I was, as fate would have it, worlds away from the goings-on of upper-crust New York when I first heard the disturbing news about Brooke Astor. The contested specifics --whether the 104-year-old philanthropist and grand dame was or was not looked after in the regal style she was accustomed to (including a private chef and expensive face creams, fresh flowers and bonbons) -- had gone far beyond the bounds of a family dispute and taken the very public form of a lawsuit brought by Astor's grandson against his own father, Astor's guardian. As a result, what might have been a matter of purely local intrigue had reached all the way to Israel, where I was sitting shiva together with my five siblings for our recently deceased 86-year-old mother.
On the face of it, the final years of a cosseted blue-blood centenarian would seem to have little to do with me or my family, hunched over for the prescribed week of mourning on low chairs in the living room of my mother's Jerusalem apartment while piously dressed visitors streamed in and out, offering condolences. Or, indeed, with anyone other than the once-formidable and now-bedridden Brooke Astor. Even from afar it was possible to discern that the details of the case were being reported with the sort of dry-eyed and gossipy note of incredulity that always accompanies human-interest stories about the sorrows of the rich (as opposed, say, to the sufferings of cats) -- as if to imply that the situation of an impossibly wealthy old lady at the mercy of callous relatives wasn't one ordinary folk could reasonably be expected to identify with.
And yet the plight of Brooke Astor struck an immediate note of recognition with me thousands of miles away, newly familiar as I was with the problems and crises that can arise when caring for an elderly, frail mother. More than that, I would argue that once you look beyond the particulars of class and money that TV anchors, press wags, and the Schadenfreude-inclined everywhere have delighted in dwelling on, it becomes clear that the plight of an aging heiress dependent on the goodwill of those who are entrusted with her welfare is emblematic of the eventual predicament of Everywoman.
"Men as well as women experience ageist bias," Margaret Cruikshank points out in her book, Learning to Be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging, "but men do not face the 'primal loathing' that old women evoke merely by existing."
The underlying principle has very little to do with how many homes or the number of household staff a person happens to have, whether she lacks for no-skid socks or has had a valuable piece of art (a Childe Hassam, to be exact) sold out from under her, as was claimed about Mrs. Astor. It has to do with the essential vulnerability of the elderly -- elderly women especially. It has to do as well with the way they are psychologically diminished by circumstance, however luxurious or simple their immediate surroundings, to being at the mercy of the world, much like infants. (It has always seemed to me that because females are more readily judged than males on the basis of their appearance, old women are more easily reduced to being old bodies than old men are.) And it has to do, finally, with the obligation to honor the integrity of the person as they once were, before the passage of years rendered them partially or completely helpless, even if they are no longer fully cognizant of what's going on around them.
All of which raises the questions: How much of your own life should you put on hold to attend to the waning of a parent's life? How much do you owe? And do your motives matter, whether you're doing it out of love or obligation, or perhaps to stave off future pangs of guilt?
My mother had me so convinced of her immortality that I find myself waking up to the realization of her being gone with a feeling of disbelief that lasts throughout the day.
My mother was diagnosed with metastasized (stage IV) lung cancer at the beginning of last January following an exhaustive series of tests. The news came as something of a shock (she was not a smoker), even though she had been short of breath and wheezing on and off for months. Admittedly, I had spent much of my adult life trying to pull myself away from the magnetic force field that surrounded her, but I had done so in the secure knowledge that she would always be there. I had envisioned her looming large in my life for years to come, an indomitable presence who would, for better and worse, remain one of my mainstays into the foreseeable future. In truth, my mother had me so convinced of her immortality that I find myself waking up to the realization of her being gone with a feeling of disbelief -- of psychological disorientation -- that lasts throughout the day.
Although she suffered from a family proclivity to heart disease and had undergone an emergency quintuple bypass in her mid-70s, my mother was an unusually strong woman. She liked to take long walks; during my youth she went off once or twice with a married couple for a week of trekking around St. Moritz, leaving behind detailed instructions for the tending of my immovable and cultivatedly helpless father. She signed on for a cruise to Alaska the summer before her 86th birthday, and, even as her strength failed in the months before she died, she looked forward to going on Sunday car excursions to obscure nooks and crannies of New York's five boroughs with my oldest sister and brother-in-law.
