ACTIVELY SENIOR
Dr. Mirissa Price
My Mom Has Dementia, And I Have Her Jewish Faith By Dr. Mirissa Price
I
wish I had more time. These six words sit with me every day and night as I watch my mother decline into dementia. At age 29, I never thought I would have to help my mom get dressed in the morning. I never thought I would have to cook for her and remind her to take her pills, or go driving through the streets looking for a blonde woman who went wandering away when I wasn’t looking. I never thought I would lose my mom so young. I never thought I wouldn’t have time to have her see me get a first job, fall in love, or have children. I never thought I wouldn’t have time. My mom’s Hebrew name is Sarah, named after one of the four matriarchs of Israel. In Jewish Law, my faith, my culture, my heritage and place in this world come from my mother. With a father who is Lutheran, she is quite literally the woman who gifted me with the Jewish faith. She is the 42
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 | OREGON JEWISH LIFE
reason I went to Hebrew Day School, became Bat Mitzvah, and visited Israel for the first time. She is the reason that, no matter how far I travel from home, I feel at home walking into a Rabbi’s house or Chabad home on Shabbat and sharing a meal and prayers with my extended Jewish ‘family.’ And so I never imagined I would lose my Ima – not in physical presence but in emotional presence – so very soon. In watching her decline into adult childhood, as we as a family describe it, I came to realize that I was mourning a loss. Fortunately, the very Jewish faith my mother gifted me has offered me strength in its mourning practices. Mourning in Judaism centers on respecting the dead (kavod ha-met) and comforting the living (nihum avelim). While my mother is far from dead, the version of her I grew up with has died. The woman who I could turn to for safety and reassurance is no longer complete, and the New York Jewish sarcasm that once filled our home has been replaced by innocent joy over musical toys. While I still have my mother to hug, my Ima has, in her own sense, died. Walking through a traditional moment of mourning has connected me even more to my faith – and through that to my mother. At the first acknowledgement of her dementia, I engaged in keriyah, tearing of the clothing over my heart. I sat shiva quietly, honoring the memory of the mother I once had and reflecting on what I still have of her presence. While we kept her illness quiet, so that others did not take part in the shiva process, I did speak to close friends who delivered their own version of se-udat havra-ah. And I took part in shloshim. I took part in thirty days to reflect on the gift of an incredible mother that God gifted me. While I did not continue with avelut or the mourner’s Kaddish, reserving those practices for my mother’s physical death, I took the tradition to heart of returning to life. As a unique strength to Jewish mourning traditions, after completing the final day of mourning, family is not permitted to continue the formal process. Other than recitation of Kaddish, and other moments of prayer throughout the year, life returns to a new normal. In grieving my mother’s mental decline, having an end point to grief, a point in which I stopped mourning what I lost
