On January 15, 2012, my mother passed away in a New York City hospital. When I received the news that morning, I cried louder than I had ever cried before. Six days later, on the 100th birthday of her late mother, Elena was laid to rest in Glendale Cemetery in Bloomfield, just a short walk from her mother’s grave. There has not been a day during the past ten years when I have not thought of my mother.
I’ve thought about how resourceful she was raising my older brother and me in our apartment in a public housing neighborhood in New York City, squeezing fifteen or twenty cents out of every dime and making sure we ate and dressed well and had some fun growing up. I’ve also recalled how, as a young divorcee, she saw to it that her essentially fatherless sons went to good schools and did their homework every day.
I remember how my mother’s life changed when she remarried and our family moved to New Jersey, where she faced new challenges. I recall her happy smile at times, and the sad look in her eyes on other occasions. I’ve thought about how happy she was on some special family occasions, and many moments years afterward when she enjoyed being with her grandchildren.
I’ve thought about how she insisted on helping take care of me one day when I was in my 40s and had routine surgery, and how she might’ve wanted to help me less than a year after her fatal surgery when Superstorm Sandy knocked the power out of my beachfront condominium for over a week. I’ve imagined how happy she would’ve been at my eldest son’s wedding in Central Park, not far from our former New York City home.
I never doubted my mother loved me. I knew it was unconditional love, like the love she felt from her own mother. And I loved her the same. It’s a love I’ve sorely missed sharing for ten years now.
