It's been a little over three weeks since my mother passed. I haven't written about it until now because honestly, I just haven't felt up to it. She had been living down in Washington, D.C., with my brother and his wife since 2022. It was strange to have her living that far away because she'd always been under an hour's drive away from me up until then.
She was 92, although there was always a question about her real age; she was always cagey about it, saying her birth records burned up in a fire in the village in Kerala, India, where she was born. Growing up, we always thought she was born in 1940, which would have made her 27 when she had me and the same age as my father. Later, I saw that her birth year on her official government documents was 1932 and when she was asked about it, my mom would claim she didn't know how old she actually was. Her parents died when she was young and she didn't have much in the way of family left, other than some cousins.
My mom was always pretty headstrong. She decided to become a nurse at a time when that profession wasn't seen as appropriate by her family, which would have preferred her to become a lawyer. They were devoutly Syrian Orthodox, an Episcopal branch that started in the Middle East and spread to India. My mom always remained very religious, but she pissed off her family first by becoming a nurse, then moving to Canada in the early 1960s to pursue a career. But the ultimate in-your-face move was marrying a Hindu, which she did in 1967 when she married my dad (his family wasn't thrilled about the situation, either).
They met in Toronto when they were both attending the wedding of friends of hers; there weren't a lot of Indians in Toronto then (unlike today, when there are Indians everywhere) so my dad somehow scored an invite. My mom was a looker and my dad was immediately smitten, and apparently he just started showing up everywhere she was until she finally agreed to go out with him. They were married in January '67 and I was born nine months later. My brother came along in the spring of '72.
We bounced around different high-rise apartment buildings in and around the city until we finally bought a house in Pickering, a suburb east of Toronto in 1975. Life was good there. My dad worked as an engineer for Ontario Hydro and my mom was a nurse. I was in school there from second to eighth grade and started high school in the fall of 1981. But that summer, my dad was getting restless at work and decided to take a job on the other side of the continent in Richland, Washington. It was a big change and I'm not sure how much he consulted with my mom about it, or how much resistance she gave. Ultimately, she came from a generation of women that deferred to their husbands' wishes, so she went along with it, even though it meant she would have to study to get her nursing certification in Washington (despite having nearly 20 years of experience as a full-time nurse). There was no doubt some bitterness building up, as well as from the fact that my dad cashed in her pension to help pay for the move, something that would come back to haunt her in later years.
So my dad moved out to Richland early, leaving in June '81 to start working at the Hanford nuclear plant while we stayed in Pickering. We knew we would be leaving at some point, but it wasn't clear exactly when. I started high school and just as I was starting to make some friends, I was told we were moving at the end of November. We first moved into a tiny duplex with my dad and I was enrolled at a junior high nearby. I just remember being sort of shell-shocked by the whole deal. After a month there, my dad found us a pretty nice house across town that we rented, which was great, but it also meant I would be going to my third school in three months. Not ideal.
Another thing that made me question my dad's strategic competence was the fact that as soon as we got to Richland, we were seeing stories about how the nuclear plant was on the verge of closing. In his haste to get a new gig, my dad clearly hadn't done his research. Richland was basically full of families that moved there because of the plant, so unlike much of the rest of country that was anti-nuke, it was all about it. We got released from school early one day to march in a pro-nuclear power rally. But by early 1983, my dad was transferred to another nuke plant, this one in Seabrook, NH. I finished my sophomore year of high school, was starting to make some good friends, and then we moved the day after school got out.
Again, he moved out several months before us. My mom had gotten her nursing license in Washington. She was annoyed, to say the least. She actually strongly considered moving us back to Toronto, even going so far as reaching out to a high school there and starting the process of getting me enrolled. I remember we had a coursebook so I could start thinking about what classes I would take there. But it never happened. She didn't want to break up the family, so she decided to go along with the move to New Hampshire. Of course, when she saw the cottage my dad had bought in the middle of nowhere in Kingston, NH, my mom immediately had second thoughts. Like a lot of things he did, my dad didn't put much thought into his decision-making. We were in a tiny town of 3,000 people that was spread out over a huge area, and our house was on the outskirts.
We persevered. My mom got a job as a nurse at a local hospital and I finished the last two years of high school before going to the University of NH. My brother ended up going to a private school and then Dartmouth (he's smart). But my dad started losing the plot. He began drinking heavily after work, and then after getting laid off (not surprisingly, the Seabrook plant was not doing well, either), he spent most of his waking hours watching TV and drinking. Then his dad and one of his brothers died and he really went off the deep end. I was at college for the bulk of this, while my mom and brother had to deal with it every day. He got a job selling electronics at Sears for a while, and then got a contract engineering gig that sent him to Tennessee for a year. My mom stayed in NH, but it was clear he wasn't doing well on his own. The '90s were rough for him and the combination of diabetes and alcoholism led to his early demise at the young age of 55 in 1996.
Mom kept working for a few more years before retiring. She moved to Toronto in 2002 and stayed there for four years before moving back to NH. She lived in Hampton until 2020 when it was evident she couldn't live by herself anymore. I had already started managing her bills and doctor's appointments and meds because she was forgetting things. We moved her into an assisted living facility here in Beverly in the fall of '20, where she lived until the summer of '22 when the facility closed for renovations. By this point, her memory was getting pretty bad and she was dealing with a stomach ailment that was making her miserable; she went to many GI docs who couldn't figure out what the issue was. She moved in with my brother for the last few years and it seemed to be a good move for her; she was eating better and was living in a much nicer place. But her health struggles continued and her mental state began getting worse. I visited a few times over the last couple of years and she had gotten pretty surly at times with caregivers (including my brother and his wife).
I had planned to fly down there in February for a visit and just before I got there, she ended up in the hospital with the flu; while that got better, her body started to shut down over the next few weeks. She didn't recognize/acknowledge me during those few days. Her health didn't improve over the following week and it became apparent she didn't have much time left. We made plans for another visit in mid-March, this time all four of us, to see her one last time. She was in a geriatric psychiatric facility to get her behavior under control; she slept for most of the visit, but occasionally would open her eyes. She seemed to acknowledge us every so often. It was tough to see her in there, especially with other, louder, more disturbed patients around her. As we were driving home, my brother messaged that Mom had been accepted into a hospice facility, where they would make her as comfortable as possible. It was going to be a matter of days, according to the doctor there.
On March 25, my brother told me she had passed. We had been waiting for that news, but it still hit hard. Even though she had been so frail over the last several years, somehow she kept hanging on. Obviously, I've been used to not having a dad for decades now, but it's very different to not have Mom around. I'm glad she's not suffering anymore, because the last several years were difficult for her. And us.
Here's her obituary, mostly written by my brother.
My brother was much closer to her than I was, but that was partly due to dealing with my dad while I was away. Shared trauma and all that. I was always a little more independent in that I didn't lean on either parent too closely, but I was always closer to Mom.
It's strange to think she's gone now. She was a great woman who dealt with a lot of difficulty in her life. In a lot of ways, I still haven't dealt with it. I imagine it's going to take a while.
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