cemeteries and the funeral business. He used to say -- if we wanted to mourn and remember him -- do it at the beach, which he loved. Mom agreed -- and their spirits (and cremains, such as they are) travel the world.

We'll be, this Monday, right on the Pacific -- our hotel is even called the Half Moon Bay Beach House.  Mom and Dad were married in California -- in Pasadena. That's where my family's story truly began -- as WW II was raging about -- two good looking children of Eastern European immigrants had a US Army rabbi marry them at the Huntington Hotel.

So my California sister, her son and daughter in law, and Wifey and I, will honor Sunny, and raise a glass to the love she gave as she raised us. We will never forget her.