Missing a Birthday

My mother would have been 92.

This was the first year I hadn’t bought her a birthday card since I can’t remember when. I’d always find one that had some forgetfulness joke to it. A woman in jogging clothes: “I run to stay in shape. I just don’t know where I end up.” Things like that.

I’d come across the card on some other errand, decide it was just right, and I’d save it up for her birthday.

I didn’t get a card this year.

I didn’t remind Sophie to phone Granny.

I didn’t phone either.

Many years ago, I learned a lot about loss and grief. I kept trying to get past a hole, to remedy it somehow. And then I realized that holes never go away; we just learn to live around them. Sometimes, I look around and I wonder how many holes are behind all the people I see.

The last two years, thoughts of my mother came in the form of emergency phone calls and emails, crises to handle and worries to calm. “Mom” meant doctors, going back into hospitals, rehab, walkers, physical therapy. It meant fighting battles, getting pissed off, evaluating care, strategizing. That “Mom” crowded out everything else. Finding a birthday card was just another tedious “to do.”

Nevertheless, when she died, it was like a shock wave passed over my world. But when you’ve lived 4,000 miles and two visits a year away for so long, after a while, the waves fade. They don’t reach to Alaska. I don’t brace myself when the phone rings anymore. Those crises are over. They were a distraction – a complication – from the real hole to come.

Something in me couldn’t let September 2nd pass unnoticed. Something in me thought of birthday cards. And on a sunny moment on our brand new back deck, I thought back to the back deck I grew up on, and I wish I could show my mother. I wish she could lie on my deck and soak in the warm sun, and I wouldn’t even yell at her that it was too much sun already.

I would tell my theater-loving mother that I managed to get non-scalped, affordable tickets to Hamilton, and the whole family was going, and I’d see her in New York in March. And she – the woman who knew and saw every Broadway play for the last 60 years – would ask, “What’s Hamilton?”

And now I will actually visit New York and not see my mother. My sisters tried it and didn’t know where to go when they first arrived. They stared at each other in the car, rootless. My mother’s hole is as big as Long Island, and we haven’t yet figured out how to negotiate it.

But when I think of a birthday and a card, it’s … a warm thought. It’s sad and it still comes with an impossible “I wish” attached to it, but it’s a warm thought. Pleasant even. Comforting. Lying on my back deck, buying a theater ticket, using her pot for soup, peeling a cucumber with her vegetable peeler – who would know they’d trigger so many good memories?

The road around a hole is paved with good memories. Only the good ones seem to linger. I let them in quietly, and they comfort me.

Where have all the uncles gone?

Oh, no. They just keep aging. The parents, the aunts, the uncles – that generation ahead of us. Yes, we’re in our Third Thirds, but they’re in their Ninth Ninths or Eighth Eighths. And now Uncle Howie has just died.

Let me tell you about Uncle Howie, who came attached with Aunt Selma. They were the city part of the family when we moved out to the country, but then they upped and moved to Florida. There was an old joke that the Brown boys never traveled further than a block in Brooklyn to find a wife, so Aunt Selma was part of the family before she was actually family.

Uncle Howie was the youngest, talkative brother so he was the window into my dad, too. I still remember his telling me the story of my father and the German field telephones he brought back from World War II. Dad was in the Signal Corps, and the telephones include the printed alphabet: A is for Anton, F is for Friedrich, G is for Gustav, all the way to Z is for Zeppelin. There are two of them, and my dad strung them across the street to my mother’s window when he was courting her. My father?!? Courted my mother? Private phone calls? “Well,” Uncle Howie said, “until ConEd made him take the wires down from their poles and lines.”

Years later, my brother and sisters strung the wires between our bedrooms to “secretly” talk. (Except that they caused static on the TV and my father would yell, “Go to sleep!”) Many years later, I wanted the telephones so we could string them between our house and Sophie’s playhouse in the backyard. They were too heavy for my mother to dig out of the garage, and she didn’t know if they still worked. Uncle Howie to the rescue again: the phones came to us complete with miles and miles of brand new wire.

Eventually, Uncle Howie and Aunt Selma came to visit us in Alaska, and Sophie and I were visiting with them at their room in the Capt. Cook Hotel. Sophie, barely a preschooler, was taking a very long time in the bathroom, so I got up to check. Turned out, she was enthralled with the tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner and lotion and had stuck her head in the sink to try them out.

