My Mommy was a Commie

An atheist till the end--she taught me to believe.

My mother always hated religion.

  "Hocus-pocus," she called it.  Even the mention of God made her sneer.  She grew up in an era rife with anti-Semitism, so she had no sympathy for Christians, especially Catholics, who taught that Jews killed Christ.  But she had no love for Judaism either, seeing the orthodox of her own religion as a bunch of fanatics with long beards and joyless lives, and reform Jews as bourgeois and materialistic.

 Instead, she joined the Communist religion in the 1930s and remained more or less a believer all her life. 

Mom brought me up to be a devout atheist, even though she had regrets about depriving me of Jewish culture.  For a while she’d sent me to Sunday school in an attempt to force some Jewishness down my throat, but I hated it.  The Bible stories were boring and the teacher got on my nerves.  I sat in the back and fidgeted.  One day the teacher asked if there was anyone in class who didn’t believe in God.  I proudly raised my hand, sealing my fate as a pariah. 

Mom pretended to be dismayed, but from then on laughingly bragged that I’d been thrown out of Sunday school because I had the chutzpah to admit I didn’t believe in God.

My parents didn’t exactly flaunt their atheism, however.  They were acutely aware of being Jews at a time when anti-semitism was alive and well, so I was kept out of school on the Jewish holidays even though we didn’t celebrate them.   When I asked why, Mom said it would look bad to the goyim if I went to school on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. We usually left town on the high holy days, escaping to a Russian resort on a lake not far from New York City.  We’d listen to picnicking groups of Russians singing mournful songs and guzzling vodka, while we rebelliously feasted on ham sandwiches.  

The only Jewish holiday we did celebrate was one of my favorite days of the year--Passover.  We’d go to a Seder at one of my parents’ Jewish lefty atheist friends.  Someone would read a couple of pages of the Haggadah while we kids surreptitiously guzzled Manichewitz, until the grownups gave in to our pleas of let’s eat.  The Haggadah was quickly discarded in favor of the meal.   But the spirit of those Passovers stuck with me, and as an adult I made sure I got to a Seder every year no matter where I was or what I was doing.

When mom, in her mid-eighties, came up from Florida to visit me in upstate New York, I took her to a Yom Kippur service at my synagogue, the Woodstock Jewish Congregation, which was held under an enormous tent, open to all.  It rang with real spirit, not the phony piousness she’d experienced in her youth.  A lifelong fan of folk music, if not of Judaism, she immediately took to our rabbi, a former folk singer whose services resembled a hootenanny. 

She endured a discussion of the "Book of Job," and later whispered to me, wrinkling up her nose in distate, “He talked so much about God.  You don't believe in all that God stuff, do you?”

 I still wasn't sure there was a God, but if I did decide to believe, I sure wasn't going to admit it to my mom. Rabbi Jonathan told us we didn’t have to worry about whether or not we believed in God to lead a Jewish life.  God wouldn’t care either way.  The essence of Jewishness was doing mitzvahs, or good deeds.

I was surprised that she approved of my joining a synagogue at all, but our congregation was so unlike anything she'd ever experienced that it won her over.  I suggested she attend services in Florida.  She shrugged her shoulders, "I would if they were led by your rabbi." 

My mom was deeply spiritual in her own way. She knew how to live in the moment.  Transfixed by a bird's nest under the eaves of my house, she would study it for hours every day, waiting for the baby birds to emerge.  When they did, she peppered me with a million bird questions as if I was an ornithologist.  She’d become rapturous over an art exhibit, a ballet, a concert, an evening watching the moon rise over the ocean.   Even a week before she died, when she couldn't walk and could barely speak, she looked blissfully content when I wheeled her out to the pool so she could visit with a group of beloved old friends.  Just their chattering presence and the warmth of the sun seemed to fill her with peace and joy.

Although mom scoffed at the notion of God, and knew nothing about Judaism, she brought me up to be a good Jew.  She was my role model when it came to helping others, regularly performing numerous mitzvahs herself, believing that being a "good person," was much more important than making money or impressing others.   She fervently believed in tikkun olam, repairing the world, which Jews view as a spiritual duty.  Most of all she taught me that spirituality is about what you do, not what you believe.  