There had always been something admirable about my mother's enormous energy, the sheer willed onward propulsion of her. As opposed to my own brooding habit of "checking my pulse," which was how she mockingly described my inclination to sound out the exact tonality of my feelings, she had a Scarlett O'Hara-ish "Tomorrow is another day" approach to everything from far-reaching decisions to immediate crises. This attitude depended on a conviction of certitude that didn't allow for much reflection -- a stance that became harder to pull off with the isolation and self-reckoning that grave sickness imposes. What I see most clearly in retrospect is that my mother's determination to jostle life's terrors back into place by minimizing or denying them came at a cost not only to her children (who often were made to feel lily-livered by contrast to her own mountain-climbing fortitude) but also, finally, at a cost to her. To let down one's guard was to risk inviting in the specters of doubt and regret. And so she remained an inveterate seeker of diversion from the clamor of her unharmonious inner life right up until the end. She loved movies, primarily for their escapist values, and was kept supplied throughout her illness with piles of videos. In the week before she died she went with my two sisters to see a Catherine Deneuve movie, Changing Times. (Ever opinionated, she gave it a resolute thumbs-down.) Two nights later, in what turned out to be a misguidedly hopeful effort at outfoxing her illness and keeping her tethered to the earth by indulging her need to flee into imagined worlds, I ambitiously rented a batch of eight movies for her to watch; as it turned out, she would see none of them.
Although my mother was used to a fairly privileged standard of living, this was not something she would have ever directly owned up to. "Diamonds are cold," she would insist, and in later years she took to mocking what she considered to be my highfalutin interest in the finer things of life by saying, "You and your Frette sheets." My mother enjoyed nothing more than recounting how she was mistaken for the housekeeper when she did errands in the neighborhood, invested as she was in an image of herself as a secret member of the proletariat, a resilient twice-told immigrant (first as a 16-year-old girl, when she fled her native Frankfurt with her family for Palestine in 1935, and then again, more than a decade later, when she left Israel for America). My mother's identification with simpler and more idealized models from her past was reflected in the German and Hebrew lullabies she chose to sing to us when we were little, snatching a bit of time away from my father before he commandeered her attention once again, calling out for her in his loud, impatient fashion: Lulshin! (This was his nickname for her, a diminutive of her given name of Ursula.) In her clear musical voice she would sing ditties of boys and girls making their way to the newly established Jewish homeland and of an old German lady who smoked a pipe and one night burned the house down. This bedtime ritual was the more precious because it pointed away from the woman we knew -- who went out on the town with my father looking elegant in her Norman Norells, and who oversaw a populous household staff that at one time included a cook, a chauffeur, a nanny, a cleaning woman and a laundress, not to mention Mrs. Rabow, who catered dinner parties -- and toward other long-lapsed possibilities of who she might have been.
My mother died with a certain prearranged single-mindedness of purpose -- without tubes or IVs, keeping her artificially alive when she was already three-quarters gone. She feared the process of dying, the indignities attendant upon it, and had gone to great lengths to ensure that she would get the most up-to-the-minute palliative care. She drew her last breath as she wished to: at home, tucked into a freshly made bed, in the same immaculate bedroom she had occupied for the past half century, in the very duplex apartment I had grown up in, on Park Avenue. (After a memorial service in New York, I flew with my siblings to Jerusalem with her body in keeping with her desire to be buried next to my father in the peaceful hilltop cemetery where they have adjoining plots.)
She had planned on going when she was ready and was frequently in a state of quiet fury at the fact that she had been given a notice of termination without having been consulted.
The six months that transpired between the news of my mother's fatal illness and her death in the very early hours of Sunday morning, July 23, were tumultuous ones. Although my mother espoused a macabre view of the world and often spoke of her death (her chosen epitaph was "She never made mountains out of molehills"), she was used to having things her way. She had planned on going when she was ready and not a minute before and was frequently in a state of quiet fury -- interspersed with bouts of extreme irritation, fleeting paranoia, and sudden onsets of despondency -- at the fact that she had been given a notice of termination without having been consulted. She disliked having to depend on other people, and she hated being perceived in any way as needy. Up until the very last day, although she could not so much as lift her body from her bed on her own, she insisted on not being accompanied into the bathroom.