Now this is why I love the two of them: ever after, whenever Uncle Howie and Aunt Selma traveled, Sophie would get a giant box of little shampoos, conditioners, and lotions from all the hotels they’d visited. That’s Uncle Howie and Aunt Selma.

This wasn’t the first appearance of little bottles in Uncle Howie’s life. When I was little, he was a Fuller Brush salesman. (If you remember Fuller Brush, you’re in your Third Third!) He gave us little bottles of cologne. Later, when I threw a suitcase on top of the thermos of milk in the family Volkswagen and the resulting sour milk smell lasted forever, we used to hold those tiny bottles of cologne up to our nose so we could stand to be in the car.

 We visited them and stayed with them in Florida during the National Waterpark Tour. Although my poor cousin nearly got a concussion after I dragged her to Rapids Water Park, what I still picture is Sophie sitting on the kitchen counter as Uncle Howie taught her how to make matzoh brei his way. Then, because she had an incredible knack for finding money on the ground, they gave her a metal detector. She hunted for money the rest of the trip. It’s still in the closet here. (It has nostalgia resistance to de-cluttering.)


I don’t know how to tell people who are far away that I love them. I’m far away, I don’t really call. We lose touch. I’m not there to help. But they hover in my heart and the pictures in my memory are vivid and warm. All I can do is write and try to say, “You figured in my life and the life of my family. You opened windows, showed love. You mattered to me.”

And as I searched the kitchen cabinets for the recipe for Uncle Howie’s matzoh brei, and I couldn’t find it, I thought, “Oh, no! Is it gone?” How much will be gone with this generation, and then who are we going to ask? What stories will we miss?

Where have all our mothers gone?

I have Stacy on my mind. We met when our two different junior highs merged into our one high school. By the time we graduated and I got my driver’s license, my car knew how to drive to Stacy’s house. The summer after our freshman year in college, we were both back on Long Island. Stacy invited me to ride horses with her, but I went to the beach instead. She fell off a horse and broke her collarbone; I dislocated my shoulder body-surfing. Neither of us could work, so we had another summer together.

Stacy became a New York executive; I moved to Alaska. We’d get together when I visited my mother or for high school reunions, and she and her husband came out to kayak in Prince William Sound. When I began my month in Manhattan last year, Stacy was with me when I first entered my rented apartment. She gave it the stamp of approval; now I could relax in the Big City.

Stacy once wrote me one of the most precious notes I’ve ever received. It was after a visit:

“…whenever we get together … it is as though we’ve seen each other everyday for the last 30 years! Yes, our bathing suits are bigger and the subjects of conversation have changed…, but we always go right to the heart of the matter with the knowledge that thoughts shared are always safe, feelings are treated with care, and we still laugh like a couple of teenagers! So beyond the trees that have grown, the neighborhoods that have changed and all the things we have each experienced over the last three decades, there is this indestructible, invisible bond, like a tap root that stretches for miles and miles through time and space….”

I was traveling to visit Stacy in Maryland – where she’s retired with horses – when I had to turn back to see my mother before she died.

Why is Stacy on my mind? Because last week, her mother died.

I can see Mrs. Frank so clearly in my mind. The way she would throw back her head, squint her eyes, and say something about “you girls.” I can picture myself in their living room. I spent a lot of time at that house, with that mother.

About a year ago, when my mother’s memory was mostly gone, Stacy drove over to pick me up for a visit. I told my mother, described who Stacy was.

“I know who Stacy is!” she interjected. She raced out to the car and hugged Stacy hello with clear and unfogged memory. My mother knew Stacy.

I walked past the telephone yesterday, thinking I’d call my mother to let her know Mrs. Frank had died. Moments like that happen. Continue to happen.

We’re losing our mothers! And so we in our Third Thirds – we motherless children – turn to the ones who knew our mothers, too. That “indestructible, invisible bond” that Stacy wrote about – that “tap root” that connects us – it included our mothers.

Stacy must feel the same thing. Yesterday, I received another note from her, coaxing me to visit her place in Maryland. She wants “to sit and reminisce about our Moms together.”

So do I.

Life and Death Lessons

Things I’ve Learned in the Last Week, or Growing in My Third Third:

I learned that losing a parent is painful.

