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Erica's WLS Book
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For Darn Good Writing Ask Erica
DEATH OF AN ATHEIST
(Originally Published in the New Age Journal, Available for Reprint)
My mother always hated religion. "Hocus-pocus," she called it. Even the mention of God made her sneer. A first generation American Jew, she grew up in an era rife with anti-semitism, so she had no sympathy for Christians, especially Catholics, who taught that Jews killed Christ. She had no love for Judaism either, seeing the orthodox of her own religion as a bunch of fanatics with long beards and joyless lives, and reform Jews as materialistic phonies. Instead she joined the Communist religion in the l930's and remained more or less a believer all her life.
When mom, in her mid-eighties, came from her Florida retirement community to upstate New York for a visit, I took her to a Yom Kippur service at my synagogue, the Woodstock Jewish Congregation, which was held under an enormous tent, open to all. Our services rang with real spirit, not the phony piousness she'd experienced in her youth. A lifelong fan of folk music, if not of Judaism, she immediately took to our rabbi, Jonathan Kligler, a former folksinger whose services resembled nothing so much as a Pete Seeger hootenanny. She endured a discussion of the "Book of Job," and later whispered to me, wrinkling up her nose, " He talked so much about God. You don't believe in all that God stuff, do you?" Rabbi Jonathan's position on God was that you didn't have to worry about whether or not you believed in God to lead a Jewish life. God wouldn't care either way. The essence of Jewishness was doing mitzvahs, or good deeds. I still wasn't sure there was a God, but if I did decide to believe, I sure wasn't going to admit it to my mom. I was surprised that she approved of my joining a synagogue at all, but our congregation was so unlike anything she'd ever experienced that it won her over. I suggested she attend services in Florida. She shrugged her shoulders, "I would if they were led by your rabbi."
My mom only got to attend services a couple of times before her health prevented her from coming up north to see me. I traveled to Florida regularly to deal with one health crisis after another. After her last hospitalization, both her mental and physical condition worsened to the point that she could no longer keep up with her friends. An intensely social and boundlessly energetic person, she became so depressed she refused to get out of bed.
During one phone conversation she said, "There has to be a change."
"You mean to an assisted living facility, mom."
"Oh no," she said, "not that kind of change," but didn't explain what she meant. Then, during our daily phone calls, she started asking frantically when I was coming to visit. I gave her the date many times, but she would repeat the question plaintively, over and over, day after day, week after week.
I didn't understand the urgency. Her condition seemed to be stable and I'd finally found Kathy, a wonderful aide who mom adored. When my husband and I finally did arrive, she threw her arms around me and wouldn't let go, saying "I love you so much." I started crying. Although I'd always known my mother was completely devoted to me, she'd never been a demonstrative woman.
From that moment she started, or finished, dying. Her kidneys simply failed, for no particular reason. We had discussed her profound wish to avoid heroic life-saving measures in such a situation, so I refused dialysis when the doctor offered it. Hospice was called in and Josie, a large, cushiony, comforting Jamaican nurse stayed by her side much of the time. I called a rent-a-rabbi someone recommended, feeling that a spiritual advisor should be on hand to comfort the dying, even if she was an atheist. The rabbi, who somehow had missed his vocation as a stand-up-comic, showed no inclination to comfort my mother, who in any case was past comforting, but he did have me laughing out load at joke after joke, a mitzvah that lightened the weight of my grief for the moment. We agreed that he would preside at the funeral, where I insisted he not mention God at all, but give a funny sermon instead. He looked stunned by my request, but said he'd try.
Mom got worse rapidly, soon losing all lucidity. One day she looked right through me and said in a sing-songy, high-pitched voice I didn't recognize, "Who are you?" It felt as if she'd physically shoved me away. Much as I wanted to be there for her when she died, I found I simply didn't have the strength to watch her dying, although I knew that if our places were reversed she wouldn't have left my side for a moment. I was desperate to return home--to my own nest where, like a wounded animal, I could grieve and lick my wounds. Riven with guilt and self-reproach, not knowing how long she would live or if my presence still mattered to her or not, my husband and I flew home, intending to return in a week or so.
That "I love you so much," was goodbye. By the next morning she was gone. I had to leave her so she could leave me.
At the memorial service, despite my earlier insistence, I was mortified that my formerly adorable rent-a-rabbi was dour, stiff and droned on and on about God. The chapel was full of mom's friends, mostly old lefty atheists like her, who didn't look pleased with his sermon. I didn't want to offend them, so I got up and tried to repair the damage. "Although my mother didn't believe in God," I said, "She was the most spiritual person I've ever known." I described how I'd seen her transfixed by a bird's nest under the eaves of my house, studying it for hours every day, waiting for the baby birds to emerge, and how, when they did, she peppered me with a million bird questions as if I was an ornithologist. She easily became rapturous over an art exhibit, a ballet, a concert, an evening watching the moon rise over the ocean. Even a week before she died, when she couldn't walk and could barely speak, she looked blissfully content when I wheeled her out to the pool so she could visit with a group of beloved old friends. Just their chattering presence and the warmth of the sun seemed to fill her with peace and joy. She was never afraid of death, even as it stared her in the face.
If, as many Buddhists assert, spirituality means experiencing each moment to the fullest, mom could have been a Zen master--or a good Jew. Although she scoffed at the notion of God, and knew nothing about Judaism, she brought me up to be a good Jew and a spiritual person. She was my role model when it came to helping others, regularly performing numerous mitzvahs herself. A highly ethical, moral person, she consistently emphasized that being a "good person," was much more important than making money or impressing others. She fervently believed in tikkun olam, repairing the world, which Jews view as a spiritual duty. Most of all she taught me that spirituality is about what you do, not what you believe.
Josie told me she died "a lovely death." Right before she died the color returned to her cheeks, and she tried to get out of bed, as if reaching for someone there to greet her. Josie claims to have actually seen my mother wave at a spirit, a "white lady in petticoats and an old-fashioned dress," who appeared in the room.
The Kabbalah teaches that there is an afterlife. Call me a flake, but I believe that figure was my mother's mother. When I feel overcome with grief these days, which is often, I comfort myself with the knowledge that, whether there is or isn't a God, I'll see my mother again someday. Mom, who always managed to push her way to the front of the line, will surely turn heaven and earth to be there when it's my turn to pass from this world. An atheist to the end, she taught me it was possible to believe.
(Originally Published in the New Age Journal, Available for Reprint)
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