The breath

Remembering my mother, Minnie Leviton

By SUSAN GOODMAN
Minnie Leviton (photo credit: Courtesy)
Minnie Leviton
(photo credit: Courtesy)
 I HAVE just marked the yahrzeit of my mother, Minnie Leviton, who died in her studio apartment at the retirement home, Neve Amit, in Jerusalem’s Ramat Eshkol neighborhood, at the age of 91, on December 1, 2016. She had made aliya with me in 2004, and lived with me for nine years prior to moving to Neve Amit. And now I feel able to return to the essay I wrote during the shiva. It is not easy to read, but I do find immense comfort in the fact that I was able to protect her from ending her days in hospital.
Lying in the half dark of a room dimly lit by a solitary bulb at one end, I became aware of how my breathing had synchronized with that of my mother. The thin futon did little to alleviate my discomfort of sleeping on the floor, seeming to do no more than introduce a firm unevenness that ached the bones of my body. Her breathing hesitated and was swiftly followed by a few rapid breaths, and then the rhythm returned.
Rising, and falling. Intake, and outbreath.
Audible, but not noisy. Heart and lungs gently pulsating in a single unison. Were not these the first sounds of consciousness that permeated my being as I transitioned from embryo to fetus deep within her womb? The night moved on slowly, each breath, each heave of her chest – sentinel to her continued existence.
The first light of morning fell across her face, filtered by the net covering the nearby window. And she stirred, a slight agitation flickered across her face. “It’s alright Mummy, I’m here.” And the eyes, which opened but could hardly see, strained to make out my form, and the lips smiled. “I love you so much,’ she mouthed. “And I love you” was my return loud and firm, without a hint of a quiver, placing my mouth above the ear that still had a hearing aid. I took a damp tissue to moisten her lips and she shook her head, still gently smiling. Sometimes she would suck on the dampness to freshen her mouth, but this time she refused.
And then they came to sit by me as I shrank into the low chair designated for a mourner. Dear friends, neighbors, and unfamiliar faces; soft voices, who shared the pain of losing a mother; louder voices that pierced the stillness – perhaps uncertain or uncomfortable by the solemnity and sorrow that hang in the air. And always the request for a retelling of the last days, the last weeks, the final moments – not I think because of any assumed therapeutic potency to help a mourner transition back to life. But driven by a profound curiosity in a society that cultivates fear and abhorrence of Thanos, that entices us into an ever-extending old age, and finally leaves us withering and dying in a hospital bed. In a society where death is remote, sanitized, and taboo, I hold secret knowledge.
The sixth day of mourning begins. My head throbs and I sob alone…so alone…an orphan in a sea of yearning. Another word, another glimpse. The sound of one more breath. Please, just the whisper of one more breath.
I am lying on the futon once more, I can feel the physical discomfort of the absent softness of my bed. I hear the rhythm of her breathing, and now I remember the endless nights listening to the tiny puffs of breath of my asthmatic babies – lying near them, alert to the tiny sounds that heralded an asthma attack. Night follows day, tiredness seeps into my every muscle. But I only need a few days of strength, I am sure of that – it is four days since she has eaten, and scarcely a sip of water. “Mummy,” I say, and she smiles and opens her eyes whispering words of love to me, and always asking the time.
I put on the same clothes I have worn each day, just a change of underwear. I brush my hair and feel its greasy lankness lying on my scalp. The mirrors are covered so there are no images to criticize and harangue me.
My mother despaired of my unkemptness.
Her hair, her dress, her nails never fancy but meticulous. I, her only child, with little regard to appearance. Not really the daughter she needed. She made clothes for this careless child. She chose the patterns and the material. Two dresses went with me to Oxford University, so that I would “look nice.”
