Good news: I had a good cry.
Bad news: None, really.
This was the first time I got up to an alarm clock, so I could make it to Saturday’s 8:30 am Bikram class. I followed my old routine to a tee: walk Elsa, oil rinse, wash dishes, drink 2 cups of water, get dressed for Bikram, and leave at 8 am for class.
Maite, one of the other Bikram regulars, greeted me with, “Glad to see you back. I’m so sorry.” That’s all she said. It triggered something. I could feel the change in my body. Jeff came out of the studio and gave me a big hug, held the door for me as I went in to put down my walker (I use it as a help for my balance in class. I don’t need it to walk.), mat, towel and water bottle. Then I did my let’s- be-on-the-safe-side visit to the bathroom. When I came back to the room, I felt unpinned. I stood there and did some deep breathing, working on getting myself under control.
Maite looked back at me. I mouthed, “This is the start of normal activities.” She came to me in the back of the room, put her arms around me, and I started to sob, those racking sobs that almost sound like laughing. I had trouble standing straight. I can only remember crying like that twice before in my life.
There were 14 other people in the room. I had several thoughts. Instructors have talked about people breaking down and crying while doing yoga because the postures can trigger a release. That made it feel like a safe place. However, I also had some thoughts about upsetting the other people in the class. I don’t know how long I was crying, a few minutes, 5 minutes, maybe 6. My body had taken over; stopping wasn’t an option. How was I going to be able to take this class if I was going to break down into deep sobs?
I said maybe I should leave. Maite offered to help me carry my gear out. I said something about being more concerned about the class than myself. I knew it would be better if I took the class. Maite just turned and went back to her mat. When I looked up, everyone was standing in place, calmly waiting for the class to begin. Mark, the instructor, walked into the room and said, “Welcome to your 8:30 am, more or less, class.” I realized he had delayed starting the class promptly to give me the time to complete my cry. Many of the people in the class knew me and knew I had just lost Mike. I felt that so protected. I felt that the people in the class held that space for me. I am so lucky.
Most people must have thought I was crying because I had lost Mike, but I have no idea why I was crying. I wasn’t thinking of Mike; I wasn’t thinking of anything other than observing I was crying and vaguely being aware that I was causing a disruption. My body was crying; my mind was blank. I’m inclined to think that a lifetime of grief found an opening and poured out.
I can remember crying like that only twice before in my life. The first was in a group therapy session when I was in my thirties. One of the few good moments in that situation that made all the bad ones worthwhile. I was crying, “ You may not be as good as my father, but at least you’re here.” I was saying it to my mother. My father had died when I was 15. He was the ‘maternal’ one. My mother was difficult, not only for her children but for everyone. But, when she was left with two children, one 15 and one 10, and her mother to take care of, she pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
Below are stories that I have wanted to put into a printed form for years. They are about my mother.
At the time of my father’s death, she was 52 years old. She had immigrated to America when she was 37 and had never worked here. Within a month of my father’s death, she had moved her mother into our house, and found a job. My sister, Dorothy, remembers when she came home and proudly announced, “I got a job!” While she had some unfortunate qualities, she was an amazing woman of great spirit. She was hard to like, but very easy to love. Sadly, she had a low tolerance for affection, any expression of love. While she had never gone to college, she saw to it that my father’s expectations for his children were fulfilled, Dorothy and I both got our college educations.
The second time I had a good cry like that was when I had the image of my mother in limbo or purgatory and not at peace. She had a difficult time being gentle in life, but she could be loving. A commune mate met her when she came to my 30-birthday party. She said, “Now, I know why you’re obsessed with your mother. She’s capable of love.” I had met that woman’s mother; it was clear at first glance, she was not.
At the time, I still gnawed at unresolved relationships instead of just walking away. My relationship with my mom was unsettled. We could not hold a conversation without her attacking me. I had no idea what was going on until shortly before her death. We were watching TV together. An ad came on, and my mom commented about the woman in it, “Isn’t she beautiful?” I said, “Gee, no, I don’t think so.” I thought we’re going to have a real conversation and get to understand each other’s point of view. She said, “Why do you always have to put me down?” I was struck dumb. Was that what was going on?
