The
nightstand holds her glass case and her favorite knick-knacks she could not
part with. The dresser and the chest of drawers contain memorabilia she
collected over the years, photos, and a few frames with her portraits and those
of her two granddaughters and two great-grandsons.
The room is white
walled with oil paintings of landscapes and an icon with her favorite rosary
blessed by the Pope which we brought back from the Vatican years ago. She liked
to pray every night and sometimes in the morning. She crossed herself at every
meal like a good Orthodox would do.
She never
wore the scarf required by modesty and church attendance for married women in
her country – she loved her soft, thick hair colored auburn and we jokingly
called her Lucy.
Her baptism
name was Niculina (Nicole), but her two brothers and three sisters called her
Bibica. Her husband of seven decades called her his Mimi, a term of endearment.
To the rest of the family, she was Mimi as well. To her granddaughters, she was
Maia, short for Mamaia (Grandma).
Mom loved to
walk her oldest granddaughter, a precocious three-year-old, in the nearby
cemetery at the university. And Eileen asked her with the innocence of
toddlers, “Maia, when are you going to die so I can come see you at the
cemetery?” That innocent question has finally come to pass, and mom’s soul flew
into the starlight; grief enveloped all of us like a thick fog.
Her semi-bare
bedroom and the bathroom, have an echo of emptiness as I step on the cold
marble tiles. It is not just hollow of her earthly presence, but it is empty of
her happy soul, of her laughter, her chatter, of her tears, her pain, and her
loving advice. Bogart can no longer jump and purr in her lap when she watched
TV. Her Romanian soap operas were legendary, and she loved to watch them with
her adult granddaughter.
Gone is her
zest for life and her almost childish happiness at Christmas when she strung
the lights everywhere and placed ornaments in the fir tree. Gone is her
soothing voice that seldom rose in anger. Her suite is quiet, so quiet that I
can hear the rain drops outside. It is an almost eerie quiet, as if rejecting
every earthly sound.
She is no
longer coming down the steps slowly and carefully, afraid of falling. She is
gone in the light, energy that is no longer here. If physicists are correct
that energy is never lost but transferred, then where is she?
If something
cannot come from nothing, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but rather
transformed into various forms, then where is her power? There was so much
light and energy about my mother, what was she transformed into? Is she our
guardian angel? Is she the monarch butterfly who found us in the cold October
day at Lake Champlain in Vermont? Is she the black and white butterfly who flew
about and around our bodies and faces when we took a walk in the woods the
morning that my mother died? Is she the dragon fly that surrounds us on the
deck, her favorite spot to watch nature and animals?
I talk to
her every day, but it is a lonely monologue, not a spirited day-by-day dialog
with a human being with a heart, mind, and soul. People tell me that she is in
a better place, but what does that mean? What better place? I miss her laughter
and her voice. Despite the many hardships she experienced under communism, she
always kept a positive outlook – nothing phased her too much and always joked
about it.
Mom’s ashes
rest in a box in her favorite room to sit down and relax after a walk with
Bogart at the edge of the woods. The small altar contains a lock of her hair on
top of the urn, her last photo, a large candle which burned at her memorial,
her glasses, the last doily she crocheted without a pattern, from the memory
jumbled in her dying brain, the crochet needle, her favorite icon and rosary,
and her straw hat. She tended to many vegetable and flower gardens wearing that
hat.
Mom wanted
to be with her siblings, in the family crypt in Romania. The war in Ukraine and
the fear of traveling so close to a war zone is depriving mom for now of having
her final wishes fulfilled. When the war is over, I hope to be able to carry
her urn then to Romania and have mom finally laid to rest in her chosen spot.
For now, I
feel like she is home, where she wanted to be before she developed dementia.
She was a home body, the perfect domestic engineer who kept us fed, in clean
clothes, and a home that was spotless.
My
children’s friends were always welcome in our home even though mom could not
speak English. But she spoke the language of welcoming strangers in our home, offering
them good food, an occasional coke hidden in the unused dishwasher, and simple
desserts. Nobody knew her recipes, they were in her head, a pinch of this, and
a spoon of that. Once her brain started dying, the recipes were gone too.
The greedy
corporatists, who locked the population down for two years to sell their
vaccines, have robbed mom and me of the opportunity to see each other as much
as we wanted. I could not touch her, I had to see her through a window and on
Face Time. As her mind died faster for lack of conversation with me or the
staff and complete lack of any mental stimulation from the nursing home which
used the Covid lockdown as an excuse to abuse and neglect all elderly by
locking them up in their rooms, she sunk into total inability to recognize us.
Some days I was her mom, other days her sister, a friend, and even though it
was painful to see her decline and the complete erasure of our shared past, I
knew her and loved her and that is all that mattered.
I fought
hard to force the nursing home to bring her out onto the patio for fresh air
while I was made to sit six feet away from her, both with a mask on. When
nobody watched, we removed the masks and we talked, smiled, and was able to
touch my mom and give her kisses on her forehead and cheek. I read her Romanian
fairytales and showed her family pictures. It was the only time that the
nursing home treated her with humanity – they washed her and dressed her.
Maybe she is
in a better place, without pain and neglect from the abusive west African nurses’
aides and CNAs. No matter how many times a week, each week, I would go to visit
mom, varying the times, I would always find them lacking in their care.
After mom’s
passing, I made a complaint to the Virginia Department of Health, the
department of nursing home certification, they made a two-day unannounced visit,
and they found all my allegations to be true. Unfortunately, they stopped short
of accessing her medical records since she was deceased, and the nursing home
declined them access to mom’s records.
If mom is in
a better place, I hope that she knows that I tried my best to care for her
health and needs, but my hardest was not good enough against the blatant
neglect and abuse of Manor Care Health Services.
Mom lived a
life filled with hope and love. She never gave up! Mom’s memory on this earth
is eternal in the minds of her immediate family and the friends she made in America.
Many of her extended
family members have already passed on. We will all eventually pass into anonymity
and oblivion as if we never existed, our names inscribed on a cross, a plaque,
a brick, a bench, or a columbarium nest. Our lives are transitory.
We are not
exactly sure why God created us, gave us life in the first place, and why He
takes it away when the time comes. Mom’s time was on June 9, 2022, at 12:12
a.m. She is probably in Heaven, teaching the Angels how to crochet her favorite
pattern, grapes and leaves, and how to garden properly and share the vegetables
with neighbors. She fed and cared for so many people during her ninety years of
life.
Dear Ileana Johnson, we know each other only by our websites. I enjoy reading your articles. We share the sorrow of the loss of our mothers. Your articles, especially of 6/12/2022, 6/14/2022, and 12/28/2022, honor your mother, Niculina Apostolescu (3/17/1932 - 6/9/2022). On 12/28/1999, my mother became ill unexpectedly. On 12/27/2000, Mom, at age 68, went to see Jesus – as her stated desire, when she knew that she was dying. My most recent articles about Mom were on 12/27/2022 and today (included in the humor laced with sorrow). While hiking in the woods, butterflies have fluttered around me, on or near the anniversaries of Mom's birth or death. God created us, in His image, to serve Him, as we accept salvation through His Son. Heaven is no probability for the saved. I see heaven, by my eyes of evidence-based faith, as clearly as I see the clear, crisp, and blue sky, looking out my home office windows, as I type this sentence. I trust that we will both see our mothers again. I know that I will see Mom again. I hope that my comment conforts you.
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