As the outlines of a medical plan emerged, it became apparent that there would be an almost unspoken division of labor in regard to her care. My oldest sister, who lived across the park from my mother, was the designated "responsible" sibling. A stickler for details and listmaking, she took over the burden of taking my mother to Sloan-Kettering for X rays and MRIs, chemotherapy and checkups. My second-oldest sister came twice from Israel to stay with my mother for extended periods, overseeing every aspect of her routine. I believe she provided the most consistent emotional support for my mother, which also meant withstanding her irate accusations of being manhandled-"policed" is the word she used -- and her casually tossed-off insults about things being done less well than she would do them. There were also my three brothers, two of whom paid regular visits and one of whom, the youngest of us, was a solicitous and unfailingly affectionate presence.
My own involvement was both hazier, less officially spelled out than my sisters', and, or so I like to think, more psychologically intense. This had to do with my reputation within the family, which was that I was notoriously unreliable in terms of showing up on time if at all, as well as with my relationship with my mother, which had about it something of a lover's intimacy, including our squabbles. (I had, after all, written a novel, Enchantment, about the spell my mother had cast on me, an inconsolable daughter frozen in time, longing for a more motherly mother.)
If I had to characterize my own role in looking after my mother I would describe it as having been the self-appointed guardian of her spirit, her Elan vital. I worried about my mother feeling lost and adrift under her show of bravado, and since I was never sure how much comfort she derived from the visible love of her children and grandchildren, I aimed to provide company by keeping her abreast of the world outside her cancer. I carried tidings from the literary front as well as social gossip in the form of accounts of dinners I had attended or of weekend visits to friends in Connecticut or the Hamptons. Along with chocolates and scented candles, I brought my mother an assortment of books to read, memoirs and novels, and the occasional sober political tract by the likes of Amos Oz. One night, in response to her comment that not one of her many visitors was willing to discuss her impending death, preferring to talk about their own ailments or to lecture her on how much there was to appreciate about the life she had lived, I read aloud an unevasive and unsentimental poem on that very subject by my favorite poet, Philip Larkin. "Most things may never happen: This one will," I quoted from Aubade, checking to see that my mother was listening, sitting up in the comfortable recliner in the room next to her bedroom. ". . . Courage is no good:/It means not scaring others. Being brave/Lets no one off the grave./Death is no different whined at than withstood." Marvelous, my mother said, her deep-set green eyes sparkling like they did when something caught her fancy. Exactly, she added. For a moment I felt we had fought off the malign intruder in our midst, that language conquers all. It is her legacy to me, from one Virginia Woolf lover to another.
Another of her legacies, for all that she liked to deride its importance to her, was a delight in the aesthetic realm, in visual beauty, and proper grooming. Cotton blouses and linen pants were meant to be ironed; my mother never failed to find some piece of my clothing too crumpled for wear when I showed up at her spacious room on the VIP floor of the hospital, where she also continued to bemoan my sixteen-year-old daughter's indifferent T-shirted style of dressing. My mother remained concerned about her appearance -- although she was never one to be obviously vain about it -- even after she had come home from the hospital with catheters implanted in either side of her lung to drain the fluid that her body could no longer get rid of on its own. A hairdresser came in to maintain her indeterminate brown/beige color, and the devoted Eva, who had worked for my mother for years, washed and blew out her hair, shaped her eyebrows, and kept her toenails gleaming.
The second-to-last weekend I spent with my mother I brought her a striated Italian glass carafe with a matching tumbler. I had carefully picked it out at Bergdorf Goodman, after much discussion with an amenable salesman as to its functionality. My mother kept water by her bed and was supposed to drink more liquids than she did, and I somehow thought this would add a touch of glamour to that drab necessity. Shortly afterward, I left for a four-day writing assignment to Paris, where I hunted around for a tiny passementerie container to hold my mother's pills. These delicate and uncrucial touches seemed important to me, a way of reminding my mother that she was who she had always been. But when I brought over the gift on what turned out to be the Monday night of her last week, I noticed that the glass carafe had a crack in it. Of greater worry, my mother seemed more withdrawn than I had seen her, as though she had pulled back inside herself in readiness for departure.
I slept next to my mother for the last three nights of her life. "Don't be lonely," I repeated over and over again, but of course I was telling this to myself.
