Eulogy For My Mother: Choosing To Be Kind

My mother was not who you think she was.

Just kidding. My mother was exactly who you think she was. But there is a twist, and we'll get to that.

I could say many things about my remarkable mother—how she was from Winthrop, how she lost her mother at age 10, how her father wasn’t around, how incredibly adventurous and brave it was when she spent the year in Israel in 1948 when she was just 18, how after she came back she worked for Abba Eban at the United Nations, how my dad passed away when she was 38, how she was present at the formation of Hampshire College, how she graduated from college at age 51, her many roles at both Hampshire and at Tufts University, how in 1982 she bought a 15-room Victorian in Boston and then shamelessly tricked her children into living in it with her and raising the grandchildren there, her time volunteering at the library at the Mozart School in Boston, her epic trips with her grandchildren and her friends Rubylee and Jody, the Seders for 40 people, her love of Scrabble, The New York Times crossword puzzle, and Agatha Christie, the fact that she built a rehearsal room in the basement of her house so the band that Maire Anne and I had had somewhere to play (I mean, who does that?)—but none of that is who she was. The defining quality of my mother was that she was, quite simply, the best person I ever met, or ever will meet. More than that, she was the best person many of you ever met, or ever will meet. I remember once saying “my mother, easily the best person I’ve ever met” in front of someone who did not know me well. It was like her title, an integral part of her name: “My mother—easily the best person I've ever met.” This fellow said, somewhat dismissively, “Rob, everyone feels that way about their mother.” I thought, “you poor schlub, you don’t know my mother.”

Many of you who knew my mother, who she helped through difficult times and challenging decisions, referred to her in glowing terms. Anne and Martha called her “my guardian angel.” Lauren called her “my Mary Poppins.” Many referred to her as a saint. She was legendary for dropping everything and driving to New York or getting on a plane at a moment’s notice to help a friend or family member in need. But for the record, my mother was not a saint. She was better. I doubt that saints have the humanity that my mother had. Or the patience.

My mother possessed an astonishing combination of intellect and kindness, reason and an innate sense of fairness. She was the gold standard not only for significant ethical questions, but also for trivial ones. If this sounds like “What would Bernice do,” yes, that’s it, exactly, and many of you sought her advice over the years, as did I. We once called her from vacation to settle an argument we were having while playing Trivial Pursuit. The question itself was, well, trivial (it had to do with whether the word “Arena” was actually part of the title of a sports stadium), but the point was that everyone playing the game was completely willing to accept her phoned-in judgment. And, if memory serves me correctly, she ruled against me.

Although people who knew her professionally called her Bernice, most family and old friends called her Bim. When I was old enough to spell, I decided it must mean “Bernice is my mother.” What else could it have meant?

My mother collected people her entire life. Amy and I were her biological children, but there were others: Anne, Martha, Lauren, Glenn, Abby, Lisa, and the Hampshire College students—Vanessa, Shelley, and others. Speaking of Hampshire College, sometimes it takes us a lifetime to appreciate the significance of certain events. I now understand that the steady stream of Hampshire students traipsing through our house while we lived in Amherst when I was in junior high school—people we didn’t see when we were growing up in lily-white Long Island, people of color, people of different sexual orientation—was the most significant, meaningful, and broadening experience of my life. Years ago, I asked my mother how she knew to do that, why she thought it was important to expose Amy and me to that beautiful radiant cross-section of humanity. I expected a rational explanation, but she simply shrugged it off. The fact that, when I sent out an e-mail from her account telling people that her passing was near, four of the first five people who responded were former Hampshire students from this group, moved me to tears.

(And regarding those emails, my mother, Amy, and I were astonished at their depth and breath. Amy and I read every one to my mother, and she remembered every one of you.)

Regarding having her as a mother, what can I say? Amy and I were privileged to be her children. She was every bit as good as you’d imagine she’d be, offering boundless love and support. I recall her only ever raising her voice to me in anger only once. And boy did I deserve it. I recall her punishing me to teach me a lesson only twice. And boy did I deserve it.

My mother’s wisdom was legendary. In my early years in college, she gently tried to correct the cavalier attitude I’d begun to display toward my family. The way she phrased it was remarkable. She said: “I see how much you love your friends, and how well you treat them. That’s great, but you shouldn’t treat your own family worse than you treat your friends.” It was astonishing that she had to say it, and even more astonishing that it worked. Years later, when our kids were born, she gave me the single best piece of parenting advice I ever received: “If your kids show interesting in something, treat that like a flower, because if you don’t, you’ll kill it with neglect, or worse.” So, to my children, you owe much of that to her.

My mother used to say that, no, life isn’t fair, but that’s why we try to make our own corner of it as fair as possible. Words to live by.

