A

year ago, on the 16th of Adar 5777, my mother a”h was buried in a small cemetery in the town of Manchester, New Hampshire. Her burial marked the second time she had been saved from a crematorium.

The day of her funeral was a frigid winter day, so when the rabbi instructed me to take off my shoes and walk between the two rows of people present, I demurred.

“I didn’t think to bring a pair of non-leather shoes,” I said. “I guess I’ll just have to keep my shoes on.”

But the rabbi insisted that I remove my shoes and walk in my socks. As I walked along the frozen ground, I was surprised that my feet did not feel cold at all.

At that moment, I remembered my mother’s description of the death march she had been part of 72 years earlier, in the winter of 1945. As the Russian liberators approached, the Nazis liquidated most of Auschwitz, and my mother and other inmates were forced to walk some 500 miles, in the snow, to the Salzwedel concentration camp in Germany.

And my mother had no shoes.

By a miracle, however, her feet suffered no harm during that march and did not even feel cold. Eventually, a Nazi guard tossed her a pair of boots removed from a corpse.

After the war, my mother, who was an only child, was reunited with her mother, who had survived the war as well. Her mother remarried and moved to Denver, while my mother made her way to Toronto and then Montreal, where she married my father in 1952. A highly intelligent woman, she learned to speak English fluently, and she attended university and became a psychologist. Eventually she was appointed head of psychology at a Montreal hospital.

She may have survived the war and built a successful professional life for herself, but part of her died in Auschwitz. As a mother, she was emotionally absent and had no interest in me or my older sister, Hayley, even though we were well-behaved, conscientious children who made no trouble. She didn’t care what I ate, what I wore, or what time I went to bed. My achievements didn’t concern her at all.

“The boy needs a mother!” my father would often exclaim in frustration. He was the one who bought me clothes, took me where I needed to go, and showed interest in my life. While he worked long hours and was rarely around, I never doubted that he loved me — unlike my mother, who clearly did not. She was busy with her clients and her friends, who found her witty, entertaining, and full of personality. But that side of her was reserved for outside the home.

Years later I would wonder about the schism between her professional and parental roles. How could such a successful psychologist have so little compassion for her own child? I’ll never know the answer, although I suspect the Holocaust had a lot to do with it.  

Both my parents grew up nonreligious, and they raised me with no Jewish observance. After years of living separate lives under one roof, they finally split up when I was eight years old. I have no recollections of happy family times, and zero positive memories of my mother.

Early in my adult life, I pledged to myself that I would build a life that was different from that of my parents. I would work hard to create a strong marriage, and I would be present for my wife and children in a way that my mother had never been for me.

In 1980, when I was 22 and away for the summer, my mother informed me over the phone that she was leaving Montreal permanently. She’d had enough of the Canadian winters and had decided to move to sunny California. I was living with my father at the time and studying in law school, but several years later, in 1983, I found myself in Los Angeles to take the bar exam. That was meant to be a temporary stay, but I took a liking to the people and the weather and decided to settle there. It was in Los Angeles that I met my wife, Libby, and began learning about Yiddishkeit. Our journey to religious observance was gradual, but eventually we became full-fledged baalei teshuvah.

Libby, too, suffered significantly because of my mother, even though we had little contact with her. She had built herself a busy psychology practice in Los Angeles, as well as a bustling social life. Childhood wounds linger, and when you become an adult, those wounds resurface in your marriage. So Libby and I had to work through all the trust, attachment, and communication issues that were the fallout of my relationship with my mother — or lack thereof. Eventually, though, we succeeded, with Hashem’s help, in building a healthy relationship and a close, loving family despite the serious emotional gaps in my upbringing.

My sister Hayley was not as fortunate. She lived a completely secular life and married a man who viewed relationships strictly in economic terms: Kids cost money, so why have them? Friendship requires reciprocation, so why bother? Family members are a burden, so who needs them?