Yes, yes, I knew that, but I didn’t KNOW that. It’s like when I first had a baby. Suddenly I felt like I needed to apologize to every friend I knew with children. I’d had no idea it could be so HARD. I didn’t know about the sleep deprivation, the worry, the demands on your time. I didn’t know about the disruption to life-as-you-knew-it. I didn’t know that finding the right childcare was so hard, that you’d be torn emotionally in so many different ways. These were abstract facts to me, not life-wrenching realities.

The same is true with losing a parent. I’d offer condolences, but I didn’t offer CONDOLENCES, if you know what I mean. I didn’t know you’d be shaken to your core, that the shaking would last and last. That anyone could be this sad.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

I learned that expressions of sympathy and comfort make a huge difference.

Yes, it was right here in this blog that I made fun of greeting cards: “NO ONE looks at old greeting cards.” But I didn’t know the power of new greeting cards. Returning from my mother’s burial, picking up the held mail at the post office, I was moved by the sympathy cards. I was moved by the cards that came from people relatively distant in my life, from my past, from my synagogue. It made me feel part of a community. They took time out of their lives to comfort me.

I was moved by the phone calls, the visits, the hugs. I was moved by the comments, the emails, the “loves.” I was honored by all the requests to help. It reaffirmed me as a member of the larger community of human beings: we all hurt, we can all comfort.

When she was little, we never let Sophie play with or wear a gift until the thank you note was written. We wanted to teach the necessity of demonstrating gratitude. It didn’t occur to me that I should also teach – and learn – the necessity of showing support.

My sister has said the same thing. In our Third Thirds, we want to be card and note writers.

I learned that rituals exist for a reason. They are in place to help people in difficult times.

When I had a child, I joined the ranks of mothers from the beginning of time. I was a mother in a long line of mothers. When I became bat mitzvah, I affirmed my place in a long line of Jewish women. And now, my mother’s death placed her – and me, as a mourner – in the Jewish tradition.

Prior to burial, my mother’s body was bathed and purified in a ritual called taharah by a group of women known as the Chevra Kadisha, a holy society. My sisters liked that; they thought of how my mother loved having lotion rubbed into her dry skin, how she would have appreciated being bathed. My mother was buried in a plain shroud in a plain pine box. To my mind, it asserts dignity and respect for the deeds of her life, not any material acquisitions. All these things make me feel better.

In the Jewish tradition, there is a seven day mourning period known as sitting shiva. You’re just supposed to sit at home, receive visits, let your grief out. And here, life has intruded. I had too many commitments – my own good deeds in the world, I guess – that I couldn’t break. But I really appreciate the value – the necessity – of shiva.

Susan said to me, “Please honor me with the mitzvah of helping you at this time.” What an exquisite way to offer help. Now I understand where rituals come from.

I learned that preparing with Advance Directives, Health Care Proxies, and The Conversation Project were critical.

Again, that’s one of those abstract facts that became real in the last week. I’d pushed my siblings to get all the paperwork agreed to and signed. Now, a week later, I know my mother could not have died the way she wanted to without the preparation we did. With The Conversation Project starter kit, I knew how my mother wanted to live her final days. With the Advanced Directives, we could ensure that would happen.

It’s all about dignity and respect.

I learned that de-cluttering accomplished BEFORE my mother died was absolutely the best thing.

My mother and we siblings had already cleared out the family home. Truckloads of furniture, memories, and photos were distributed, dealt with, disposed of years ago. My mother was an active player in all this as she launched her own downsizing. In July, her apartment was further condensed. When she died, she was surrounded by only her favorite things. My siblings and I dealt with it all in a few hours.

By de-cluttering early, my mother gave herself the gift of lightening her life. I still remember us asking where she wanted to put the photo albums in her new apartment. “I’ve had them for years,” she said, “It’s time for one of you to take them. I don’t want them filling up my new place.” By getting rid of the weight of her old life, my mother could make room for a new life.

She gave us the gift of that lightness, too. Everyone who has dealt with parental clutter says the same thing: I don’t want my kids to have to deal with all this. I cannot imagine sorting through 90 years of memories and possessions while grieving. Thank you, Mom, for sparing us that.

Mostly, I’ve learned that life is short. Live it well.

An Orphan in My Third Third

Did you feel it? The shift in the universe? Like the gravitational waves, “ripples in the fabric of spacetime from a cataclysmic event”? Or maybe it was just my universe.