It has always seemed to me that dying -- uneuphemistically veiled in contemporary coinages like "passing" -- remains the great taboo topic of our information-loaded, garrulous, relentlessly confessional age. When the imminence of death actually puts in an appearance, it tends to induce a kind of panicky busyness in those closest at hand; the brute reality is cloaked in an obsessive bustle of death-delaying arrangements. But as more women live beyond the age of 85 (four out of five centenarians are women), and linger for a decade or longer in a declining condition that consumes more time and money than planned for, there is always the terrifying prospect that instead of devotion, this state of dependency will elicit impatience, an indifference that can verge on neglect. Although I am hounded by things I wish I had done differently -- called her more often, been more regular in my visits -- I take solace in the thought that I tried never to treat my mother as less than the complex, infinitely prideful person I knew her to be under her failing body.
I slept next to my mother for the last three nights of her life. Sometimes I held her hand and sometimes I simply stared at her, taking in her beautiful lightly freckled and remarkably unlined skin, the resiliency of her jaw line. I talked to her because the nurses insisted that she could hear me even though she didn't respond much, assuring her that there was nothing to be afraid of. "Don't be lonely," I repeated over and over again, but of course I was telling this to myself. When she seemed in discomfort or pain I would lean over and kiss her, inhaling her delicious smell. The last words she said to me were in garbled German, "Ich denke dich," which, in essence, means "I'm thinking of you." All these weeks later, her absence still strikes me as implausible, the loss of her bewilderingly real.
This article originally appeared in Vogue.
(25) Anonymous, May 22, 2019 1:04 PM
Greatly appreciated this beautifully written article by an outstanding writer on the death of her Mother, who had led a very full and fortunate life. My own background is also from a traditional German Jewish family and I am now also 86. Thanks so much or all your wonderful work.
(24) Anonymous, June 12, 2013 4:40 AM
Last time I saw her was in a BOX her casket.
I cried at the thought of my mother dying just the thought and when my sister took her away out of the state and would no longer let me speak or see her I felt my heart was phisically breaking . I went through alot and tried profuseely to seek her and was never allowed.when my mother passed another sister gave me the news and although I knew that my sister who took her away would be at her burial I needed to see my mother I felt as though somehow she would tell me why she never tried to call me or try to see me. I hoped she would appear to me and tell me that she loved me despite the lies my sister had told her about me. She was burried and I not once spoke a word to my sister and still today have not.I wish that I could forgive her for all the pain she put me through not letting me speak to my mother or see her but i feel that I am not perfect and if others seek perfection then they should seek god for in my thoughts he is the only perfect being and I too am sorry and I ask him GOD to forgive me because i'm sure he'd like me to forgive her yet I don't feel I can
(23) Maria Costello, January 1, 2009 12:08 PM
Thank You
Thank you for sharing your tory I am searching for the right thing to do as my very close friend whom I consider a brother we have been friend now for the past 28 years has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer which has spread through his entire body, my initial reaction was no we will fight this but ater the 3 weeks since and the biopsie results yesterday my heart is broke I don't know what to do for him or his family, but your story has given me inspiration to just be there for him make him laugh and cry and let him leave this world for his true life with GOD. I really cannot thank you enough and may you be blessed with nothing but good! Sincerly Maria
(22) Anonymous, May 14, 2007 5:31 AM
I was 14 when my mom died. I slapped her face to bring her back. What 14 year old child should ever have to do that? She never responded to my touch. She never gained strength to be alive. I'm mad about that. I never recognized her as a person until I became 21 or 22. I started to see why life had done her wrong. My father died when I was 4 days old. My god that must have been hard for her. She started to drink and only wanted to forget the pain of having three children on her own while dealing with the pain. I, as a young 6 year old, had to make dinner for my siblings and do laundry, clean the house, and make sure homework was completed. I don't think any children of that age should have to take on such a mature role. But I did. Thank you for allowing me to tell my story. My story does go on ... my brother and sister are separated from me because we did not have the matriarchist to keep us close. Life is sad. But it does go on.
(21) arleen, February 15, 2007 12:24 AM
Interesting topic
I enjoyed the well written article about your mom's dying. My mom is now 92, and I am so concerned about my reaction to her death if I outlive. (nothing can be taken for granted). Your article gave me some good ideas if she should fail more, how to be supportive, so I thank you. But how to live with the loss afterward???
