“George is the father I never had,” my mother said to me from her nursing home bed.
Her actual father, a Russian immigrant house painter, died in an accident when Mom was only three years old. The youngest of eight children, her memories of him were from stories she heard from her siblings about how he held her on his lap while he played his accordion. One of the few things he brought to this country, the worn musical instrument lives on a recessed arched bookshelf in my house, its ivory keys laughing even in their stillness.
Whenever my mom looked at it or gently touched it, I could feel her creating fantasies of how her life might have been growing up with him. I love that my choice of a tenderhearted husband brought some of Mom’s fantasies into being. Near the end of her life, she would tell me that George’s kindness actually exceeded her fantasies.
However, it was not always thus.
When I called my mother across the country, to tell her that George and I had decided to live together, her reaction was a shocked, “What, you’re not getting married?” George and I had both been divorced for many years and decided to walk gently into this phase of our relationship.
My mother, who could not fathom that I didn’t want to get married, decided George must be the holdout. On top of that, he wasn’t Jewish, and we had three daughters between us. What was I thinking?
Although her visits after that were tension-filled for all of us, George was always respectful as though he could feel her sadness.
When I called her two years later to say that we were getting married, she responded, “Oh, thank God.”
Mom relaxed after we became legal. But the real turn of events came when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Mom flew out from Virginia to help care for me when I got home from the hospital, and she and George blended into a determined team, dedicated to helping me get well. She watched with awe as he calmly attended to my every need with love and humor.
Later, she would tell me she had never seen any man that loving and caring of his wife. He could empty tubes and change leaky bandages all while making me laugh. A few years later, when we convinced Mom to move to a retirement home near us, she became the recipient of his nurturing. He listened to her stories, took her out for hot fudge sundaes, and held her hand as she was wheeled into surgery. I know she believed that marrying George was the finest thing I ever did.
When, after 20 years of marriage, my husband decided to convert to Judaism, I thought my mother would be thrilled that she was finally going to have a Jewish son-in-law.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said resolutely, “I couldn’t love him more.”
Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Patriciabunin.com
Related Articles
Shopping while hungry yields unexpected results. And a carton of ice cream A ‘quick minute’ for an advertising pitch? Don’t hold your breath. Celebrating my birthday in the most official way possible A Mother’s Day gift of happy memories delivered by my baby brother Discovering a mother-daughter bond via a late-night email Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How my mother found a loving father in her own son-in-law )
Also on site :