My mother died.

We’d had a happy time, sitting in the sun, looking at old home movies. She was all settled, ready to be released back home. All good. I flew back to Alaska. Two days later, she was nonverbal, back in the hospital. Suddenly, things were “grave,” according to the doctors. She died before our planes landed and cars arrived.

My mother died peacefully with Cousin Larry, Jessica, and Kathy at her side, with her best friend Gloria on the other side. They say it was easy and peaceful. I thank everyone she wasn’t alone, but I worry whether she was frightened. Whether we all are.

My mother had a big chair in her and my father’s bedroom. When I came back from school dances, no matter what time, I would sit in that chair and tell her about the night. Did I have a good time? Did any boys ask me to dance? Anything special? She let me go on and on. She asked questions, she never fell asleep on me.

Now I need a big chair, and I need to tell her how her death is rocking me.

I didn’t expect this. I somehow thought I was “ready” for this news. I even thought it was the best way for things to go, that my mother needed to be spared a life of endless readmissions to the hospital. That she didn’t want to live in a world that had become so confusing to her.

And now I find myself bursting into sobs when just nothing at all triggers it. My mother died two days before Yom Kippur. I sat in her synagogue with all the contemplation that Yom Kippur fosters, looking around at “her” space, and I think my whole self just broke.

The thing is, my mother and I had a “prickly” relationship. I don’t understand some of the reasons, but it was prickly enough my mother could never broach the subject. Yet I was her only child to have a child. I KNOW in the core of my being how powerful mother love is – I know of nothing else so gripping – so I know my mother felt it for me. My mother felt it for her four kids. And now there’s a shift in the universe because that force is gone.

A long time ago, I was featured at some event and asked the organizers for an extra copy of the program to send to my mother. One woman said she used to do the same thing, and she noticed each time she couldn’t after her mother died. As my siblings and I went through my mother’s things, I ended up with piles and piles of all the photos, programs, news clippings, stories, and letters I’d sent her over the years. Even from far away, my mother was … my witness. The keeper of my story. Or something like that.

Now my life is … unobserved. I don’t know how to describe this.

My father died when I was 26 and he was 56. But to me, he was “old” and I was young. Not so young as to feel robbed, but not so old that his mortality leaked into me. I was 26, I still had a mother, and death was something that happened to old people. But now I’m in my Third Third, and the loss of my mother puts our generation “up next.” You find yourself doing subtraction, estimating how many years you have left. Mortality is beyond hinting; now it plants its shadow solidly in your path.

I’d said my Third Third was my mother’s Ninth Ninth, and that was worrying, stressful, challenging. Sometimes it was a problem bigger than me, a whole-society problem. Now my Third Third is motherless, and it’s still bigger than me: a sadness so very, very big.

My siblings and I talked about an afterlife. None of us believe in one. I believe in spirit, in soul, in things not observable; I just believe they die, too. But I do believe in memory, in the aftereffects of good deeds at work in the universe. My mother left a lifetime of good deeds behind. Let me share her obituary with you here.

Tonight as I was cooking dinner, my thoughts just glanced in my mother’s direction as they often did. And then I remembered that she’d died, and the universe shook again. I’ve lived 3,000-4,000 miles from her since I was 17, and yet she was always a presence. Now she’s an absence. And no matter how much I think of her or cry over her or wish about her, it does no good. The hole is big and real and permanent and sad.

Is it finally too much?

“Call them mommy” “Hurry”

I still can’t even think of that text message exchange without crying. I can’t imagine being the mother on the end of the phone at 2 in the morning and feeling so utterly helpless. No, I can imagine it. That’s why I sit here with tears splashing down my face even days later.

Every now and then I think I’ve become numb to any more horror. I notice on Facebook that everyone was “Charlie” once for a while, but now they’re not “Pulse.” We just can’t keep thinking of new ways to say “This time it got to me, this time I am so so so so sad.” And then I hear of a text message to “mommy.”

If you’re in your Third Third, then assassination looms large in your life: President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X. Those were horrific and formative to the selves we were to become, but did we ever think our futures would involve this number of shootings against the general public?

Yes, there’s an important qualification to this: many of these acts aren’t against the “general” public; they’re against African Americans or gays. They’re hate crimes. But as one friend of mine put it, if you can kill 20 little kids in an elementary school in Sandy Hook and NOTHING CHANGES, then we’re all sitting ducks.