(20) Donna Manvich, February 4, 2007 11:08 PM
comingling contemplations regarding a parent's passing
This piece was beautiful. I am 53 yrs. old and think often about the inevitable death of my own parents. How can it be any less than incomprehensible to walk the face of this earth without them? I wonder if I and my sisters will be able to care for my mother so that her dignity and fierce independence remain intact? We are all so different, I know we will each rise to the challenge in 3 unrelated and inconsistent ways. Yet, as different as we are, we are all able say, "Mirror mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all", and therein lies the legacy of mothers and their daughters.
Thank you for a wonderful article.
(19) Sura Z, January 31, 2007 3:44 PM
WOW! How did you know how I feel?
I am amazed at how parallel my emotions were to the author's, in the aftermath and also during my spiritually gifted Mom's death and dying.
I too followed the Astor story to see what was determined regarding the care given. I thought, well, she must have been well taken care of up til then to have lived to that age, and wondered if the best way to get better treatment for her was to go public.
Your statement:
" I find myself waking up to the realization of her being gone with a feeling of disbelief that lasts throughout the day," hit home.
I too, still am in shock, since May 2006. How could it be true? How could it have actually happened? One day mom was here and then poof she was snatched away from me, still needing her to appreciate me and enjoy our visits, still wanting her near me, to be glad and smile at my buying her bath and shower gel, moisturizer, and slippers or a hat or bathrobe. I had even bought my Mom a mother's day gift, as did my daughter, for her grandma, when my Mom left us, without receiving these gifts, not even being aware of their existence.
It just happened one day, after a short stint of problems with falling and breathing, when my saintly mom was one month shy of her 90th birthday. My sisters rushed Mom to the hospital, where I quickly joined them in the emergency room. Low blood pressure, not high; low temperature, not a fever... the opposite of what was previously considered a problem. Mom lived another week. No cancer. A shutting down of all systems, as per her advanced age. We spent another week together, 24/7, but it was not enough. I miss her so. I still yearn for that welcoming twinkle in her beautiful, clear, blue eyes.
I sang to her, held her hand, and whispered encouragement to her. But I could not change God's will. None of us can, and for a good reason. He is the ultimate true judge, and we must abide by his decisions.
THANK YOU WITH MY HEART. "A heart feels a heart," or so my Mom would say.
(18) Hinda Bina, January 25, 2007 2:16 PM
It made me cry
I only recently lost my own dearest Mother at the age of 90, also from cancer although hers was Pancreatic. She was "given" six months but only lasted barely two and a half. Reading this article brought tears to my eyes.
(17) Anonymous, January 25, 2007 1:02 PM
Powerful, emotional, loving
I am 68 years old and until the last couple of years did not feel aging or even the possibility of my immortality. I'm told that I do not look or act as an older person..my mother did not either. But, time does make changes and much as I don't look forward to my dying I know that it is inevitable and nothing to fear. I pray that when that time comes my children will carry on being the wonderful and exemplary adults that they have become. They will always hold my love close to their hearts as I hold theirs now.
(16) Patricia Arnhem, January 25, 2007 10:09 AM
I
Daphne Merkin was my creative writing teacher in New York in 1985/6. I was invited to the launch of her first book 'Enchantment' in the Russian Tea Room, and met her parents at a later reading from the book. Please tell her that, and offer my condolences. I live in Israel now. Thank you.
(15) Veronica, January 24, 2007 2:20 PM
Mothers
Where would we be without our mothers?In the days that turn into years to come bulldogged tenacity she poccessed to climb life's mountains comes alive in you as well.This is her legacy to rise above what life and other people would impose on you.After all life is a choice even in death.
(14) Judith, January 24, 2007 1:33 PM
It so closely reflects my own experiences
It is amazing how closely this account of a mother's passing equals my own experiences with my own mother's passing on April 23, 2006. My mom was almost 97 and suffering from a heart problem and dementia. I was the only child present 24/7 we had an aide 5 hours a day. My brother didn't visit for the last 4 years. My children came occassionaly except for my older daugher who lives near-by an her daughter who lives/ed with me and mother until leaving for college in 2004. Being the care taker of a frail woman who took care of you is no easy task and preserving her dignity takes its toll on the care giver. It is difficult to believe that this strong willed, opiniated, verbally rude, loving woman is gone and left me to now take care of myself..I am the only one for whom I have never had time or money
(13) Sonia, January 24, 2007 5:27 AM
A Symphony Written on the Wind but heard by all of us who have also lost our mother
What a beautiful name, Daphne
A quality of Venus to it - and much closer to that of Neptune, the sensitivy to suffering at levels invisible to most lookers-on who refuse/fail to see!
