A Day I Always Remember

A Day I Always Remember

A day I always remember is the day of my mother's death. Early in the morning I took a worm, perfumed bath- as if to coming into my resources, as if I knew in advance I could need my whole soul to meet a special challenge.

"I am going to visit my Mum this morning" I announced my husband before he went to work. I was a part time worker at that time and my decision was done nearly automatically.

My Mother was very ill for years. She nearly recovered for several years, in the middle of the Seventies, from cancer, but suddenly after she came back from re- visiting Germany after the war, she became ill again, and this time there was no way back.

My father felt secure enough to leave her that morning, and went to work as he did every day. When I came to see her, it was a wonderful, flourishing winter day; she was in bed, things seemed to be as usual, I set near her bed on an armchair and have read the Newspaper, while she fell asleep, calm prevailed in the room, and while reading and my eyes wondered reluctantly over the obituaries- I felt I am stuck somehow.

And than she was awakened by a brutal cough, struggled some minutes with her breath, I have run to the telephone in the corridor, to call the doctor. In the meantime, out of her struggle, I heard her saying, in a serene voice "My dear Nurit" in my German nickname "Nuritlein".

I don't think she ever talked to me in such a loving tone like that. Than fell a terrible silence; I put my hands automatically, as with no sense of what I am doing, over my head.

Than, after a while my father, my sister came, they screamed out of shock, and me, the always too sensitive Nurit, that was not at all expected to be there in the uttermost fearful moments that everybody was afraid of- to come- stayed cool, calming everybody and functioning amazingly efficiently.