Oh, not you? Because you carry a gun? Oh, lucky that your kid isn’t hiding in the closet, you think it’s a home invasion, and you shoot your kid. Or you shoot the poor trick-or-treater. Or your kid finds your guns and shoots himself.

I live in Alaska. I know people can use guns responsibly. I’ve eaten meat killed by someone with a gun. I even did a day of Shotguns and Stilettos with Becoming an Outdoorswoman. I’ve also been a victim of armed robbery by a guy who shot off his gun before robbing us (real sign of crazy man). The only time I felt fear in the outdoors was when three guys showed up at camp with a boom box, lots of six-packs, and three rifles.

I ride a bicycle. Every single time I’m on the road, I am aware that cars are bigger than I am and I have to make choices that reflect that: Get eye contact before you cross, ride here not there. I am more careful because cars are bigger. (And yet you also had to take a test and get a license before you could drive that big car on the road.)

I used to feel a certain measure of control about physically defending myself; I took self-defense classes. But introduce a gun, and he’s bigger. Introduce an assault rifle and he’s HUGE.

If other people keep getting bigger, we run out of ways we can compensate by being careful. We all run out of ways of staying safe. If my gun is bigger than your gun, do you have to get a bigger gun? We’ve created mutually assured destruction in our lives, our very own escalating arms race.

People say guns don’t kill people, people do. So what’s the problem about looking at the people buying them? What’s the problem with saying guns are meant to kill meat (if you must) or even one person at a time (if you really must…)? But what’s with the kill-dozens-at-once assault rifles? I have not heard anyone pause, think quietly, and give me a good answer to these questions.

The thing is, there’s so much anger floating around right now, we’re all on somebody’s list and we’ve all got our own lists. Somebody doesn’t like your political party, the country his parents came from, how your pants hang, her grammar, your fancy car. Face it, none of us are list-proof and none of us are without our own lists. We’ve become a boiling mess of anger and this is whom we’re arming?

Make no mistake, we are arming them: We set them loose on the elementary school kids in Sandy Hook. We set them loose on the employees at a holiday party. Our silence and inaction set them loose on the 141 other mass shootings listed on the Gun Violence Archive for 2016.

And yes, all of us set the guy loose on the young man who asked “mommy” to hurry. I hope it’s not your kid or my kid who calls next.

Everytown for Gun Safety

I will make a will!

Here I am, looking for purpose, meaning, and simplicity in my Third Third. Fretting over it, writing about it, thinking it to death. Making plans, researching options, supposedly leaving no stone unturned.

But now I am embarrassed to admit – yes, even more embarrassed than being caught peeing by the side of the road:

I do not have a will.

Didn’t hear that? Let me try again: I do not have a will.

The universe screams in outrage: How did you get to be this old without a will?!? And with a daughter?!? How could you have left her care so unprotected?!? What were you thinking???

I didn’t get around to it.

Mostly, I just kept putting it on the back burner. Procrastinating. Tim and I did visit a lawyer and start the whole process, but it kind of derailed over the choice of guardian. I kept observing the changing life situations of assorted family members and I just couldn’t be sure. They kept moving in and out of most favored guardian status. Observing this, Tim went ahead and made an interim will, but I kept dodging closure on the subject.

It’s not like I couldn’t face the Death Thing. I have very clear and thorough Advanced Directives. I’ve covered every base in my attempt to avoid a miserable end of life.

But as to the end itself? I’ve got nothing in writing.

Well, that’s going to change because now there’s Wills Week – this week, May 9-13. Starting Tuesday, there are free community events to guide us through the process. Take a look: www.alaskawillsweek.org. On the website, we downloaded a really useful workbook.

Here I’ve been writing about de-cluttering and clearing out stuff so our daughter wouldn’t have to face a houseful of junk, and we leave a potential legal and financial mess for her. What kind of legacy is that? Just when she’d be grieving, I’d give her headaches?

Nope, not anymore. We’re doing this. You, too?

Ailments R Us

Okay, it’s time to discuss our ailments.

I’m kidding.

No, I’m not. But before I get to ailments, let me remind you of a few things. I remember back in our Second Thirds, I went to a dinner and said, “Listen to us. All we’re talking about are mortgages!” Later in my Second Third, my two sisters and I went on a road trip with (poor) Sophie. Ten minutes in the car, and my sisters were discussing menopause. I had to declare a moratorium before Sophie threw herself from the car.