My mother once said that if she ever ran a personal ad, it would say—and I love this—“basically reasonable person seeks basically reasonable person.” She said that appearance, money, even political differences could be dealt with, but lack of reasonability... that was a deal-breaker.

A number of years ago, someone asked my mother why she never remarried. She replied, in an offhand way, that she’d had several opportunities. My jaw dropped, as I’d never heard anything about this. She then said, very matter-of-factly, “The question wasn’t whether I could’ve gotten married again. The question was: Would it have improved my life? I decided it wouldn’t have.” Classic my mother.

In addition to her wisdom, the defining aspect of my mother was her sense of kindness. She was the queen of kindness. She was kind before kindness was cool. She was unfailingly kind to people, both old friends, new ones, and complete strangers, but she wasn’t above remonstrating someone if she thought they were doing their job badly (that was the professional administrator in her) or abusing their position. The only person I ever heard her speak badly of was a Boston building inspector who was giving her a hard time about some trivial aspect of the planned modifications on the house. Well, and certain Republican politicians. And the physical therapist who was trying to get her to use the cane. And there was one nutritionist she wasn’t crazy about. But it was lack of kindness that drove her crazy. She’d say “It’s so easy. And it costs nothing.”

People say that they want to have their wits about them when they go, but I can tell you how heartbreaking it was to see her aware of her end. That was, however, what she wanted. About six weeks before she died, when I came to the house, she joked, as she often did, “Did I know you were coming?” I said, as I often did, that no, she didn’t; I was just checking in on her. She didn’t mind talking about her death. She was alternately matter-of-fact and deeply philosophical about it. On this visit, she began by saying that it wasn’t her intent to involve Amy and me in her death. Then she launched into this incredibly detailed description of a book she’d read in her 20s, “The 40 Days of Musa Dagh,” a piece of historical fiction about the Armenian genocide in Turkey. She described the story, about a town had relocated itself to a mountain top to escape the Turkish troops, and how the social situation in the town decayed. But she had the most passion behind the description of a young man, a resistance fighter in the town, who became sick. When he was captured, he was so sick that he wasn’t even aware that he was about to be executed, that this was the end of his life. She said that she’d remembered the story and this character her entire life, and how profoundly sad it was to her that he wasn’t cognitively there for his own death, and how glad she was that she was there for hers. This must’ve been very important to her, because she told Amy the same story. I sat there, astonished. What do you say to this?

I said “Well, ma, regarding the first issue (being sorry to involve Amy and me in your death)… what did you think we were going to do? Stick you on an ice floe and leave you to the polar bears?”

“And regarding the second issue… when your son comes over just to check on you, you can just chit chat or play Scrabble; you don’t necessarily have to go on for 15 minutes about how you want to be there for your own death.”

But it was a microcosm of my mother—deeply practical, deeply philosophical, and worried more about her family than herself.

A number of years ago, my mother put together a little hand-assembled book for Amy and me. It was called “Your Father and Me, and You and You (by me).” It described their individual histories, their courtship and marriage, how he came to the marriage largely fully-formed while she was still coming into focus, his sickness and death, and her regrets. Obviously, it was sad. But it was more than that. It made me realize that my mother, who showed a relentlessly cheerful presence to everyone, carried an undercurrent of sadness beneath the surface for her entire life and didn’t show it to anyone, not even to Amy and me. She and my dad had only 13 years together. While she moved forward from his passing in July 1968, and did brave amazing things, raising Amy and me as a single mother, moving us from Long Island to Amherst and then to Lexington, expertly balancing all of our needs, a part of her always remained with my dad.

When my mother went in the hospital in April, she took a photo of my dad with her. As we talked about her mortality, she said “I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I do believe that, when I die, I’ll be reunited with your father. And if that’s self-contradictory, I don’t care.” I loved that her rationality did not extend to this.

About a month before she passed away, my mother wanted to go to a specialist appointment, even though she was in hospice. She was weak, and getting her in and out of the house was logistically involved. But she really wanted to take the appointment. She explained that it wasn’t false hope. She said “I’ve thought about how and when to take risks my entire life. Now, I have only one more risk left to take. Why wouldn’t I want to take it?” So she did. Genius, that woman.

My mother wasn’t in pain, but was very tired. She had periods where she’d be completely lucid and carry on detailed conversations with Amy and me, but with her eyes closed, and talking slowly and softly. Remarkably, she could still be very funny. Once she said “Call my friend Rubylee… and tell her… she should skip this part.” She also said, with a touch of Erma Bombeck, “If you write a book about me, call it “I always thought I’d die of something I knew the name of.””