I remember a moment when I was about 12 years old. My mom stood before me in the living room and said,” If two people always agree, there’s only one mind at work.” Even at the time, I knew those were my father’s words, which she was repeating. She didn’t make abstract statements like that. However, the bone she threw me allowed me to be myself and work to find some way to reconcile with her. While we never did have successful conversations, we did make it to a loving and caring relationship. She lived in the mother-in-law (ohana) attachment to our house for the last 18 years of her life.
Dorothy and I estimate that she had the emotional development of an 18-month-old when I was born and a 2 or 3-year-old when she was born. Some people thought my mother was narcissistic, but she didn’t have the emotional development to qualify for that disorder. No, she was too young. Her disorder was not an ego problem; it was a survival problem, PTSD. And, she came upon this disorder honestly. She had several serious traumas. The first started shortly after her birth in November 1903. They found a good-sized benign tumor on the left side in her upper back. If that tumor had been allowed to grow, it would have crushed her vital organs. In response, the doctors injected alcohol, I don’t know what kind, into, and around the tumor. Every other day, my grandmother took my mother to the hospital for this procedure. The tumor and the area around it became infected. I imagine it must have been impossible for her to lie on her back or be held to be nursed without pain.
In May of 1904, when my mom was 6 months old, the doctors removed the tumor surgically. She came out of the anesthesia twice during the operation. The doctor’s told her it was because she had such a strong will to live. Nonsense. It was 1904; anesthesia is risky to this day. Imagine what it must have been like to give it to a 6-month-old back then. I’m sure they delayed it as long as they could and then dove in. But, this story became part of my mother’s identity; she was a fighter. It served her well.
Shortly before she died, she told me another part of the story. She wasn’t kept overnight in the hospital but sent home. My best guess is the hospital didn’t have an infants’ ward. My grandfather was a chauffeur for a wealthy man. He drove a horse-drawn carriage. My mother was driven home in that over cobblestone streets hours after the surgery. She cried; her mother was embarrassed. I told my mother that if she had been a dog, they would have put her down rather than have subjected her to such treatment. She was essentially tortured. That she survived with any sanity intact is a miracle.
Her second major trauma was at the death of her beloved dog, Lord. Lord came into the family when my mother was two. My grandfather was something short of a dog whisperer. His training methods for both the dog and my mother involved beatings. In his defense, it was the culturally approved method at the time. When one of them got a beating, they retreated to my mother’s bedroom and comforted each other.
Lord was fiercely protective of my mother. My grandparents felt comfortable leaving him to ‘babysit’ my mother when she was still very young. If he barked, the neighbor would come running. If anything was wrong with his charge, he would have barked his head off.
There are a few other wonderful stories. When my mom was six, she was playing with a group of children. Something happened, and my mom wound up crying. Lord went up to each child in the group and looked them straight in the eye. Each child, in turn, cried, “ I didn’t do it.” I got the impression that no one was afraid they would be hurt by him; it was just his accusation that intimidated them. He was an authority figure.
In 1914, when my mother was 11 years old, her 42-year-old father volunteered to fight for the German army in WWI. In preparation, concerned that the two women he was leaving behind wouldn’t have enough food for themselves, no less a dog, he asked a neighbor to take Lord to the vet and have him put down. He said nothing to either my grandmother or my mother before. Neither had a chance to say goodbye to him. My mother was devastated. She was sick in bed for two weeks. It was a grief she carried with her for the rest of her life. My sister and I mourn this dog we never met as well.
In a group therapy session, I once said, “My uncle was a dog.” Everyone jumped on me for denigrating my uncle so. I said, “He was a Doberman pincher.” Oh! Lord was a beloved family member and as much as my uncle as my real uncle. He was my mother’s brother, period end of sentence.
The final trauma was Nazi Germany. My father and mother started dating in 1927. They met at a New Year’s Eve/engagement party of mutual friends in Berlin, where they both lived. My father was upper class Jewish, and my mother was lower-middle-class Protestant. In 1935, my father, along with all the other Jews who were working in the German courts, were expelled. He arranged to meet my mother in the Tiergarten and told her he had to leave for America. Would she be willing to emigrate and marry him if he could earn enough money to support her? You can imagine what her, and their life, was like after that. She had many Jewish friends. She witnessed someone being dragged through the streets of Berlin behind a motorcycle. She had to fear for her own life.
