An unusual coincidence or divine intervention?
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| Ike and Sylvia Kessler |
This column, which was published in the June edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, was written as a tribute both to my late mother Sylvia on the
occasion of her 25th yahrzeit (memorial observance) and to my older daughter Arianna because of an interesting coincidence in their respective lives.
Or was it a coincidence --- or an example of divine intervention?
Read on and you can decide.
(Link to the column on the Je
wish Rhode Island website: https://www.jewishrhody.com/
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As I write this, I’m observing the yahrzeit of my mother Sylvia on the 25th anniversary of her death on May 15, 1997, which corresponded to the ninth day of Iyar.
At first blush, it seems difficult to fathom that it’s been a quarter-century since I spent the last Mother’s Day with my mother at her nursing home bed, where she was unresponsive and was basically waiting to die after several years of battling Alzheimer’s disease and its complications.
By that point, it was a blessing that she had only a few more days to live, because her mind, body and soul all were ravaged beyond belief by the Alzheimer’s, which had long ago robbed her of everything that had made her my mother.
We first started noticing cognitive and behavioral changes with her in the early 1990s, but by the time we were able to get a definitive diagnosis, in June 1994, that her dementia was due to Alzheimer’s disease, her condition had progressed beyond the point where effective treatment with any of the experimental drugs then available would be considered helpful.
But the worst was yet to come.
Two years later, things had deteriorated to the point where I was told by the social worker at my parents’ senior apartment building that my mother had to be removed from the residence that she and my father shared in Brookline.
That occurred June 6, 1996, and she was sent to a Boston area hospital for a week until we were able to locate space for her at a nursing home.
Exactly one week later, on June 13, 1996, Sylvia was placed in what would be her final residence, and things went downhill immediately.
Part of the reason for that was that my mother had just enough self-awareness left to realize that she was in a place where she didn’t want to be and would never be leaving. As a result, she behaved as many seniors already affected by dementia have likely done over the years: She gave up.
The next year was hell, as she was put on way too many medications that did nothing for her --- and only made her more agitated and angrier at those closest to her: her family. She especially blamed me for putting her in the nursing home, and therefore spent most of her remaining coherent time lambasting me and my wife, Lynne.
Her condition only worsened, and after the nursing home insisted on shuttling her back and forth from psychiatric hospitals --- which only increased her agitation and essentially sucked the life out of her --- her passing was a blessing.
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| Ari, on the Providence Marathon course. |
In the early days of the summer of 1996, while my wife and I were dealing with my mother’s situation, we had also been pursuing the adoption of our first child from China. Those were in the days when thousands of Chinese children, mainly girls, were being adopted yearly by Americans due to China’s one-child policy, which was ended in 2015.
My wife and I started the adoption process in January 1996, and after several bureaucratic delays, we finally received a picture of the girl meant for us 19 months later, in August 1997. We had already decided that our daughter would share the Hebrew names of my wife Lynne’s father, who died on Memorial Day weekend in 1996, my mother and my grandmother, who even though she had died in 1993, hadn’t yet had a baby named for her.
Those intentions took on a deeper meaning after we received our daughter’s date of birth: June 13, 1996, the same date as my mother’s life was essentially over after she was in effect exiled to a nursing home against her will.
Over the years, I’ve begun to interpret that eerie juxtaposition as a positive sign. I saw it as proof that it was part of a divine plan to make sure that we received just the right girl to raise.
Now, almost 26 years after my daughter’s birth and 25 years after my mother’s passing, we have been nothing but blessed with our first child. Arianna went on to become a teacher and has grown up to become a responsible, independent adult who willingly takes on challenges. Just last month, for instance, she followed in her father’s footsteps, and ran her first marathon in Providence. (Her father ran 17 26.2-milers in his younger days.)
She made us proud then, as she’s done so often in her life. I have no doubt that she would have been loved by Sylvia, if she had lived long enough to become a grandmother.
LARRY KESSLER (larrythek65@gmail.com) is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro. He and his wife Lynne adopted a second child, Alana, from China in 2002. He blogs at https://larrytheklineup.blogspot.com/
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