No saint however, she loved to gossip and regularly committed the sin of leshon hora (negative talk—a sin according to Jewish law). She despised boring people, preferring witty folks with an edge.  She once slyly admitted to me that she was fan of Teddy Roosevelt’s caustic daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who quipped, “If you don’t have anything good to say about anybody, come sit by me.”

My mom only got to attend services with me a couple of times before her health prevented her from coming up north to see me.   I traveled to Florida regularly to deal with one health crisis after another.  After her last hospitalization, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and both her mental and physical condition worsened to the point that she could no longer keep up with her friends.  An intensely social and boundlessly energetic person, she became so depressed she refused to get out of bed.

During one phone conversation she said, "There has to be a change." 

"You mean to an assisted living facility, mom."

"Oh no," she said, "Not that kind of change," but didn't explain what she meant.   Then, during our daily phone calls, she started asking frantically when I was coming to visit.  I gave her the date many times, but she would repeat the question plaintively, over and over, day after day, week after week.

I didn't understand the urgency.  Her condition seemed to be stable and I'd finally found Kathy, a wonderful live-in aide who mom adored.   When I finally did arrive, she threw her arms around me and wouldn't let go, saying, "I love you so much."  I started crying.  Although I'd always known my mother was completely devoted to me, she'd never been a demonstrative woman.

  From that moment she started, or finished, dying.   Her kidneys simply failed, for no particular reason. I think she had decided it was time to die. We had discussed her profound wish to avoid heroic life-saving measures in such a situation, so I refused dialysis when the doctor offered it.   Josie, a large, cushiony, comforting Jamaican Hospice nurse stayed by her side much of the time. 

I called a rent-a-rabbi someone recommended, feeling that a spiritual advisor should be on hand to comfort the dying, even if she was an atheist.  The rabbi, who somehow had missed his vocation as a stand-up-comic, showed no inclination to comfort my mother, who in any case was past comforting, but he did have me laughing out load at joke after joke, a mitzvah that lightened the weight of my grief for the moment.  We agreed that he would preside at the funeral, where I insisted he not mention God at all, but give a funny sermon instead. He looked stunned by my request, but said he'd try. 

Mom got worse rapidly, soon losing all lucidity. One day she looked right through me and said in a sing-songy, high-pitched voice I didn't recognize, "Who are you?" 

It felt as if she’d physically shoved me away.   Much as I wanted to be there for her when she died, I found I simply didn't have the strength to watch her dying, although I knew that if our places were reversed she wouldn't have left my side for a moment.  I was desperate to return home--to my own nest where, like a wounded animal, I could grieve and lick my wounds.  Riven with guilt and self-reproach, not knowing how long she would live or if my presence still mattered to her or not, I flew home, intending to return in a week or so.              

Her  "I love you so much," was goodbye.  By the next morning she was gone. 

I’ve thought about that moment a lot since.  I’ve read that some dying people wait until their loved ones leave the room so they can die alone.   I think I had to leave her so she could leave me.      

It’s been said that the last thing a parent teaches you is how to die.   My mom faced death with a grace and dignity I can only hope to emulate when my times comes.    

Josie told me she died "a lovely death”—that right before she died the color returned to her cheeks, and she tried to get out of bed, as if reaching for someone who was there to greet her. Josie claims to have seen my mother wave at a spirit, a "white lady in petticoats and an old-fashioned dress," who appeared in the room.

The Kabbalah teaches that there is an afterlife.  Call me a flake, but I believe that figure was my mother's mother, the grandmother who died before I was born.

I still miss my mom desperately sometimes, even though she’s been dead for many years now.  I comfort myself with the knowledge that, whether there is or isn't a God, I'll see her again someday—sooner rather than later now that I’m almost the age she was when she died.   Mom, who always managed to push her way to the front of the line, will surely turn heaven and earth to be there when it's my turn to pass from this world.

An atheist to the end, she taught me it was possible to believe.