During my father’s absence, they had to correspond secretly. Lotte Levy, my mother’s good friend who was Jewish, acted as their intermediary. My father would send his letters to Lotte’s address, she gave them to my mother, who would reply, give them back to Lotte, who then mailed them. As a precaution, they only used terms of endearment in their letters and never their names. Below is the letter my father sent to my mother for her to receive on the boat coming from Germany to America.
H. Ernst David
74 Wadsworth Terrace
Apt. B-41
New York, N.Y.
My eternally beloved Marguerite, for close to a year and a half, not once in my letters have I been able to call you by your own name. A year and a half, that, in spite of the not unsatisfactory business developments, has not been a very easy time. For me, the worst was the fear that I suffered for you from time to time, from the thought that, indeed, in spite of all my caution, I might have made some mistake that could result in giving you difficulties.
So, the thought that when you receive this letter you will be ready to start your journey here, and that four weeks from today I will be able to see you again and kiss you as my dear bride makes me all that much happier.
I know, darling, that you have just made a very upsetting and painful farewell, which is surely still weighing on you. I understand this pain very well and you may be sure that I wouldn’t expect that you would love your parents even in the slightest less than before. Rather, I will really try my best to always be a good and loving son to them.
You are going to be coming into an alien country, darling, with a foreign language, and people who are strangers. Don’t try to rediscover our Germany here, the one whose familiar beauties of home existed only once in the world and which, with the best will cannot be magically recreated here. Much is different from what we are used to, many things will seem strange to you and some will seem ugly. Try, my darling, as a favor to me, to take things as they come, and if possible, without drawing comparisons at every step, recognizing the good, and at least overlooking the bad, for the first while that you are here. If you follow this advice, you’ll soon find out that America and in particular, New York, has great attractions and outstanding beauties, which, if we discover and enjoy them together, can replace much which Fate has taken from us.
It may be, darling, that I too have changed in the last year and a half, and that you will find in me faults and weaknesses other than the ones you already know and for which you are not prepared. On no account let a feeling of disappointment or dissatisfaction arise in you. Tell me right away what you don’t like or what is on your mind, just as I am planning to share all my thoughts and feelings with you. We two have always been able to understand each other, and will, as I confidently hope, continue to do so as husband and wife.
Neither of us is a child, dearest, and we are mature enough to know that marriage is no game, but a serious undertaking, that responsibilities, sacrifices and discomforts for both partners, and in critical moments, which will happen to us too, can only be overcome with an iron will. But on the other hand, our feeling of belonging together through thick and thin, which underpins such determination, contains the possibility for the greatest fulfillment of happiness that two people are capable of.
You, my dearest, by your actions in the last years, have shown that you are well and truly willing to do your part in the fulfillment of the task that is in front of us, and I promise you I will also do everything to make our marriage a true partnership.
So, my dearest, I am looking forward with joy to the future, in the confident hope, that from our shared joys and sufferings, that future will bring us mutual satisfaction and happiness.
This is serious letter that I am writing to you, dearest, to lead you from the old Europe to a new continent and new future, but you should know how seriously I will take the vows that we will make to each other a few days after you receive this letter.
You should know, dearest, not only that I love you with all my heart, but also that I feel I carry a deep and heavy responsibility toward you, a responsibility that I can only discharge if I succeed in making you, and in that way, also myself, happy.
As a result of a new law in the state of New York, our wedding cannot take place until three days after your arrival, which should be December 21, and I am looking forward to that day, which will join us for life, with longing and joyous expectation.
On Wednesday, Erich’s telegram arrived. So far, we don’t have any further news. I am hoping that he will be with you on the ship. I wish you and everyone else a peaceful, pleasant, and smooth voyage. Best greetings and kisses. The next ones will be real.
In great love and longing,
Always, Heinz
After my Bikram class, I came home. I did some work on the obituary and took a nap, only the second one I’ve taken since January 25. Before that, Mike and I must have averaged 12 to 14 hours of sleep in 24 hours. I would get 8 to 9 hours of sleep during the night. I always got up early because I went to the 7:30 Bikram class, but I would also take a 2 to 3-hour nap in the afternoon. I sleeping was one of my favorite retirement hobbies.
The evening routine: walk Elsa, eat dinner, watch an English murder mystery, Vera, walk the dog before going to sleep, brush my teeth, wash my face, and go to bed.
