Challenge Day Six: The Survivor

 

My husband and I relaxed for the most part. Today we went to Panera. I ate a bowl of bean soup. He ate a bowl of potato soup. We did some window shopping for kitchen rugs. Ross, Marshall’s, and Target. And yes, I did go home with a kitchen rug because my hubby didn’t like my make-shift-towel rug where I stand to do the dishes. Maybe I should cut holes in some of my clothes and parade them in public.

Before we finished our outing we went to visit my hubby’s mom. She stays in a nursing home. Neither of us like going. Not because its out of our way but because it’s a possible reflection of our future.

It also hurts to see his mom live the rest of her days helpless.

Today we found her lying on her bed in fetal position. She reminded me of a newborn baby. When my hubby grabbed her blue, twisted fingers, she responded with a small tug. The stare in her brown eyes showed dead-pan. Nothing indicated she remembered my hubby.

Ten years ago she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Today she’s ninety-three and we don’t know why she keeps on ticking. My husband says somewhere inside is the will to live. She’s been like that all her life.

You see, she’s a Holocaust survivor. Born to Polish-Jews in 1918. She lost her parents and four of her siblings in the camps, and carried that pain with her through life.

My husband tells me she did whatever she could to survive those camps. Her only way of escape was to marry an older German man. The ticket to meeting her true love, my hubby’s dad. A man from the Mossad in Israel.

Eventually, she divorced the German and married my father-in-law. They lived in Israel until my husband turned seven years old.

In America, she owned her own antique business, kept her house, cooked, did laundry, and mothered her two children.

That’s about all I know. My hubby doesn’t remember everything.  But, he remembers her feistiness and how she loved her family. Wished I could have met her before Alzheimer’s took over. Her whole story would have been an honor to write.