This is the seventh and final part of my writing of a "biographical trace" that spanned my passage from Pesach to the festival of Shavuot. It would have been fitting for me to publish it before the 49th day of the Omer.
Tragically, on the 10th of May, on Yom Yerushalaim, which was the 43rd day of the Omer, a war broke out between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel. It is not the first time that they have been at war, nor is it the first time since I have been part of the Jewish people, but this time it broke my heart in a different way.
Perhaps because this time, more than the others, I have the feeling that the spark was ignited somewhat close to home, in a more 'intimate' dimension; also we know that, unlike in the past, a group of extremists has involved in the conflict Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens, who until now had lived together in peace.
Could it be because I did some introspection in my life during such a spiritually sensitive period as the days of the Omer?
The fact is that this event has slowed down my pace, deepened my thoughts and so here I am today 20th of May 2021, three days after Shavuot, posting the seventh week, although divided into two parts so that it is not too long 🙂
–continued – part one
My partner decided to move to Modena and be with me, a precious gesture of love. As was the post-graduate period from London that my daughter spent in Modena, working with me in my shop. All this helped me to help my mother. But my emotional energy, my connection with the customers, was waning, as it had in the past.
Before I was forced to close the workshop, I tried to reduce my costs by leaving my little nest in the city and asked my mother for hospitality in what she keeps calling 'the family home', also to be able to be there when I wasn't at work. Soon after, they turned me away, I went to stay at a hostel: I kept all the worry and humiliation to myself, without involving my sister to avoid further tensions. Her response to me was usually yet another outburst of anger towards our parents, not exactly what would have helped me.
One day my mother call in order to tell me that she wanted to apologise to all her children for any actions or words with which she might have hurt us in her life. I was touched, and told her that I surely appreciated and accepted her words, and that I reciprocated for any harm I might have done to her.
In the Spring of 2019 my sister arranged an orthopaedic consultation and shortly afterwards I accompanied my mother to an outpatient clinic to assess the possibility of having a hip replacement, at the end of which she and the doctors decided to go on with the plan.
So on the 20th of May, exactly two years ago, she had the operation and when she came out my sister and I were moved and relieved to imagine her in better health. During the night I received a call from the hospital that my mother was delirious and unmanageable. We rushed to her, I spent the first night and from then on my sister and I shared the time of care during a very long period of at least three months, with no boundaries between day and night. The operation had gone technically very well, bh, but the anaesthesia had devastated mama's fragile neuro-vascular situation.
After a week she was sent to a rehab facility, but her recovery was still very far behind. After two weeks the clinic was pressing for her discharge even though it had not been possible to get her through the planned rehabilitation. My sister wanted to move her to a famous facility in the hills. I remember that moment: we were in the corridor of the clinic and she was speaking about this far away place, I said that in my opinion it was too early because she did not have sufficient functions to face physiotherapy and she would also have been more alone. My sister was just asking me a meaningless 'what do you think', yet without taking my answer into consideration, just not seeing me; she kept repeating 'everyone says it's a very good place'. I suggested we take mama home, which would help her regain psychological awareness, and organise a combination of assisted treatment and physiotherapy, all the while being close together. But as usual, I did not insist, and was obedient to the decisions she made.
My mother was transferred 80 km from home, where my sister and I took turns every day to visit her.Every time,I would find her more confused and neglected, she was too weak for physiotherapy and that place couldn't give her the kind of assistance needed, not even to help her eat. One day I found her feverish, drenched in sweat, alone in an isolated room. I settled her down and begged the doctor to find out why. My sister arrived, I went back to Modena but the news was very bad. I told her to call for help, but she was hesitant. I turned around and went back to them: my mother was getting worse, my sister and her partner were asking the OS to call an in-house doctor, but to no avail. I took the responsibility of signing, called 118 and they took mama straight to the hospital, where she was admitted and given two transfusions for dehydration and malnutrition.
She finally came home, with a whole host of assistance. My sister found a good physiotherapist and I found an assistant who was able to cope with my mother's fear of getting up.One day my sister and I were chatting with a friend/nurse about the various tasks in sight and I mentioned that one of us should be given the power of attorney, just in case. I was already thinking of my sister, of course, but since a) I was rattled by the episode of her uncertainty in calling for help, b) it was implicit to me that we should continue to discuss initiatives (although ... really?), I was sorry to discover that they had done everything without even telling me. My sister then started to build 'walls' around my mother, to lock rooms in the house, I guess with the best of intentions but without informing me, except for the usual outbursts of anger for her burden in the situation. I never protested about her partner's anti-Semitic comments for fear of being accused of being problematic.
LiOr – continued –
Photo: LiOr Lod, Israel 2015