So I’m trying to chart our life spans by the conversations we beat to death. Somewhere in the first two Thirds, I know every man in America would put “relationships,” as in “Do we have to discuss the relationship again?”

My friend Janet, after visiting Alaska, once pointed out that every conversation included “ordeals we have faced outdoors.” But I think that topic is geographically specific and just rises to the surface when faced with visitors who need to be scared to death. It’s not a topic that is so embedded in the human condition that it arises from our collective unconscious.

Okay, so what ailments do you have? A bad knee? Diabetes? Receding gums? Hearing loss? Do you want to hear about mine?

I remember spending time in a preschool. The children discussed their owies in great detail. They showed them off, inspected them, rehashed all their symptoms.

Just watch someone in a hair salon and the obvious pleasure they get from having someone work on their hair. Then look at apes grooming each other, picking the insects out of each other’s hair, and you wonder, how deep does that pleasure go? To our very DNA? So is it the same with our preoccupation with ailments? Is it embedded in us? Are we programmed to talk about our ailments?

So when do you want to hear about mine?

My guess is that the ailments discussion morphs over time, depending on the life stage. I used to tell visitors to my family’s home in New York that no matter what the occasion, somehow menstrual cramps were going to be discussed at the dinner table. It happened every time … in a house with three girls. Or maybe I just remember it so vividly because it was so monumentally embarrassing.

Pregnant women, new mothers, and nursing mothers share no end of stories: labor and delivery, sleep deprivation, colicky babies. Hmmm, I remember those conversations fondly. It’s how I got suggestions, how I felt like I wasn’t the only inept mother. Those conversations weren’t beaten to death; those conversations were lapped up like balm to the suffering.

So is it time to talk about our ailments yet?

Sometimes the discussion starts at a back door: a discovery of a new remedy. How many conversations about coconut oil were just a lead-in to a discussion about memory loss or … whatever coconut oil is supposed to cure? Costco has things like CoQ10 and 5-HTP and I know they’re supposed to cure something, but I have no idea what. I’m sure if I mention one in conversation someone will have the appropriate ailment to match with it.

Wow, that could be the memory matching game for Third Thirders! But since memory loss is a major, unfunny ailment to most of us, how much fun could that game be?

I’m thinking now that some health problems aren’t even what I’d call ailments; they’re life-threatening. I don’t have really detailed conversations about cancer, and I don’t know if that’s because the folks with cancer don’t want to talk about it and/or don’t want to talk about it with someone who doesn’t have cancer. Same with mental illness. That one really only works with someone who’s been there, but there’s also the stigma that’s still attached to it. Can I talk about it with you without you treating me differently tomorrow?

I’m not sure if injuries are a subset of ailments. Injuries bear no relation to mortality (as long as you survive them). You can tear a ligament skiing and not be any closer to dying. But arthritis means you’re starting to deteriorate. So talking about the former may mean telling an adventure story – right up there with “ordeals we have faced outdoors.” But talking about the latter may ease fear, be a way of reaching for comfort, like all those new, inexperienced mothers did.

Maybe you need to talk about your ailments. Maybe I do. Oops, out of space. Can’t do it here. Have to run. Catch me later.

How much of "us" resides in our stuff?

My friend Chris has found herself the caretaker of the personal memorabilia of a man she barely knew. She has his diplomas, photo albums, letters, awards and trophies. It’s all in one box that she acquired when she moved all her mother’s belongings out of Arizona and into her garage.

The man is her mother’s second husband, not Chris’ father. Chris says, “He had no children and his first wife is dead so I guess I feel I have some sort of responsibility for his personal effects.”

As she described this to us – De-Clutterers Anonymous – we said, “Get rid of it.” But this wasn’t really the typical de-cluttering dilemma.

Chris feels it’s like this man’s life, that it deserves more respect than taking it to the dump. That these are all that’s left of a life that was lived, so how should it be … jettisoned?

This is an interesting question with a bunch of different answers. First, I guess, is the “it’s not his life, it’s just stuff” answer. That once our lives end, we are only the memories in whomever’s mind so the stuff is just … stuff. You can’t take it with you because it’s not you. It’s Things.

