Auld LANG SYNe

Many songs came to my mind in the days after my mother died. For the first 24 hours, I could only listen to Rachmaninoff and gospel, particularly Mahalia Jackson and early Sam Cooke. Then Simon and Garfunkel and other 1960s folk music, which my mom used to play all the time when we were children; her favorite songs were Bridge Over Troubled Water and Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. But somehow the song that most stayed with me that first week was David Bowie and Queen’s Under Pressure, especially these lyrics: “why can’t we give love, give love…cause love’s such an old-fashioned word and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves…”

My mother, Marjorie, was a lifelong nurse and caregiver in the tradition of her mother Agnes. For many years, she was director at several large hospitals in central New Jersey, including Raritan Bay Medical Center in Old Bridge and Monmouth Medical Center, formerly Paul Kimball in Lakewood. Her greatest passion was elder care; she spent most of her time with people who didn’t have anyone else to care for them. For many years, she worked at Arnold Walter Nursing Home in Hazlet. Even when she was a patient in a nursing home and rehabilitation center, she did the rounds to check in on staff and other patients. People who met my mom would first always tell me how kind she was—that was the first thing. She was tough, too: both kind and tough. One of the last times we saw my mom was at the Aster Creek holiday party where she sang Amazing Grace and Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby McGee. When I drove her to my aunt and uncle’s house this past Thanksgiving, she marveled at the sun, the sky and the pine trees the whole trip there, just like she would do when we were little and would sing “little darling, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter…it feels like years since it’s been here.”

My mother was an intensely private person with little to no interest in calling attention to herself. She also had almost no concern for material possessions—what she had at the end of her life could fit in several small boxes given to me by her brothers. When my brother Michael and I were growing up, my mom told us that we could choose religion or no religion as long as we chose to be kind. Along with me and my brother, many will remember my mom: grandchildren, Henry and Anastasia, whose imaginations and spunk often made her laugh, especially in the last year of her life, as well as son-in-law Adam, siblings Harry, Roberta, Ellen and Mark (who swarmed around my mother with endless love and support over the years, always there in a heartbeat when needed) plus loving extended family and many friends at Aster Creek. Her internment will be at a small ceremony at Locust Valley Cemetery in late January with immediate family, close to where she grew up in Sea Cliff, New York. She will be acknowledged by St. Bonaface Catholic Church in Sea Cliff where she attended grammar school and where her mother practiced for many years. Our family will host a larger memorial celebration in later 2024. Donations have been made in her memory by Robert and Leona Dressler to Dorot which serves senior citizens of all faiths in New York.

Now, on the brink of New Year’s, an amaryllis on my shelf has bloomed a deep but brilliant red. It’s where I grow all of my plants in winter and is, for me, the undeniable center of my home. I find amaryllis especially comforting in the winter months—sometimes they bloom and sometimes they don’t. I had given this amaryllis bulb to my mom over Thanksgiving—I remember handing it to her after the Janis Joplin holiday party, asking her to keep it in a sunny spot. Now it is back with me for New Year’s; I feel my mom is, too. She would surely know this old tune from Scottish poet Robert Burns and undoubtedly chime in with all of us for another round: “we’ll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne.”