A Mother Becomes Death

Proposal

This third experiment is inspired by the third poem of my creative writing poem portfolio, entitled “Eight”, which inspected the feelings of melancholy and disorientation that occur after a loved one has passed away. The poem will be adapted from a child’s perspective into a less-emotional obituary that highlights the life experiences of my grandmother. Death is often a mournful and sorrowful event – its aftermath itself includes solemn funerals, casket purchasing, legal processes, and grief. However, these events should not further despondency, but rather, serve as a celebration of life. Obituaries as a form of writing can be this celebration of life, as well as a source of celebration and closure. The obituaries that do celebrate life are often only published for well-known celebrities and are often written by those who had no meaningful relationship with the person. I want to open up these conventions by writing an obituary on someone who not only was influential despite not being in the public eye but was someone who I had a close relationship with. Hopefully, this piece will invite others to do the same.

Genre Analysis

The earliest obituaries date back to 59 BC and were very simple, meant for dignified people. As newspapers became popular and easier to create, obituaries became a part of record-keeping, but also reserved for notable figures in the public; obituaries soon became vital in the United States as keeping a track of deaths during the Civil War and communicating these deaths to families. Slowly, obituaries became more detailed on the lives of those who had passed. However, it was the tragic events of 9/11, where many nameless and ordinary people died, that had the New York Times respond by forever changing the conventions of obituaries - the newspaper focused on more mundane lives, detailing more on life anecdotes and stories rather than cold-hard facts. Nowadays, even digital obituaries exist, with interactive guestbooks and unlimited space to add images and text. There’s no established structure of the obituary, but there are components which most, if not all, obituaries have, such as stating who has died, where they passed away, and sometimes, the manner in which they passed. Many reflect upon the contemporary impact of the person and tell their most important life accomplishments or factoids with pictures incorporated to give a better visualization. There is no clear-cut, researched subject matter of this experiment because its basis is my grandmother's life. However, I will say that there are some prominent parts of her life that have had real-world evolutions, such as her family’s immigration to America, her fight for education in Puerto Rico, and her fight with Alzheimer’s.

Sketch

Touch upon aforementioned important life moments in addition to growing up in Wisconsin, living in Italy, and raising eight children
Full realization would involve digital platform - add more detail, incorporate photo albums, page to donate to Alzheimer's Association, interactive guestbook for people to leave messages

Sample

That is how she will be remembered. While she ultimately lost her fight against a debilitating illness, she will never be forgotten. Her infectious smile and contagious giggling will be the memories of her by loved ones. She will keep making the world a radiant and welcoming environment through them. She will persist in inspiring the world.

She is survived by her husband, her eight children, and her fifteen grandchildren. She will be missed by all.

Reflection

While in Experiment 2 I learned more about my grandmother as a mother, here I really got to inspect her life holistically. Even the message that I was trying to convey resonated in making this project; previously, the majority of my memories of her were those of recent, when her mental capabilities were deteriorating. However, while writing this piece, I went back to memories from when I was younger and felt a sense of comfort and warmth. Writing this was a cathartic experience, and in that, I think that my intentions were accurately realized and I know that others could indeed find some emotional closure in this activity. That does not mean that they aren’t emotionally difficult. There were times when I had to step away from the project for a while. There were complex feelings involved when I viewed my grandmother’s actual online obituary. It was exactly what most obituaries are and what I feared – to the point, a couple banal sentences that state who they were, when they were born, when they died. It was not enjoyable to see that this would be the lasting words of her life. Yet that made me appreciate this writing piece more – while others would not create a celebration of her life, I actually did.

A mother, who inspired the world with her dedication towards motherhood, education, and her fight against Alzheimer’s, passed away at 91 in Los Angeles, California.

There are many ways in which she lives on though. One could say that the innovations of international accounting, bankruptcy and insurance litigation, the natural gas industry, Bay Area architecture, and the Friends of African Village Libraries non-profit have been, and continuously are, owed to her.

Emigrating from Russia, her family eventually settled down in small-town Janesville, Wisconsin, where she grew up. She and her brother were part of the family’s first established American-born generation. It was here that her father became a historic city manager, paving the way for a grounded civic infrastructure that would not only give the town some much-needed discipline, but also provide her with a secure educational and economic foundation to propel into the world of higher education. She attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she studied English and Education, and afterwards found herself in the working force as a teacher. There was arguably no thing she loved more to do than teach.

She met who would become the love of her life soon after graduating, a young boy from San Diego who had just finished his time with the military and was working in accounting. She had her suspicions about him – as the man would later say, “It took me a thousand tries to get her to look at me, and a thousand flowers more to get her to talk”. Yet after all these attempts, she finally relented and gave him a chance. Two years later she was walking down the aisle towards him.

Not soon afterwards, she and her husband moved to Milan, Italy for work purposes. That year, she had her first of eight children. Yes, eight. Her husband was often traveling around Europe for business, a major tension to their relationship. He recalled, “I couldn’t tell if she was happy when I got back or just waiting for me to walk out the door again”. For eight more years they stayed in Milan, where she had five children. Ultimately, a change of setting was needed to raise them.

Before long, they were on the move again, this time to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Here she had her last three children and raised them in the same home that she would stay at for forty-five years. Not only did she engrain values and ethics into her children, but also the young scholars of San Juan. She worked as an English instructor and counselor for the San Juan public school system in a time when its future was in disarray; at least for a nominal community of students, she helped stabilize their educational paths and guide them towards a secondary education. As one of her daughters would admit, “I think she felt most accomplished with her work. [Her children] were a duty, but these kids were her benevolence. She loved hearing back from students and seeing how much they'd achieved”. Without a doubt she loved what she did and made the San Juan community better because of it.

As much as she considered her children a responsibility, they were also her livelihood. She couldn’t be a teacher permanently, but the mantle of “mother” was a title she held onto forever. No one would’ve given her grief if she ever wanted a rest from the multitude of tiny beggars, but she never asked for one. She was there for every child, and later every grandchild, with an unquestioned and undivided love. She was strict when she needed to be, caring was kindness was the resolve, and spirited throughout. There was no woman who could listen and respond to a child’s monologues better.

The years went by, and eventually she was no longer needed as this comforting caretaker. Her children were grown, off to America, off to college, off to their own lives. She did not let this void become a detrimental downfall. Rather, as her son joked, “When everyone left the house, those were her formative years. That’s when [her] real life began”. She spent her time volunteering within the community, travelling the world with her husband, and sharpening her recipe of the best homemade apple pie with cheddar cheese. Truly, you can take a girl out of Wisconsin, but you can’t take the Wisconsin out of the girl.

She became a matriarch of a large family, a grandmother to fifteen lucky souls. She basked in the sun more than ever, switching her stays cyclically between San Juan, Los Angeles, and La Quinta. Any mean part of her soul that had been necessary as a mother had been eviscerated.

Yet the world was not as kind to her and she was to it. At the age of 84, she was diagnosed with dementia and later the Alzheimer’s disease. This did not deter her in any way, shape, or form, and she continued to live life to her greatest capacity. Soon though, she began to lose her cognitive abilities, which deteriorated at a rapid pace. She no longer could tell her fascinating stories, win a Scrabble game without breaking a sweat, or even call out her husband's name. Yet while this malady took away her functioning independence, but it never took away her fighting spirit. Her grand-daughter noted, “She always had a smile on her face. She laughed a lot, she made jokes. She always kept her happiness, which in turn kept my hope”.

She was not solely a joyous person. She embodied joy. She was joy.

Final Project