Living Out Loud
Gibberish and applesauce
Tomorrow morning, I am returning to Israel after a week-long visit with my 97-year-old mother. I posted just one photo of the two of us on my Facebook page, simply to commemorate the visit and explain my absence from social media. The responses to this snapshot were truly heartwarming, with many childhood friends and relatives with whom I’d lost touch reaching out to send their regards, love, fond memories, and so on. Nice. More than a few exclaimed, “Wow! Your mom looks great!”
Gazing at the photo that elicited such reactions, I struggle to understand what people see. I don’t get it. Don’t these kindhearted folks realize that I cannot pass along their regards or share the memories that defined those relationships? My mother does not know who any of these people are. She does not know who I or my siblings are, nor does she know that she was married to my beloved father for nearly fifty years.
She kisses me a lot, freely and frequently saying, “I love you” – words I yearned to hear as a child but which were mostly withheld. This no longer matters to me as it once did. We hold hands, and I notice that hers are mottled and always cold.
The weather in southeastern Maryland has been uncharacteristically balmy. On days when it didn’t rain, we sat on the veranda, soaking up the sun and breathing in the scents of freshly mown grass and late-autumn foliage. I miss these smells while living in the dusty, sand-swept Middle East, and I cherish these moments, among others. A staff member might bring us a dish of chilled applesauce and/or a cup of diluted cranberry juice.
While the words may not make much sense to my mother, she can perk up and laugh when I tell her that my sister is going to make her a Bloody Mary on her next visit, or when I remind her of the time we took a Jazzercise class together in the early 1980s. I tell and retell the story of how we were both asked to leave because of our stifled guffaws as we watched the other participants, squeezed into too-tight leotards, scream and woo-wooing to the theme from Superman.
Mom and I were not such woo-wooers, and when I retell the tale, she doesn’t join in, but she hums the music with me. Yes, music is a great communication tool, and she particularly perks up to anything by the Four Seasons. The Village People singing “Y.M.C.A.” also gets a response.
Four years ago, when I departed after my annual visit, I sobbed all the way to the airport, thinking I would never see her again. Three years ago, I barely said goodbye, so anxious was I to return to Israel after the Nova massacre. I’m leaving tomorrow, and this time I feel numb.
Perhaps numbness is what happens when you have already done so much grieving, in increments, that you no longer know what remains to be grieved. So much of Mom has already “left.” The woman who raised me, who shared my childhood and my memories, who was my mother in all the ways I understood motherhood, is becoming increasingly difficult to find.
And yet . . .
Something far more unexpected has taken root in this otherwise disappearing landscape.
It is a new kind of language, largely devoid of words but rife with expression. It is most often gibberish, guttural and peppered with “oys.” But when I listen less and intuit more, I find myself transported to another level of comprehension.
I am learning to understand what is no longer being said. A look, a touch, a kiss, a hum. The language is not one I ever expected to learn, and I am certainly not fluent. But I am getting there.
It has taken a long time to reach this point, and I’m humbled that God has granted Mom these additional years—not simply for the privilege of having her with us, but for the unexpected blessing of discovering a way to reach her when so much else has fallen away.
I’m still working out the what and whys of Mom’s diminished state while, at the same time, basking in gratitude for still having her in our lives.
Having a mommy helps me forget, some days, that I am also an old woman.
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(Reprinted with permission of San Diego Jewish Journal, November, 2026)