But there’s another metaphysical aspect to all this: how much of ourselves gets imbued in our physical possessions, the things we choose to save? When does the stuff we save represent “us” and when is it just “stuff”? And isn’t there some intermediate step in there, when it’s “our stuff”?

Is memory a necessary part of that? So if I hold my father’s tools, am I somehow connected to him because they were his and I remember him or is there something of him residing in the tools? What if, like Chris, you don’t even know him or have memories of him; are the objects devoid of meaning? Does it matter that once he had meaning for her mother?

Chris won’t take his stuff to the dump. She thinks she’s going to burn it. The De-Clutterers thought that was fitting. What does burning mean that the dump doesn’t?

As a hard-core recycler, I actually do things like take trophies into trophy places, vases into florists, paper to the recycling center. This could be a way of giving further life to his now-ended life, like donating corneas.

On the one hand, reflecting on all this just makes me want to get rid of more stuff so no one has to fret over how respectful or disrespectful, painful or uncomfortable, disposing of it is. “I’m not there” after all. But on the other hand, I gave my stuff to the library archives so I’d be “somewhere.” Obviously, thinking about all this is complicated and fraught with … feelings. I’m going to bed.

My Third Third Is my Mother's Ninth Ninth

Let me tell you about my mother, who turned 90 last week. She once held elective office. When she saw that women in the court system were paid less than men, she had them switch bargaining units, get firearms certification, and get equal pay. I would come home and all her picket signs would be leaning against the walls. She wrote stories. She cooked dinner every night, typed school papers, walks two miles every day, and voted in every election ever held in New York. We can never reach her by phone because she has such an active social life.

But this past January, my mother had the shakes and asked to go to the E.R. Somehow it came up that she had to reach for something and she said, “I can’t lift my arm.” That’s because a while ago she had rotator cuff surgery for her shoulder that didn’t take. But that wasn’t in her chart and someone thought that meant she’d had a stroke. So they admitted her.

Five days of tests later, my mother had what is called “hospital psychosis.” She wanted my father (long dead) to get her out of the airport and bring her back home from Germany. Her confusion was total. When the hospital concluded she was actually fine and could leave, they would only release her to a rehab/nursing home because five days in bed had left her unsteady on her feet.

At this point, I flew out on a red-eye. The rehab place had her in a wheel chair that was alarmed if she stood up. She had one hour of physical therapy a day. I insisted I was taking her out; they told me it would take at least a week to have a Discharge Planning Meeting.

So my sister and I kidnapped her, stealing her back to her apartment so that familiar surroundings could bring her back. Later, I had to keep kidnapping her back and forth because she wasn’t officially released. I had to force that release, hire an aide, convince the facility the aide did not have to sleep in, and try to restore my mother’s grip on reality.

I met with medical administrative types and social workers, took her on practice walks despite protests that I wasn’t “certified,” borrowed wheel chairs and bought a walker. Everything was a constant wrestling match with institutions and rules that made no sense.

During one meal, one woman said she didn’t like the selection, could she have a plain tuna fish sandwich like the man across from her. She insisted. It was like a scene out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the staff deciding she was a troublemaker. I thought my mother would go into old age feisty like that. I assumed she’d argue with the officious caregivers, demand her rights, know what she wanted for her Ninth Ninth and make sure she got it. But now I see how fearful and confused she is, and I’m terrified she’ll be prey to a system that doesn’t care what she wants for her Ninth Ninth. I don’t worry about my mother dying; I worry about her not dying well.

I told my siblings I had encountered a problem bigger than me. That was it. It was just too crushing, but it had to be handled, and I was there. I think the whole experience left me with PTSD. America’s medicalization of aging is bigger than me, bigger than any one of us. I’d never felt so defeated. And the sad thing is, the medical people think I “won.”

My mother is now settled in back home. She lives in one place and her four offspring live in four different places. We fly in and out, try to balance what care she needs with what care will rob her of abilities and autonomy, make telephone calls and try to ensure her medical records reflect her wishes.

But as my brother pointed out, Advance Directives only work on an unconscious person. A frightened, nervous 90-year-old with the flu might insist she go to the E.R. Who’s going to stop her? And once in there, will we have to launch yet another rescue mission?

My Third Third is inextricably intertwined with my mother’s Ninth Ninth. Together, 4,000 miles apart, we sit precariously and fearfully on the edge of a rabbit hole.