I entered the university a poor girl, unaware of the mores of fashion…and no one cared.We girls were a motley bunch, and I felt embraced for whoever I was, whatever I was. The snobberies of northwest London that derided my poverty were supplanted by an alma mater that embraced me, and fed an ever-curious intellect. From a home with no books, I had a college room beneath a library, open all hours. My mother felt enormous pride – her daughter at Oxford! But she became more and more remote from me, and I from her. A chasm opened between us. But her last years were a gift to us both. She even described them, as the happiest of her life. It was her illness that gave me a way to reclaim a presence in her life. We now spent together the hours that she had longed to spend with me all her life. She was wise counsel to problems I laid before her. She read widely and with profound understanding. Twentieth-century political history was her forte. And always, to within her last few days, she was lively, engaging, and informed, on every triumph and catastrophe of contemporary politics.
IN THE last weeks, my every moment with her was greeted with a welcoming smile as she opened her eyes at the whisper of my voice. She loved me so profoundly. It was the unconditional love that binds parent to child. And now I could find voice for the immense love I had for her, a love that had not always expressed itself in the whirl of fleeting years. We sat and discussed the closing of her life, and I promised she would not be sent to hospital or to the dreaded siyudi, which occupied the basement floor of the home for the elderly where she had her own studio apartment. Siyudi is the repository of those needing extensive physical care and echoes to the endless wailing of the demented.
Chandika, a young woman from Sri Lanka, cherished and cared for my mother. She did everything as an act of pure love. And between us we could keep my mother in her bed, in her room. I administered medication to keep her pain free but still lucid when she emerged from the depths of weary sleep. I watched over her at night, and Chandika cared for her every need by day.
In her last days she opened her eyes and looking at me clearly, she spoke clearly and meaningfully to my hovering face. Our every moment together was precious.
And people keep visiting me. Uncertain of what to say. Bringing soup, and shepherd’s pie, and quiches, and bread and biscuits. And it is all exactly what I need.
Sustenance and companionship. I, who live so much of my life alone, relishing my solitude, filling it with work, am suddenly surrounded by so many. And sometimes they weep as they recount their own memories of loss, and sometimes they talk of the banal, and sometimes they tell jokes. And I hardly hear any of it; I nod knowingly and realize, when they have gone, how painful it is to be left in the empty room that now envelops me. Mike is right, the world is a colder place when your mother dies.
And the room is replenished with new faces, and they too encourage me to retell the last days and the last hours. I hold secret knowledge.
When did I know that she was dying? Seven months ago. No. No. Wrong answer.
I see the puzzlement. They want to know about the real dying, so I add: It was clear two weeks ago. And your sons flew in earlier in the week – how did you know they should be here? You can see the changes.
I pause. I look. There is no questioning in their eyes, they are satisfied with the formulaic answer. They don’t want to know the stages of death I witnessed, the change in skin color, urine production, breathing patterns…the progress of the kidney failure that enabled her to leave life most gently. They don’t want to know about the careful titration of drugs against pain that I performed throughout each day so that she could still be transiently lucid, but without experiencing the encroaching pain of secondary bone metastases. It was a dance with death. Not to prolong life. But only to relieve pain, and prevent us being lured into adopting life-perpetuating measures, with their accompanying misery and suffering.
Not to deprive her of those brief flashes of consciousness, when she returned to us.
And always, always the recurring question – before, and during, and after – Was she in hospital? No. Why wasn’t she in hospital? Because she was dying. Always a long silence. Please understand, I want to say, the dying should not be in hospital.
Please understand that we should not fear the death of our loved ones. We should see its approach and not deny it, not push it away, not delay it, but give peace and permission for those who are leaving us.
I wish I could have told my mother that she would not be buried beneath the earth. I remember her recounting to me, as a young child, of perhaps six or seven, her trauma of the earth falling on the coffin of her own mother – she was suffocated by the thought that one day that would be her fate. But as her shrouded body was slid into a small burial chamber in a wall, and a rectangular stone wedged within its opening, I was reminded of the ancient practice of placement in caves, and felt the lightness of the air above her, rather than crushing weight of earth. And although it was merely a desiccating corpse lying there, I would like her to have known that this would be her end.
But then, there are many things I will want to tell her over the years ahead.