Auntie Daisy: Part Three

Auntie Daisy

Part Three

© 2014, Gadi Bossin

[email protected]

Gadi Bossin

P.O. Box 20

Kiryat Bialik, Israel

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

AUNTIE DAISY: PART THREE

Walter had written earlier to tell me that Auntie Daisy was sedated and would not last more than a few days.

When his message about her passing arrived, it was not unexpected.

I’d already begun to mourn for her and I’d taken some time for myself to think about her life. I’d tried to imagine what it was like for her.

It occurred to me that she and I had something very significant in our lives in common.

We were both small children when our mothers died. And it was startling to me that we’d never talked about this.

She was just a few weeks short of her fourth birthday when my grandmother, Shevva, her mother, died.

I was but two when my mother left home to go to the hospital.

I reasoned that, unlike me, Auntie Daisy must have grown up with a few memories, perhaps a bit hazy, but nevertheless real memories, of her mother.

In a moment of epiphany I understood she must have been much more aware of the loss of her mother than I was of mine.

When you are so young that you don’t know what’s happening around you, it’s not really so bewildering.

There’s nothing to be bewildered about.

Other people look out for you.

Two-year-olds still live a life of timelessness and blissful innocence.

Four-year-olds, on the other hand, are much more aware of the people around them. The death of a mother cannot escape their immediate notice.

Auntie Daisy must have suffered the loss of her mother in utter bewilderment.

“Where is Mama? Where is Mama?” she must have thought.

And later, a few years later, she must have asked the next questions motherless children ask: “Why did this happen? Why did this happen to me?”

Still later, she must have been aware that Bubbeh Bluma, her step-mother, was and wasn’t her mother.

I don’t know how she felt about that.

What I’m saying now never occurred to me before, that she and I had so much in common as small children who’d lost their mothers.

And that’s why we never spoke about it. 

I’m shaking my head as I write these lines.

Why did I never think about this?

Was I so completely absorbed by my own loss to never have recognized hers?

In late middle age, when Uncle Joe had become so obese his doctor had said he would die if he didn’t do something about his excessive weight—and right NOW—and the two of them had to go to what they called “the fat farm” at Duke University in North Carolina, what was my Auntie Daisy thinking?

And what was she thinking in old age when she lost Uncle Joe and lived on for almost fifteen years without his demands and needs and endless requests for this and for that and the other.

What was she thinking then?

“Oh, Joe. I miss you. You know I do. But what a work of art you were!”

Walter and Leslie were very solicitous of their mother.

I knew that Auntie Daisy was very well cared for.

Walter had money. And both of them visited her frequently.

The day Walter’s message arrived telling me his mother was in her final days, I realized I would never again hear the sound of Auntie Daisy’s voice.

I wrote this poem to try to help me remember the sound of her voice saying my name.

The Sound of Her Voice

The phone rings once, twice, thrice

And the sound of her voice

So gentle, so full of grace

Tells me she’s pleased I’ve called

“Geddy, . . . Geddy,” she says

And the sound of her voice

Dear Daisy’s sweet, soft voice

Is gone now

Is no more

Never again to say my name

But I do remember

“Geddy, . . . Geddy,” she says