As we were waiting for her to be discharged from the hospital for the last time and come home, she was fighting through the exhaustion and the disorientation, her fine mind trying to make sense of it all. She quietly asked me “Am I dying?” Remembering her passionate attraction to “The 40 days of Musa Dagh,” I told her the truth. “Yes, ma, you’re dying,” I said as I gently kissed her forehead. An anguished expression passed over her face, lingered for about three seconds, then left. What she said next was shocking. I was the only one in the room, so you’ll just have to believe me. She said, and I swear I’m not making this up, “Now, I can be nasty.” I literally laughed right in her face. “You’ll never be nasty, ma,” I said. “You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

She was, of course, joking (at least I think she was joking), but my mother did not have an easy life, and I began wondering where she came by this well of kindness. I consulted The Book of Bim, looking for clues. This was the closest I got: “[Your father and I] were driving somewhere, and passed a house that had been painted a deep shade of pink. I commented on how awful it looked, and daddy asked me why I cared; why I needed to say something negative about another person’s decision that didn’t affect me at all and wasn’t harmful to anyone. This has become very much part of how I think, and I am bothered by the need that people have to criticize that which is completely unconnected to them and whose comments can be hurtful to others.”

Then I found it, the diamond in the dust, the life-long lesson extracted from something trivial: “Your father and I rarely argued, but we did occasionally get angry at each other, almost always it was me angry at him. I probably told you this story, but it’s a good example of his ability to get at the essence of an issue. Once we were expecting friends to come for the evening. I had a head cold and was feeling lousy. Daddy was sitting in the living room reading the paper and I was busy vacuuming in that room, while sneezing and coughing at the same time. He didn’t offer to help. Finally, I said “How can you sit there while I’m busy and feeling so lousy?” He immediately got up and started to vacuum, but said something to me to the effect of: why are you cleaning up; you feel sick; these are just our friends who are coming; they don’t care what the house looks like; what do you want to be remembered for—being a good housekeeper? I was furious. For at least two days. Partly I was furious because, although he was helping me, he was also criticizing me, and partly because I knew he was right—at least right in his philosophy, but wrong in his approach. It took me years for this powerful idea to become part of the way I looked at things. What is it we want to leave behind when we die? Our afterlife is in the hands of our children, but the memories we leave them, [those] are in our hands.”

Wow, right? It gives “Thanks for the memories” a whole new meaning. I think that, as someone who knew so much pain, she not only came to understand the value of salving other people’s pain with kindness, but also the value of the memories this would leave. Is that why she did it? Administered all that kindness over all those years? I don’t know. But I think this shows that this was who she chose to be. Sure, some of it she was predisposed to, and some was underpinned by her Judaism, but I really think that she chose to become the superhero that we knew and adored, and that makes it all the more remarkable.

When I was a kid and was honest to the point of being hurtful, my mother would sometimes say “you sound just like your father.” When she said it in this way, this was not a compliment. I have certainly become more like her in the second half of my life, absorbing the elixir of kindness through her ceaseless examples. She lived by something a friend of hers, Norman Kotker used to say: “The highest value is kindness.”

My mother used to say that she’d inherited the gene to function under all circumstances. I thought I had too, until the final few days. My sister, Amy, on the other hand, displayed a combination of grace, love, and fortitude that was stunning, though not in the least surprising to those who know her. Truly our mother’s daughter.

My mother would scoff at the idea that she has something as weighty-sounding as a legacy, but we all know that she does. And it’s not only the dissemination of kindness, but of “tikkun olam” (repair the world), and of performing mitzvoth. My son Ethan called my mother “the Ted Williams of mitzvah hitting.” If there’s a mitzvah hall of fame, she’s a shoe-in to get in on the first round. Choose to be kind. Choose to do good. If she could instill these teachings in me, the wicked of the four Passover children, she can, even in passing, instill them in anyone.

I’ll leave you with one final story. During one of her hospital stays, I wanted to bring Scrabble, but all I could find at my house was Junior Scrabble, which had a board with large squares with pictures on them, no double and triple word scores, and no points on the letters. Nonetheless, we played, one point per letter. It was a beautiful way to spend a few hours in the hospital. And I was aware that it might be my final opportunity to beat her, which I had never done. I thought I had her, but then, even on this junior board with no points, she did one of those moves with putting in one letter that made three words, and zoomed ahead of me. I steadily caught back up. At one point, I had to take a phone call. I came back to see that she’d put a word starting with “S” at the end of the word “pink” to make “pinks.” “PINKS?” I said. “Yes,” she said, “reds, greens, blues… pinks.” What, you think I was going to argue with her? Again I caught back up, but only because twice she pointed out opportunities I’d missed that were still there on my next turn. At the end of the game, I’d edged her out by two points, but because she’d pointed out those two words to me, I wasn’t sure I deserved it. We discussed it, folded in the controversy over “pinks,” and agreed to call it a draw. It was the reasonable, kind, and fair thing for both of us to do. 

[Bernice Siegel, ETBPIEM (easily the best person I've ever met), 2/28/1930 - 7/12/2019]