The Death of A Mother

TOWSON, Maryland, Monday, April 17, 2017 - For the last two years of my mother's life, her mind was enfeebled with Alzheimer's or Dementia.  Doctors say they can never be sure which of those two horrors is actually doing its dirty deeds, I'm told, unless they do an autopsy, and after all of the indignities heaped upon my mother during the end of her days on this earth, an autopsy was not going to happen.  

Then, my mom died on Good Friday.  She was 87.  This close to the end, I cannot hope to do justice to her as I write here.  My sister calls her the perfect mother, in the sense that she made my sister and me feel like we were always loved and that somebody was always on our side.  My mother was perfect at that.  

My mother and father were married over 63 years when she left us on Friday.  He is 90.  It was my thought he never looked or acted his age until then.

My sister is worried that people will only remember the last two years, when my mother's personality changed 100%.  Once this happened, she was able to embarrass herself and her family with a cutting statement that, during the rest of her life, she would never dream of saying.  In fact, all of the things that were extremely important to her for 85 years seemed to disappear from her world.  The diseases that do that to people come straight from hell; there is no other place that could concoct something that evil.  

My father would patiently explain to her, over and over again, who she was, who he was, who we were, where we lived, where we went to church, and so on.  A second later she'd prove she didn't comprehend anything he had said.  Over the last six months, one day would be simply terrible and you'd think, this has to be the worst it can possibly be. And then the next day would be even worse. You'd bury your head in your hands and - when nobody was looking - sob for an hour.  But we kept her at home with us.  Meals were sent in and nurses came.  My wife and oldest daughter were relentless (and then some) in fixing meals and treats and doing other things that lessened the burdens.  But 95% of the time it was my father and me.  More him than me.  My sister lived half way across the continent - OK, she lived in Ohio - and could only come now and then.  She worked ridiculously hard when she came, but she couldn't stay because, like her mother, she had a family she was responsible for.

That was the last two years of my mother's lifesd.  The 85 that came first were God's most gracious gift to the people mom came to know.  People remembered her warm sincere smiles and gentle laughter, her love of her family, how she marveled at the Maryland countryside and how well she kept her gardens.  She and my father were frugal to a T.  The reward for all of that was that both of their kids went to college, earned degrees and started families.    

Anybody who knew her eventually heard the story of her near-drowning at age 13.  She was in the surf at Atlantic City when, suddenly, a series of large waves rolled in.  She was knocked under the seething water and when she tried to come up for air, a number of smaller children near her yanked on her so they could get up above the surface.  By pulling on my mother, the smaller children made it up for air, but my mother couldn't get there, at least for the longest time.  At the last, she did survive that horror, but she never was at ease in the water again.  

Nor was my mother at ease up in the sky, and a lot of great vacations my mother and my father could've taken in their later years never happened because of that.  My father did finally persuade her into flying out west, just the two of them, to see parts of These United States they had only read about or saw on TV.  Their flight took off from Baltimore, and would finally land in Las Vegas after a lay over in Kansas City.  After one night in Vegas, they embarked on a motor coach tour of the great western National Parks. Both of my parents absolutely loved that trip, but the "leaving on a jet plane" part was another story altogether.  In later years my father would show people the permanent scars on his arm where my mother had dug her finger nails into him upon take off from Baltimore, and kept them embedded there for the duration of the flight.   

My mother did make it to other destinations by automobile.  The Trotz's drove to Florida and Maine, Vermont, Canada, and other places in these United States.  Although my mother wasn't much for boats, she did consent to taking the Ticonderoga Ferry across Lake Champlain, probably because it only takes 15 or 20 minutes.  She loved those trips.  Most of them took place after both of my parents had retired.   But i do recall one lengthy car trip that took place when I was 14.  

My father was one of six children born to an immigrant coal miner and his wife.  Both of my dad's parents were of Polish Ancestry and lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania. One of my Father's sisters ended up in Orlando, Florida.  When I was 14, my aunt and her husband (my uncle) came to Baltimore to visit my dad and one of his other sisters, who also lived here.  While they were in Baltimore they talked my parents into driving back to Florida with them for a visit.  It was great idea, we all thought, except for one thing:  it was 1969 and our car wasn't air conditioned.  It was also summertime.  My sister and I took turns riding with Aunt Edna and Uncle Ernie - their car was air-conditioned - but my mother stayed with my father all of the way down to Florida and then all of the way back to Baltimore.  

I remember that while we were in Florida, the first manned flight to the Moon took off from Cape Kennedy (which it was called at that time).  On the day of the launch, we all arose before dawn and drove to a small peninsula that was near the Cape.  The spot offered a great view of the early morning event.  The large rocket jumped out of the morning mists, orange-tailed and flaming, and flew up and up until it finally disappeared into a distant cloud bank.   We saw the actual landing on the moon on my aunt and uncle's TV.  

On the drive back to Baltimore, my parents revealed that about eight years prior to that time my father, who was both an engineer and a complex tool designer, and was employed by Martin Marietta at that time, had been offered a better job at the Martin facility in Cocoa Beach, Florida, very near to the Cape.  He sort of kind of wanted to take the job, but my mother was vehemently opposed, solely because she was, for all intents and purposes, an only child and would've had to leave her parents behind.  Funny thing was, neither my sister or I knew anything about the job offer or the other issues until they told us these many years later.  

My mother graduated from Towson High School, back when that school was housed in the building that eventually became Towson Elementary.  In those days, High School ended after the 11th grade.  Her parents - my grandparents - only had two children.  My mother's older sister had died in infancy after being born with a serious stomach or bowel defect.  My mother was their second try and to say she was the apple of their eyes would be a vast understatement.  But my grandparents were the most wonderful people and she had a very happy childhood.
  
My sister and I came along in the mid-1950's, a couple of years after she had married that son of the Polish Coal Miner from Scranton, Pennsylvania.  My sister and I never doubted that we'd gotten a great deal we'd done nothing to deserve.  My mother did all the things mothers did, and then she did a lot more, working hard, raising a family, keeping us on the straight and narrow, and many many other things she decided she needed to do. Every Christmas and birthday was remembered, celebrated and made memorably special.  Every piece of clothing I pulled on was laundered and most often pressed.  Every dinner had a green vegetable.  Big breakfasts were on weekends, but even the midweek ones were just great. We did our homework, come hell or high water.  We took some fun vacations to the ocean.  One year my father rented a house trailer for a week or two and we headed north, touring New England all the way up to Maine. 

This week, the very best mother in the world will be laid to rest in the old Lutheran Cemetery in Blenheim in Baltimore County.  The cemetery sits up on a hill and behind a small grassy lot where the little wooden church, St. John's Blenheim, once stood.  It's the very same little wooden church where she and my father were married on August 1 those 63 years ago.  Her parents and her infant sister, and her grandparents, and lots of her aunts and uncles and cousins, are already buried up there. All of their spirits and souls are with the Lord in heaven, and there must've been quite a joyous reunion a few days back.  Back here, among her survivors, there is a gaping hole so large it cannot now possibly be imagined.