Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

The visit to Mom was mostly good (though sad), but I did get into two brief but heated arguments, one of them with her.

[Mom, you don't have to read this.]

Dramatis personae: Ralph and Liz are Simon's children (my mother's stepchildren, and incidentally my third cousins). Jenny is married to Ralph, and Peter is married to Liz. Liz and Peter live in Australia.

The first argument was, I think, the day before Simon died. Peter was talking about weight loss, and wondering whether he could believe the scale at Ralph and Jenny's house. My mother got the bright idea of using her scale, but trying to calibrate it. She didn't make that clear, she just said "Vicki, do you know how much you weigh?" I said "yes," meaning I have a rough idea. (For years I tried not to; I'm more relaxed about this now. But more relaxed does not mean entirely relaxed or calm.) Mom then suggested I go weigh myself on her scale, so I could report back on whether it was accurate.

I said no. She asked again, starting to explain why. I said "No!" She asked a third time, and I said "No! We are not having this conversation!" and walked out. I sat in the guest room and did puzzles until I felt a bit better. After a while, Mom came in, and we sort of smoothed things over. But that was more about why it wouldn't have worked anyway (the inaccuracy of scales meets random variation in almost anyone's body weight, certainly a pre-menopausal woman's, and I don't track it that closely) than about why I really don't want to be pushed on that subject. And certainly not by her.

The other argument was with Ralph, not long before we were going to be leaving Mom's house to go to the cemetery for the funeral.* I don't know all the back story on this, but Mom started to say that Ralph tends to dominate conversations (I think she said he did 90% of the talking), and please let her and other people have a chance to talk too. He interrupted her in mid-sentence, saying "You have to raise your hand."

I interrupted back, pointing out what he had done—refused to let someone talk about the fact that he wasn't letting her talk. He seized on the fact that I had also interrupted. Before it could go much further, Mom asked me to stop and led me into the living room.

I understand her, or anyone, not wanting a noisy argument the day after her beloved husband has died. I did tell her that Ralph had pushed a button there. (I didn't mention the feminist aspects of this, or that I think it was a "protect Mom" button.)

That led, a little later, to Mom saying, surprised, that I seemed to have a lot of buttons (the weight thing being another), and me saying that I guessed she hadn't been pushing many of them. A piece of that, in turn, is that I don't normally see her when we're under that kind of stress, and that everyone present was under stress there. I wasn't anywhere near as close to Simon as my mother, or his children, were. But I was short on sleep from the travel, and I was sitting with Mom during those last couple of days of his life. adrian_turtle also said that being present for a death is a strain, even a quiet one.

I know we were all under stress, so I am cutting Ralph some slack and hoping that he is usually a bit more willing to let other people—and specifically women—talk.

*Customs differ. In the U.S., we'd have gone to a funeral home for a service, and then out to the cemetery. In London, the eulogy and prayers are in a building at the cemetery, and then the mourners walk to the graveside.

My mother's husband, Simon Kugler, died two days ago, after a long and difficult illness. He died quietly at home in bed, as they both wanted. I thought, when I was booking tickets last week, that I was flying over for the funeral, but having lived at least a year longer than the doctors expected, he then lived another three or four days longer than we thought he would after they took him off the IV hydration. But after a few days of "it will be today," Tuesday morning, when the palliative care nurse came in, she noticed signs that it would be soon. Mom sat near him, because she wanted to, and I sat with her, because the reason I was in London was to take care of her. He died gently enough that it took us a couple of minutes to be sure.

In Orthodox Jewish tradition, he was buried yesterday afternoon; I changed my ticket home so I could stay for the funeral, and am very glad I was there to support Mom.

After the doctor came to certify the death, Mom told me she was glad the doctor hadn't written something euphemistic like "heart failure" on the death certificate. Simon had frontal-temporal lobe dementia, which was hard for him, and for my mother, and for his carer, Mel (who worked for them full time for the last five years). But they had many good years together, and Mom told me a few days ago that before she and Simon met and fell in love, she had no idea how much one person could love another, or be loved.