Eulogy for Leah

By Margo Isidora Katz

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Prologue: A Well-Known Student

Born during the Great Depression, she allowed her mother to feed her at the kitchen table until she was ten so she could read uninterrupted. A child of the Second World War, she was the first in her family to go to college. She grew to womanhood in the 1950s, attending Alfred University on scholarship with Bob Kalfin, Harriet Englander, Bobby Littell, and Lew and Jenny Krevolin. Professor C. Duryea Smith taught her the great writers and playwrights, and saw in her that spark teachers dream about. When Professor Smith died, his obituary described Mom and Bob and the great comedian Robert Klein as his “well-known students.” Teaching English in Venezuela she survived an earthquake, a revolution, and a love affair with an Italian count whose marriage proposal she rejected. Look at her then and you can see how men and women so easily fell in love with her. Her Mona Lisa smile, languid sensuality belying her true ambition, her sublime wit. She was irresistibly appealing.

 

Act 1: Our Bodies, Ourselves

She went door to door campaigning for Eugene McCarthy, pushing Jessica in a stroller with me riding shotgun. She bought me books like “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and “Women of Courage.” Mom threw me a Period Party at Grandma’s house in the dining room. She lit candles and we drank Manischewitz wine and Mom said a prayer thanking God that he had created me a woman. She imbued in me an unholy sense of self, and shaped me in such a way that it was sometimes hard to know where she ended and I began. She had this much to say about her own relationship with her Mom, Dorothy, documented in Mom’s book titled, Joined, which should be required reading for anyone who has lost a mother.

 

Act 2: Woman of Courage

“I have something to tell you,” she said. It was the first time that I saw fear in her eyes. I thought, “Oh my God, my Mom has cancer.” Then I thought, “Or maybe she’s gay.” And then I thought, “Please let her be gay.” After half a lifetime she had declared her truth (although later in life she said to me, “You know, I’m bisexual. We’re all bisexual.”) In the closet, her life had been fractured and riddled with secrets. Her decision to live an authentic life liberated her, realigned her, and made her accountable and accessible. A similar conversation 20 years later, but this time it was cancer. She lived those 13 cancer years with grit and quiet strength. In May of this year when she said, “It’s time,” it was. What she went through to come to that moment, I can’t imagine. Her courage brought me to my knees. But because I’m Leah’s daughter, I got back up again.

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Act 3: Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

“Margo,” she wrote, “is a happy and confident child who resorts easily to tears when confronted with injustice or cruelty.” How did she know me so well? Was it that we were cut from the same cloth? So tightly knit that she knew me as she knew herself? Or was it simply that she paid attention? Her original Avigdor, John Shea writes, “I remember Leah clearly as a young woman, her innate sweetness, her gentle ways with people, but all of it a velvet sheath that hid her fierce purpose and keen intellect.” As her daughter I can attest to her intense discipline, her infuriating stubbornness, and her exhausting thoroughness. She also had an emotional intelligence, an intentionality, and an intellect bar none. She was endlessly curious and an active listener. She understood that failings and flaws are part of being human and she forgave them. Though I don’t know if she ever forgave herself hers.  

 

Act 4: The Best of Leah

Her dream was to live on a commune with everyone she loved. That would have been one crowded commune. Mom was a people collector: relatives, friends, ex-lovers, and one ex-husband remained in her life, whether they wanted to or not. I cite a seven-hour drive from NY to Pittsburgh in 2002 to bury my father’s sister. Though Mom and Dad had been divorced for over 20 years, Mom still considered herself a sister-in-law to Florence, whom she adored, and an aunt to Florence’s children. When Mom died, my cousin Pam shared with me the following: “When Florence was not doing so well, Leah said to us, ‘The best of Florence is in all of you.’ I always remember that, even now, with great comfort. So I’m saying the same to you and Jessica and the little girls: the best of Leah will always be in all of you.”  

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Intermission: That Rabbi is a Fucker

No story. Just my most favorite thing she ever said.

