Playing kindness forward — with a special family seder

As a veteran journalist, I have found that some articles are difficult to write, especially in the genre of personal essays, while others virtually write themselves.

This blog entry fits into the second category.

It’s about history repeating itself. Or, as Mark Twain allegedly said, at least rhyming.

It’s about part of my family’s history.

Eight years ago, I wrote a first-person story for Jewish Action, the OU’s four-times-a-year magazine, about a memorable seder my mother had led for her older sister several years earlier.

Aunt Hennie, dealing, in her eighties, with an early stage of dementia some three decades ago, was, as a US Army member during World War II, living in a VA hospital-nursing home in Batavia, New York, a 45-minute drive from our family’s home in Buffalo. A second mother to me and my two younger sisters, Aunt Hennie had been brought up in an Orthodox home in the East-Side-then-Jewish-neighborhood of Buffalo. The daughter of early-20^th-century emigres from a shtetl in what is now western Belarus, she had led a mostly Orthodox lifestyle her whole life; she had never missed a seder.

That year, in the VA nursing home, she would. She was in no shape to attend a seder, or conduct her own. And, as the only Jewish resident in the wards of her veterans’ facility, she would find no seder there. No kosher l’Pesach food. No sign of yom tov.

Until Mom stepped in. Or, as was the case, she drove over.

Mom, who grew up in the same Orthodox home but had not led a strictly observant life after she left home to join the U.S. Navy during World War II, also had not missed a seder as an adult.

Aunt Hennie that year in the nursing home would not either, if Mom had her way.

Which Mom did.

In my Jewish Action story, headlined “Refusing to Pass Over Pesach,” I described how Mom made Pesach for her sister. On erev yom tov, before she hosted her own seder at home, Mom loaded the family car with kosher food – much of which she had made — and other Passover supplies (“Everything for the seder,” Mom said), drove to Batavia, unloaded all the stuff and carried it to a private room the nurses had set up for the holiday celebration. An interested Catholic couple joined Mom and Aunt Hennie at the seder table.

Mom explained what the seder was about. Then, a stickler for the sanctity of the Haggadah (we always used the Maxwell House version), she read every word – in English.

Aunt Hennie, in an Alzheimer’s fog, sitting in her wheelchair, was mostly silent.

Came the first berachot. Aunt Hennie chanted along – in Hebrew. “She started singing the prayers,” the ones she had learned as a child eight decades earlier, Mom said. The Catholic guests “were surprised” by Aunt Hennie’s unexpected participation.

What was the explanation for this Pesach miracle?

“Short-term memory is the first victim of Alzheimer’s, doctors say,” I wrote, “while some long-term memories remain intact. And music often spurs memory.

“Mom has another, simple explanation. ‘Some things you never forget.’”

This week, several decades after that altruistic seder, it was Mom’s turn to be the receiver, not the giver, of Passover kindness. She now living in an assisted living facility in the Houston area, where one of my sisters moved some three decades ago.

Like her sister before her, Mom gets around in a wheelchair.

At 104, Mom has not officially been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or a related memory-and-cognitive-decline condition. We have steered around using those frightful terms, preferring to describe Mom sometimes as being “loopy” or “out of it.”

But the signs are clear. The confusion about where she is and what day it is. The creeping forgetfulness. The increasing inability to follow or sustain a conversation.

In recent weeks, Mom knew Pesach was approaching, but she did not know exactly when it was. At her age, in her assisted living facility, where she is virtually the sole Jewish resident, she for sure could not conduct her own seder. Or, now using a clunky wheelchair, go to one off-site.

Our question: How would she be able to join in one, one led for her? Like she had done for Aunt Hennie?

My sister had the answer. She would follow in Mom’s footsteps of chesed.

This week, my sister who lives a 20-minute drive away from Mom, and usually hosts her own seder, decided that she would bring Pesach to our mother.

Like I said, this story virtually wrote itself.

I wish it had a happier ending.

On the first night of yom tov, my sister and her husband would attend a seder led by her nearby married daughter’s in-laws; but first, before nightfall, my sister drove to Mom. As Mom had once driven, at the same time of day, to Aunt Hennie. My sister loaded her van with some chicken, chicken soup, kugels, grape juice and matzah. She and Mom, in a small reserved dining room, had their own seder. My brother-in-law, Mom’s two-year-old great-grandson, and a senior citizen friend of Mom from Mom’s Temple joined them.

The seder lasted about an hour.

It was all meal. Mom pecked at her food. The Haggadot were never opened. There was no point – Mom would not participate. No readings, no singing.

“Mom was mostly out of it,” my sister said. “She didn’t wish me ‘good yom tov,’ but she knew it was Passover.”

How aware was Mom of what was taking place?

That’s hard to say, my sister said.

At the end of the hour, Mom crashed. Her head slumped, and she was basically non-responsive. She was alive, but clearly in trouble.

An ambulance took her to a nearby hospital, where the ER staff ran several tests.

The verdict: some cardio problems. Urinary tract disease. And “full-blown dementia.”

Mom spent the first days of Pesach in the hospital.

After all the effort for Mom, cooking and baking and arranging the seder venue and inviting Mom’s friend, Mom barely took part in the seder. Like Aunt Hennie, decades earlier.

Was the effort worth it?

“Absolutely,” my sister said.

She had done her best to bring Pesach to a relative who would not have any yom tov otherwise.

Aunt Hennie would understand.

As would Mom.