Mama was a complex individual
Some readers of my book “My Life Through My Dresses”, completely misunderstood my mother’s character, her love for me and my love for her, becuse I was describing my childhood traumatic experiences, most of which came from Mama. Mama herself never understood, or perhaps, understood, but never owned up to the harm that was done to me in my childhood. Yet at the same time, I would not have become ME, had I not been my mother’s child. Mama gets credit for many things she did right raising me amidst all the dysfunctionality of our Soviet life together and the society around us, which lingered into the early years of our life in the US, the systematic institutionalized antisemitism that she herself had experienced throughout her Soviet life, and the horrendous marriage to my father, which left her deeply wounded for all her remaining years. Basically, 2/3 of her lifetime. She was only briefly happy in her life for several years after graduation and before she married him…
Mama never read what I wrote
After I wrote the book, Mama erroneously presumed that I wrote a book about fashion and so she continued to say to her many acquaintances. She was still active then, still able to read, her vision deteriorated a couple years after, but she never made an effort. What I wrote was not of any interest to her, just as my thoughts and aspirations were never items of any particular curiosity, except to torment me for having them.
Different perspectives
I was very different from Mama quite early on and she had no idea how to let me be me. My Grandma was a buffer, shielding Mama from responsibility of daily chores and such. But she died when I was 9 years 11 months and 5 days old. I was the only witness to her final moments. Grandma’s death effectively ended my childhood and transferred to me a lot of responsibilities. In essence, I lived from then on as a mama to my mama.
I was never afraid of death.
I mourned Grandma, because with her death I lost my best friend and supporter ever. Mama feared death, because when she was just 9 years and 7 months old, she witnessed much death and destruction. That was in August of 1941, not even two months after the Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Union. Bombs were dropped onto Kiev from the first days of the war. Mama vividly remembered and often reminisced about the very first night, June 22, 1941. Later, in August, after Grandma finally made the decision to evacuate, their train was bombed and two cars after theirs were completely destroyed. She never told me just what she witnessed that night. Except fire. She saw fire from where she and her brother were hiding in the ditch. I understood only last month that Mama’s fear of death dates back to that night. She must have seen them jump, burn alive or worse, being torn to pieces…
About Babi Yar
After Kiev was liberated and her family returned to it, they learned about their neighbors, friends, schoolmates and relations, who were executed in the Babi Yar ravine on September 29-30, 1941 by bullets. Today and tomorrow we commemorate the 85th anniversary of that tragedy. Mama lived a month short of the full 85 years beyond the date she could have died in Babi Yar with the rest of 33,771 Kiev Jews. Growing up in Kiev, surrounded by Russian and Ukrainian neighbors, who continually lived there, including under the Nazi occupation, many Jewish children were hounded and bullied. I personally heard every antisemitic slur, including “you should have died in Babi Yar with the rest of them” from people I considered friends, parents of friends, and even children of my teachers…
Death was not merciful to the Babi Yar victims. The entirety of Jewish population of Kiev, who did not evacuate, were lied to and led without resistance to be corralled behind the barbed wire, stripped and lined up in rows by 5 or so, to save on bullets. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers witnessed their family members die and knew they only had minutes left. The Ukrainian polizai were vicious and killed anyone who was found still breathing in that giant grave site. The Ukrainian women from that neighborhood sorted the belongings of the Jews, who thought they were being deported and were told to bring all their valuables with them. The entire city was a witness to this mass execution, the first one of this proportion ever during WWII. The Nazis covered it up as they started losing the war, and the city covered it up some more after the Nazi’s left. The ravine was filled in and flattened. The Jewish victims were never honored and hardly mentioned. Then a dam broke in March of 1961, just three months before my birth. Mama miraculously evaded death that day by being too lazy to go visit her aunt. Otherwise, like so many hundreds, maybe thousands, that day, she too could have been buried under the Dniepr silt and Babi Yar’s human remains and ashes of their burned bodies.
Death is a natural part of life
I do not fear conversations about death since I witnessed Grandma’s. I also heard so many stories of family miracles and losses. I’ve visited the graves and played among them in the shade. I’ve lived in the shadow of Babi Yar in Kiev. Death was something I understood early on in ways children do not. It is a release and transition. Mama refused to consider this. A trues product of the USSR, she was a lifelong atheist. I told her about waking from insufficient anesthesia during an appendectomy . I was given my first knowledge of death. I was only 8 years old. I experienced what people refer to as an out of body experience. I remember some of it. Mama dismissed it as hallucination.
Two decades later, also after the effects of anesthesia, I had a tunnel of death experience. I remembered some of it. Mama was unwilling to talk about it.
Mama sent me a signal
Mama died a month ago at 1:19 p.m. on Saturday of full moon. After the funeral, I lit a candle in Mama’s apartment and it stayed lit for over 28 hours.
I could not, as is the Jewish custom, sit shiva for the entirety of the mourning period. I had to leave NY, possibly forever, and to return home, but after I returned I did. At 2 a.m. of the immediately following Friday, I lit another memorial candle. They are all made to burn for 24 hours. It burned until 1:20 p.m. Saturday, nearly 36 hours and extinguished a minute after the entire week passed after Mama’s death.
It was not a coincidence as skeptics would rush to say, it was a divine miracle.
Thank you, Mama, for always teaching me something important.
Being philosophical
This is not the forum to delve into the deep philosophical meaning of death being a natural part of life. It is far simpler to say that it is a natural end of life. But that is only for atheists and possibly, for agnostics.
I am no longer that. I’ve lived my life mostly in the freedom of the United States, and because of freedom I live and practice, I believe in God.
It is something Mama had a very uneasy time to accept. But now, like me, she understands that death is natural, because we live in our bodies, which last only as long as bodies can, but we live as well as our minds (spirits) and hearts (souls).
Mama was a highly educated person, an electrical engineer, who understood science in ways I do not. She understood that nothing comes from nothing, ex nihilo nihil fit.
And now she knows for sure that life does not disappear into nothingness. Her neshama soul will continue to hover over me while my body lasts.