A Day In The Life

My mother in law, Erna, used to look at the photo I had of her as a young woman, framed hanging on the  wall in my home,

and ask me, “I wonder what they will say about me when I’m gone.”

Well Erna, this is what I am saying….

Today is the anniversary of my mother in laws death. She died 16 years ago.

She was born in Poland and moved to Germany when she was 2 years old. She fled the Nazi’s in 1938, able to leave on one of the last ships out. She was 19 years old, married, and came to the United States with her husband, parents and 3 younger siblings. A year later her first son was born, and 7 years after that my husband came along. Sadly she was widowed suddenly at the age of 36, my husband was only 10 at the time. 4 years later she remarried. That marriage lasted 20 years until he too, died. Her life was not easy, fleeing Germany, widowed with young children, worried about money, remarrying and gaining financial security but living with a difficult husband.

When I met her she was 72. It took about 6 months for her to warm up to me, as she was still not completely over the fact that my husband had divorced 2 years prior to our getting married. Old values die hard. When my husband had told her he was getting divorced she was extremely shocked. “WHY?” He explained some of what had been going on ending by telling her he just wasn’t happy, to which she responded, “Who needs to be happy?” People from her generation just toughed it out and continued along, no one getting divorced.  I made an effort to “win her over” and succeeded in doing so, and we became very close. We spoke on the phone every day, sometimes twice a day. She was easy to talk to as she would talk about anything and everything. The weather, the latest news, the latest family goings on, clothes, shopping, and always asking at the end of a conversation, “so when am I going to see you?”

Though she appeared tough on the outside, in truth she was a softy. I suppose the hardships in her life had contributed to this tough exterior. I was glad to come to know her softer side, her ability to speak openly, to always share a good laugh. After she died I found every card & letter I had sent her among her things. I was surprised and touched.

Occasionally I would meet her for lunch, sometimes with her friends. They were an elegant group of ladies, all European. During the course of the meal they would lapse into German, then look at me expectantly for a response to something they had been discussing, not realizing they had been speaking German which I didn’t know a word of. We would all have a good laugh.

She was a real card shark and also played Mah Jongg. She was always able to keep track of tiles or cards that other people had, and could strategize amazingly. My husband recalls as a teenager playing cards with her and losing, and when they showed their hands he told her she had the card he needed. Her reply was, “I know, that’s why I’m holding it.”

She had been diagnosed with Ovarian cancer the year before I met her. The first Doctor she went to gave her 3 months to live. She then went to another Doctor who offered a more optimistic attitude and she lived for another 12 years. As fate would have it, the Doctor who had given the gloomy diagnosis was hit by a car while riding his bicycle and died. Stranger than fiction.

In those 12 years she participated in the weddings of her grandchildren, and celebrated the births of 6 great grandchildren.

First great grandchild

With grandchildren & great grandchildren

I think of her often, when I see red nail polish- her nails were never without red polish-ever. When I eat whitefish, hers was always the best. When I wear a piece of jewelry that used to be hers. I think of her when a holiday comes around and she is no longer sitting with us at the table. I can still hear her laugh in my head, though it is so many years later. One of the last things she said to me was, “You make me laugh” though I have no recollection of what I said to her that made her say that. But I am glad that it must have been something funny, not sad.

I hear myself using the phrase she would use so often when things were not going as planned, or when life presented challenges that we have no control over- she would always say to me, “We shall live, we shall see.”

And so it has been these 16 years, we continue to see how life unfolds, and remember you Erna, and how you touched our lives and remain in our hearts.