Hayley had no children, and eventually got divorced. Emotionally and spiritually stunted as she was, she estranged herself from me and from most of her other relatives and friends. She viewed my religious lifestyle as a throwback to the dark ages and wanted nothing to do with me.

My oldest daughter, Elisheva, was born in 1987, shortly after my father passed away. To my surprise, my mother actually took some interest in her new grandchild. She would visit us, take Elisheva out for walks, and even babysit her on occasion.

That all changed three years later, when our twin daughters were born. Adina and Tehila arrived prematurely, and while Adina was perfectly healthy, Tehila suffered a brain hemorrhage at birth and contracted a staph infection shortly afterward. The next two years were a whirlwind of hospitalizations and diagnoses, as Libby and I struggled to care for Tehila and cope with her multiple disabilities, while tending to the needs of our other children as well. At one point, we belonged to five different support groups.

Later, Tehila, with her plucky, resilient nature, would learn to do most of the things her peers did and would be integrated into a regular Bais Yaakov class, with the help of an aide and a modified curriculum. Despite her many challenges, she would grow up to be a hardworking, independent, and productive adult. But during those early years, when she required a tremendous amount of care and attention, we desperately needed help and support.

At precisely that time, much to my disbelief, my mother picked herself up and moved to Arizona, where she knew no one. To do that, she had to close her psychology practice, leave her friends, and reestablish herself from scratch. She declared that she was moving because she had osteoporosis and the dry Arizona climate was better for her, but that made no sense, because Los Angeles rarely experiences humid weather. It was obvious to Libby and me that she was moving because she wanted to get away from us. Her own mother had recently moved to Los Angeles, after living in Denver for 40 years, yet the prospect of living near her did no more to keep my mother in Los Angeles than the prospect of being near her grandchildren. I remember her saying that she didn’t want to be anyone’s caretaker.

During the years my mother lived in Arizona, she visited Los Angeles on occasion, but most of the time, she didn’t even tell us she was coming, and we’d only find out later, from other people, that she had been in town. On the rare occasions that we spoke, she told me nothing about her life, and asked me nothing about mine.

At one point, beside myself with frustration, I asked her point blank, “Do you want a relationship with your only son or not?”

“No, I don’t,” she replied.

Later in life, my mother wrote a will. She never showed it to me, but she did tell me that she wanted to be cremated. “The others were burnt in the crematoria at Auschwitz,” she said, “and it’s fitting that I should go up in the chimneys and join them.”

I was horrified, and repeatedly tried to dissuade her, but she was insistent. When I explained to her that cremation is against Jewish law, and is considered a terrible thing, she became very angry and accused me of being selfish.

I spoke to rabbanim and contacted a lawyer, but after hearing how intractable my mother was, everyone agreed that there was nothing I could do to change her mind and no legal way to override her wishes posthumously — especially since my sister had power of attorney, and she didn’t care about giving my mother a proper Jewish burial. Over the years, I lost plenty of sleep over this, and many times I begged my mother to reconsider, but she would not hear of it.

At the point that I despaired of stopping the cremation, it dawned on me that it would actually be a lot more convenient for me if my mother were cremated. For my father, I had sat shivah, said Kaddish, and observed all the restrictions of the year of aveilus for a parent, but after painful years of working to accept my mother’s coldness and finally managing to divorce myself emotionally from her, I had no interest in doing any of that for her — and if she were cremated, I would not have to. In accordance with halachah, I could have a normal year, socializing, attending simchahs, listening to music, and otherwise going about my life.

When my mother was in her early 80s, Hayley, who lives in New Hampshire, invited her for the summer. While there, my mother was in a bad car accident, and was unable to return to Arizona. By then, she was already showing signs of Alzheimer’s, and she never did regain her independence.

For the last ten years of her life, my mother had no contact with me. She set up that dynamic while still of sound mind, and her developing Alzheimer’s cemented the wall she had erected between us.