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Act 5: Pitch Perfect

She had a beautiful singing voice. She would sing us to sleep with songs like “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Oh Susanna.” And then her closing number: “Shluf gezintalade. Shtay uf gezintalade. Sleep tight and pleasant dreams to you-you.” And then a kiss and lights out. I don’t know if that was real Yiddish, or all Yiddish, or a mix of Yiddish and whatever, but it was something her mother used to say to her. And it was the ship on which we sailed into our dreams every night.  

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Act 6: Jackie O

She was there for me in the most difficult of days. A witness at my divorce, on the stand, sitting ramrod straight, the judge asks her her name. “Leah Napolin. L-E-A-H. N-A-P-O-L-I-N. Leah. Napolin.” Poised and precise. Always. She came to stay with me for my foot surgery and slept upstairs in my bed which, at the time, was a post-divorce mattress on the floor that someone had donated to me. She was 76 at the time and never once complained. When she wasn’t making sure my foot was raised above my heart, she was making daily pilgrimages to Ocean State Job Lot and Target, coming home with new towels, a kitchen trash can, a vegetable peeler because she hated mine and said as much, and five dollar Jackie-O sunglasses for herself which she raved about for years. We fought when I wanted to walk the dogs and she said, “If you go, I’m leaving.” I went anyway, pulled by two unruly Basset Hounds and dragging that big surgical boot. When I returned, she was still standing on the front porch. I never thought she’d really leave.

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Act 7: Just Stopping By to Say Hello

There have been a few sightings. An antique silverware chime that she gave me, hanging in my flower garden nestled amidst a cluster of cosmos, revealed in an up-close photograph, stamped on the back of a spoon: “Rogers Bros, Eternally Yours.” And just the other day, on the computer, pulling up Amazon to check on an order, the greeting at the top right of the screen that always says, “Hello margo” said “Hello leah” instead. I took a picture to prove it because of course, when I reloaded the screen, it was gone. And I can’t seem to get it back.

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Act 8: Do not go gentle into that good night

We told her everything, and her responses were the sum total of how she mothered. She beamed and chortled at good news and growled at bad. She unutterably loved her kids and her kidlets, as she called her multi-generational offspring. She was our matriarch, our fixer, our hero, our poet. To the grandkids she was Grammy, Grams, the Graminator. To us she was Mom. She was not a helicopter parent by any stretch of the imagination. It was only when we were in peril that she turned into Tiger Mom, our own personal FEMA. She mothered like nobody’s business, which is why, in the last months, when the tables were turned and we were mothering her, it was an unrecognizable, heartbreaking landscape. Though she was still on this earth, everything that was within me cried out for my mother. Two weeks before she died we celebrated her 83rd birthday. Barbara made her a book of charms and Mom said it was the best birthday she’d ever had. We were sitting on the sofa, holding hands, when she asked if I thought my father had been ready to die. His sudden death, a shock to us all six years earlier, had caused her profound grief and she struggled with what she could have done to save him. Tears sprung to my eyes. I blinked them back, needing to be brave for her, trying to be strong for her, wanting to comfort her. She shook her head, looking out into the distance at something I couldn’t see. I wasn’t strong, and I wasn’t brave, and I needed her. I leaned into her and wept. And she put her arms around me, and held me, and mothered me for the last time.

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Epilogue: I can’t go on. I must go on. I’ll go on.  

Her book, Split at the Root, is available on Amazon. Her web site is leahnapolin.com. Follow her on Facebook.

I would like to thank: 

• Eleanor, who got Mom a beautiful obit in the NYT

• The hospice nurses who took my calls and answered my questions

• Mercy and SueAnn who took care of Mom and all of us with tender, loving care

• My husband Craig and my brother-in-law-Morgan who both know loss, and let us go when we needed to be with her

• The grandkids, who were so brave at the end

• Dale who visited weekly and boosted Mom’s spirits and made her laugh

• Jessica, the Leah-Whisperer, who once again proved her mettle in the face of heartbreak

• Barbara, who repaired our fractured family; loved Mom fiercely and gave her a great and happy life. She kept her safe and comfortable, protected her dignity and privacy, and made it possible for her to die at home surrounded by her mishpuka, which is what she wanted.

 

Shluf gezintalade. Shtay uf gezintalade. Sleep tight, Mom, and pleasant dreams to you-you.