Wed 11 Mar 2009
Sylvia Orman was my wife Judy’s mother, and she died this morning around 9 am.
She was 96 years old. Every year you expect there will be another birthday, but this year there won’t be. We never lost hope, but when you’re that age and small problems begin, they start to add up quickly. She’d had a pacemaker installed about three weeks ago and was doing well in physical therapy until she got a viral infection which turned to pneumonia, and she had to return to the hospital.
We saw her yesterday afternoon, which is when we said our last goodbyes. She was heavily sedated but she squeezed Judy’s hand when she talked to her, so we think she knew we were there.
We’re sad today, of course, and still shaken up a little, but we’re glad that we had her living close by for so long. She lived in an assisted living facility, but until the end she was very independent and did everything pretty much on her own.
Did the usual mother-in-law jokes apply? Not once. Not ever.
March 11th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Our condolences to you and
your family, Steve.
March 11th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Sylvia was a very special person. My folks thought she was amazing and are greatly saddened to hear of her passing. We’ll all miss her very much. May we all live so well and so long.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
My condolences to you and your family. I had a great mother-in-law too, and stayed close after my wife’s unexpected death. All the stupid jokes and cliches aside some times you get lucky and more than one wonderful person enters your life when you marry.
All my sympathy for you and yours.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
So much like what happened with my mother last month. I ache for your family.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
My sincerest condolences, Steve.
March 12th, 2009 at 4:18 am
My thoughts are with you at this time.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:22 am
I’m sorry about you and your wife’s loss, Steve. Losing a relative who has lived to an advanced age is always tough because then you have lost a connection with another world and time. The world of 1912 was a completely different place from the period we are living in now. I’m pretty sure our present suffers in comparison with 1912.
March 12th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Sorry to hear about that, Steve.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Thanks to all who’ve left messages or have emailed me privately. No matter how ready you think you are for someone leaving your life, you’re never really ready, and your thoughts and kind words have been very helpful.
What Walker said struck me in particular, since I was thinking along the same lines when I woke up this morning, even before I saw the comment he left.
Sylvia often talked about the past, but largely in terms of her friends and family as she was growing up, mostly the latter, as she was part of a large extended family.
What occurred to me this morning was that we never really asked her more general questions, such as what life was like in, say, the 20s and early 30s, when she was growing up and as a teenager.
As older people die, as Walker says, we lose connections to the past like this. History books give the big picture and talk about the big events, but seldom is there time in the usual school curriculum to go into the smaller details of what life was really like when those bigger events are going on, maybe even far away and unnoticed by youngsters.
I don’t think that life was any easier in 1912, Walker, but it was different, less stressful in some ways and more so in others, and even richer, I agree, in many ways.
— Steve
March 12th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Steve, what prompted my comment was somewhat the same sad event that you and your wife are going through now. My wife’s father died a couple years ago, also in his 90’s and living independently in a senior housing complex. He was ok until a couple months before his death when he started to have internal bleeding problems and the doctors simply said his body was wearing out.
But the last few years of his life I had dozens of conversations with him about life in the Trenton, NJ area during the 1920’s and 1930’s. He was a fount of interesting information about silent movies and the theaters, B-western movies, major league and minor league baseball, and most interesting of all to me, the buying and reading of pulp magazines. Not only what he read but what his fellow workers at Roebling Steel read.
I miss our conversations more than I can say and wish he was still around to talk with me about baseball, old movies, and pulps. Once our old friends and relatives pass on there is an empty spot in our lives that can never be filled again.