Still, when an acquaintance of Hayley’s alerted me that my mother was not being cared for properly, I contacted New Hampshire social services and arranged for my mother to be transferred to a quality nursing facility.

Last year on Friday, the 12th of Adar, at seven in the morning, I received a call from my married daughter Adina, who lives in Eretz Yisrael. For her, it was 5 p.m., and she was calling a few minutes before Shabbos to inform me that Hayley had just e-mailed her that my mother had passed away.

I have no idea why Hayley e-mailed Adina, of all people; I don’t even know how she had her e-mail address. Moreover, Adina never checks her e-mail so close to Shabbos, and she herself wasn’t sure why she had done so that Friday.

This was clearly Hashgachah, because had Hayley not e-mailed Adina, and had Adina not checked her e-mail and called me, I probably wouldn’t have found out about my mother’s passing until all that was left of her was ashes. Tempting as it was to let that happen, my sense of right and wrong prevailed, and out of loyalty to halachah and Jewish tradition, I resolved yet again to do everything in my power to stop the cremation.

I called my mother’s nursing home to find out about the funeral, but the staff there was very bureaucratic, and the only information I managed to glean from them was the name of the funeral home she had been taken to. When I called the funeral home, they, too, refused to give me any information, since Hayley had power of attorney. But they did tell me that Hayley was on her way to the funeral home to finalize the cremation.

I realized then that the only chance I had to stop the cremation was to appeal to Hayley. But she had cut off ties with me over 20 years earlier, and most likely she’d slam down the phone if I called. So I called my daughter Elisheva, who was married and living nearby, to ask her if she could speak to Hayley.

By then it was 7:30 in the morning, and Elisheva, who works as a medical researcher, is normally out of the house at that time. Having heard from Adina about my mother’s passing, however, she notified her boss that she would not be coming to work that day. When she told me that she had decided to take the day off, I urged her to go to work, but she refused. “It’s more important to make sure Bubby isn’t cremated,” she said.

Somehow, Libby and I ended up in Elisheva’s car, and I sat in the passenger seat with a pen and paper, coaching her through a 45-minute telephone conversation with Hayley.

“I’m so sorry that Bubby died,” Elisheva began. “I know that she wanted to be cremated, but as her daughter, you have the opportunity to stop that from happening. This would be Bubby’s last act on earth, and it would be terrible for her soul.”

Elisheva pursued that tack for a while, but she got nowhere.

“This is what my mother wanted,” Hayley kept repeating.

“Tell her that if Bubby has a traditional burial, she can visit her,” I scribbled on the paper.

“If Bubby is cremated, no one will be able to visit her,” Elisheva noted.

That gave Hayley pause. “I guess it would be nice if I could visit her,” she reflected.

But then her stance hardened again. She bore my mother tremendous anger and resentment, just as I did, and while the idea of being able to visit a gravesite made her waver momentarily, her negative feelings toward my mother quickly overcame any flickers of love and loyalty.

Thinking quickly, I wrote, “Invoke my grandmother.”

“Do it for Granny,” Elisheva urged. “She’d be horrified if her daughter were cremated.”

“Tell her we’ll pay for the burial,” I wrote to Elisheva. Cremation cost about $2,000, while a proper burial cost about $10,000.

“We’ll pay for everything,” Elisheva kept repeating. “And we’ll make all the arrangements.”

In the end, it was Granny, and the money, that clinched it.

“I guess it’s what Granny would want,” Hayley said hesitantly. “And you say you’ll pay for it, right?”

As it turned out, the local funeral home did not perform cremations, and had therefore shipped my mother’s body to a cremation facility in Manchester, New Hampshire — a town I had never heard of and my mother had never stepped foot into. The cremation had been scheduled for Shabbos morning, the day before Purim.

As soon as I had Hayley’s consent, I began working feverishly on the funeral arrangements, hoping to get my mother into the ground before Hayley could change her mind. Not knowing a soul in Manchester, I contacted the local Chabad rabbi, who turned out to be an angel in disguise. He arranged for my mother’s body to undergo a proper taharah, and in the meantime, I made lightning arrangements for a burial plot in Manchester.

