My mother passed away on Saturday.
I received the news while I was at the lovely Phoenix Comic Con. Her passing was hardly unexpected; her mind had really checked out several months ago, and her body finally caught up with her. My sister, Beth, has been the point person dealing with the day to day issues of an ailing parent, and honestly it’s been brutal on her. This is one of those occasions where death is a blessing. But it’s never welcome.
If Dalia Rojansky had been growing up in modern times, she might well have had a very different life. She was a mathematical genius. She worked with Watson and Crick, mappers of DNA. But she set all that aside to raise three kids–me, Beth and my brother, Wally–and always be there for us.
I get much of my sense of humor from her. Every year we would have a Passover seder, which my father took very seriously. But my mother and I would always crack jokes and break each other up, and at some point my poor father would slam down the Haggadah, declare, “We are NEVER doing another sedar!” and storm away, leaving us laughing hysterically. Yet of course next year we would start all over again, with my mom and I swearing that we’d be good this time. Which we never were.
Admittedly, her cooking wasn’t the greatest. She grew up in Haifa in Israel, where food storage was sometimes an issue. So she was taught to overcook everything in order to kill potential germs. I didn’t know until I was older that on Thanksgiving, the turkey leg wasn’t supposed to snap right off. I remember one Thanksgiving Beth and I staged a SWAT-like raid on the turkey. The meat temperature said it was 180 degrees, the little thing had popped to indicate it was done, but my mom wanted to cook it another hour and a half “for luck.” And her Swedish meatballs…she never added breadcrumbs or eggs. She just packed the meat tightly. And then overcooked it. Jose Reyes could hit one out of Citi Field, and that is NO exaggeration.
But she’s your mom. You accept what you can’t change and you forgive that which is annoying. Frankly, I thought she would pass two years ago, within days of my father’s dying. At least now they are back together.
I will miss her terribly.
PAD
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