Quite an article evocative of a multiplicity of emotions as regards my own mother. She had been a sole holocaust survivor of a family I was never to know. My mother whose emotion table was hidden from view - it expressed in a fight to keep from letting what had been and how destroyed from surfacing. And it did again and again - its sufferings all too frequent.
And here you are - parents and family living as though the holocaust, forgive my assumption and envy, had not even touched a feather of a pillow under her head! No "veltschmerzin" there!
It all leaves me wondering if in the final analysis whether what you learned and so want to share is even transcendent! Though I am sure - perhaps - your mother's resistence to transcendence is in fact what underscores the narrative on your mother for whom vulnerability, staving it off at all cost, defined her life! Till its end!
People leave, you know, when their particular assignment in this world ends. And it is their love that never ends - not as a show piece but how we as a result live our lives.
~Sonia
(12) Daniel, January 24, 2007 1:11 AM
Really it's not easy to miss mother especialy as I read the above history it was touchy and it's not easy to sleep three days with out any respond.thanks for the message
(11) raye, January 24, 2007 12:06 AM
Haves and Havenots
I wonder how many women living alone in Israel and in their eighties and not as privileged as Daphne's mother are made to feel after reading this article.
(10) Anonymous, January 23, 2007 3:03 PM
Enjoyed your article
Having lost my mother about one & half years ago, I can so relate to your article. Life does seem unfair especially to the females in this world. I thought you described your presence with your mother the last three days were on target. My sister and I were with mother the last few days (24/7) and so glad we did. I am sure others will enjoy your book very much.
Thank you for sharing.
(9) agnes csato, January 22, 2007 1:56 PM
I went through something like this and I still feel her.
The death of a mother is hard to take.My mother died in Sydney and I flew from Chile to pick her up and bring her back. I could never write about it although I am a writer myself.It is incredible how small you see that strong happy powerfull woman whopulled me through the holocaust. In Tahiti where we changed planes I covered her with wild orchids, and opened the bag with the beautiful mahogany box where I ha her ashes. I even took the box to the blue-green see. She had to be cremated to make such a long journey. Finally we arrived after five days of flyght, and they wouldnt allow her into the jewish cemetery. So we took her to a Park, where she rests, she was my strong stubbern mother who had to live under the Commonwealth rules and have an Ausy passport. That was her dream during the war. But she never dreamed to sit ina a beautiful mahogany box on a beach towell in Papeete-Tahiti. Its another way of dying, or a different after-death. Thank you for reading this: ágnes
(8) Susan Babendure, January 22, 2007 9:43 AM
Greatly appreciated
I am going thru this now with my 86 year old mother and not being a writer, would not be able to put the words together so beautifully. I sent this to my sister in hopes that it will give her some solace also. Thank you.
(7) Anonymous, January 22, 2007 6:54 AM
very enlightening, well written, and touching
This beautiful account of Daphne's mother and her role at the end of her mother's life was very enlightening.
It has helped me immensely and will alter the way I relate to my mother who is 84 and who recently moved to Israel, where I too live. I have passed this on to my friends who are now caring for a parent.
(6) Anonymous, January 22, 2007 2:21 AM
Maybe she said 'Thank you'.
Beautifully written. Perhaps your mother was saying not 'denke' but 'danke'. Could she have been thanking you? I see someone has already suggested this. Which matters more, I wonder, her concern or her gratitude? Both are there.
(5) saranna, January 22, 2007 1:12 AM
Loving article...
Treasure your measure,,love your Mother...unconditionally...
(4) Denise, January 21, 2007 9:27 PM
Riveting, beautifully written, literate and honest.
Intriguing to read that this first appeared in Vogue.
(3) Myrna, January 21, 2007 6:00 PM
death of mothers
Timing is everything. Thank you for this article as my own mother lies dying in a hospital far from me.
We had our few moments where she was lucid and I said my goodbyes.
(2) Abby, January 21, 2007 12:40 PM
As someone who has lost their mother in the past year. Your words resonate with me. Thank you for sharing this with others.
(1) Anonymous, January 21, 2007 11:15 AM
I found this article very touching. It seems to me, though, that perhaps the author's mother's last words were "Ich DANKE dich"--i.e., "I THANK you" rather than "I'm thinking of you."
May the nifteres rest in peace.