I had planned to travel to the funeral alone, but my family wouldn’t hear of it. They insisted that I allow Elisheva to accompany me, and in the end I was glad she did. On the plane to and from the funeral, and during the funeral itself, Elisheva’s comforting presence was the ultimate validation of the choices I had made in my life. I had raised caring, devoted, spiritually sensitive daughters who were the diametric opposite of my own mother and sister, and being the recipient of their love and support as I paid my final respects to my mother was deeply cathartic.

We flew to Manchester for the funeral, which took place Tuesday morning. Although no one in the town knew my mother, the Chabad rabbi managed to round up a minyan, and I was able to say Kaddish. In the end, my mother had a proper Jewish funeral and burial, complete with me walking along the frozen ground in my socks between rows of complete strangers. These were mostly elderly Jews who’d braved the cold to help a fellow Jew, and I was deeply moved by the ahavas Yisrael that flowed from them and the rabbi.

Ironically, in a Purim-style turnabout, my mother was buried in Manchester solely because she had been brought there for cremation.

I returned to Los Angeles to sit shivah, thinking it would be purely a matter of going through the motions of aveilus. After all, I had long ago unhitched myself emotionally from my mother, after letting go of all my immature hopes and dreams that I could one day have a relationship with her. I wasn’t looking for closure; I knew there couldn’t be closure.

Much to my shock, however, the first three days of shivah were very difficult for me. I cried a lot, and when I said Kaddish and davened from the amud, I kept breaking down. My voice would turn hoarse and drop to a whisper, and then I’d find myself unable to continue at all.

I have no idea why I was so emotional. Was I subconsciously mourning my mother? Was I grieving for the relationship we never had? Was I feeling sorry for myself that I’d never experienced a mother’s love? Such love, for most children, is as much a fact of life as the daily sunrise and sunset. But for me, it had always been something foreign and unattainable.

My feelings were completely incoherent and indecipherable, so I’ll never know. I do know, however, that when the heaviness of grief lifted, after those first three days, I experienced a certain peace and closure that I never expected to feel.

During the shivah, many kind visitors came to console me, most of whom did not know my mother and were unaware of the dynamics of our relationship. After hearing about my efforts to avert my mother’s cremation, and my earlier efforts to ensure that she lived out her last years in dignity, people mistakenly assumed that I had acted out of love and devotion.

“What a wonderful son you are,” people kept commenting. “You must have loved your mother very much.”

These comments made me extremely uncomfortable. Not wanting to perpetuate a dishonest impression, I made sure to set the record straight. “It’s nice of you to say that,” I told each of these well-meaning visitors, “but I never had a relationship with my mother. I didn’t do what I did out of love — I did it because it was the right thing to do. My mother gave birth to me, and I had a basic obligation of kibbud av v’eim to make sure she lived out her years in dignity and went on her final journey as a Jew should.”

Last week, we marked my mother’s first yahrtzeit, as well as the end of my year of aveilus. What could have been the first anniversary of a tragic cremation was instead an uplifting remembrance of a Jewish soul. In hindsight, I’m glad that I was able to give her the final honor of these mourning practices; after all, she was my mother, even if she couldn’t recover from the horrors of the Holocaust to fill that role properly.

A mother, we expect, is someone who nurtures us, loves us, worries about us, and does everything she can for us. But in truth, as many rabbanim have told me over the years, my obligations toward my mother stem purely from her having given me life.

When all is said and done, I retain no animosity toward my mother. I believe that as a Holocaust survivor, she is now sitting near Hashem’s throne and enjoying the rich legacy she left behind, even if inadvertently.

She rose up from the ashes of Auschwitz to bring me into this world, and I raised her from the ashes to bring her into the next world. —

The narrator may be contacted through Lifelines.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 701)