EULOGY FOR MY MOTHER - ADELE MILDRED WALLACH ERON
12/28/1919-2/13/2000
Lewis John Eron
The last of the 613 mitzvot, Divine Commandments, according to the great Medieval Jewish Philosopher, Moses Maimonides, is to write a Sefer Torah, a Torah Scroll. The literal and common understanding of this mitzvah, commandment, is that at least once in the life each and every Jew, he or she should participate in the writing of a new Torah Scroll and, thus, ensure that there will be new scrolls for the generations to come.
According to the Jewish tradition, the Torah is the earthly reflection of the heavenly voice that sounded first when the Jews stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and continues to reverberate over time and space through the generations of the Jewish people. The Torah is the living word of the living God and by writing a new scroll, we each do our part to guarantee that the word will continue to resonate in the years to come.
But the living word of God resides not in the Torah scroll but in the hearts and hands of those who take the static written record of God’s word and makes it live in their own lives. By what we say, and what we do, by what we dream and by what we create, we fulfill the 613th commandment by composing our own very personal, very precious Torah. By making God’s word their own, by struggling to incorporate the high values and deep teachings of our tradition into our lives and the lives of those we touch in love, we bind our personal Torah to the endless Torah and become part of God’s eternal word.
We are here today to celebrate my mother’s life, to study her Torah, and begin telling her story, a process that starts today but continues throughout the weeks, months, and years ahead. Although we are saddened by her long struggle and grieve deeply her passing, we know that her Death is neither an ending or a beginning of her life or her Torah but a passage through which her wisdom, her strength, her creativity, her love must go to enter the deepest recesses of our hearts and souls. It is now with us and in us and it is up to us to make it live.
Just as the study of Torah written on the parchment scroll never ends — we go from book to book and as soon as we come to the end of Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth and last book of the Torah, we begin immediately re-reading Sefer Beresheet, the Book of Genesis, Torah’s first book — the study of loved ones’ Torah written by them on our hearts continues from generation to generation. It is a precious legacy.
But when we come to the end of a Torah book, we pause for a moment and recite a three word Hebrew prayer, Chazachh! Chazach! Ve-Nitchazeich! Let us be strengthened by what we have learned! Be strong! Be strong!
These are the words we should hear today because my mother above all was strong and she would want us to be strong — not uncaring, she cared deeply about the people she loved and the values she believed in — not unfeeling, she valued love and compassion — but to be more than strong enough to live life and love life and cherish all its blessings even though she knew that life was a challenge and a struggle and sometimes unfair.
My mother was a strong, tough woman and her strength and toughness served her in good stead. As a young girl, it enabled her to thrive despite the hardships of the Depression and family tragedy. When her father took ill during the years of the Great Depression, she drove him around so that he could make his sales and deliveries. Luckily, she was a tall young woman and could look over the high dashboard and drive him all around Waterbury, Connecticut. Even though my grandfather died while my mom was still a teenager, she managed to complete High School and College.
Her strength enabled her to cope with the loss of her only sister, my Aunt Doris, to find time to be with her even while she cared for her young family. Her strength enabled her to care for my father throughout his long illness and to create for herself as wonderful, independent life after his death eighteen years ago.
Her strength enabled her to find ways to expresses her boundless creativity as an artist, knitter, gardener, and quilt-maker while she was simultaneously being a full-time mom raising a family and helping out in my father’s business.
And her strength enabled her to raise the four of us as if we were four only children, teaching us to be independent, curious, searching, and creative. She taught us how to read, write, and travel the world and when we grew up and went on our own journeys she would somehow find a way of catching up with us in Europe, Israel and Japan and I believe that if circumstances were different she would have figured out a way to visit her grand-daughter Jamie who is serving with the Peace Corps in Haiti right now
I
n her last years, my mother’s strength kept her going through a dreadful set of medical set-backs — broken bones, strokes, and an untreatable neurological deterioration — that slowly robbed her of her mobility while preserving her mind and forced her to spend her last months in Donroven, a nursing home, a place where she never wanted to be. Yet, her spark enabled her to create a special relationship with the staff at Donroven for which we are thankful.
My mother was strong — strong in her beliefs, strong in her opinions, and strong in her love. Now it's not always easy living with a strong person. My mom could be headstrong and stubborn. If she formed an opinion about someone or something, it took a great effort to change her mind. But her hard-headedness was tempered by a wonderful sense of playfulness and humor and she knew her foibles and could laugh at herself and celebrate the incongruities of life.
And she did everything well — cook, bake, knit, sew, discuss literature, talk about politics, do figures, draw, conjugate French verbs, train dogs, raise roses, and so on and so forth. Well almost everything, she could not sing, but she still managed to raise a professional musician, my sister Carol, and two talented amateur musicians, Jonathan and Deborah, and myself, who like my mom, appreciates but does not produce music.
My mother had a wonderful relationship with all of us and as we got married and began to build families, she welcomed David, and Jamie, Joshua and Ira, Yuichiro and Lila, Gail and Abby, and Andrew and Carolyn into her heart and her home. In her last years, however, a special bond was forged between mom and my sister Deborah who became her primary caregiver and connection to life. I know that all of us will always be grateful to Deborah and her family, Yuichiro and Lila, for all their efforts to keep mom as independent and happy during this difficult time in her life.
My mother was not only strong but she was blessed and, we, her children, made sure that she would never forget it. Every Friday night at the Shabbat Dinner Table when my father would recite in the passage from the Book of Proverbs known as the “Woman of Valor” the words, “And her children will rise up and call her blessed”, we would dutifully stand up and yell, “Hiya, Blessed!”
But if my mother was blessed, we were truly blessed in having her in our lives. I know that we will all miss the strong, stubborn, creative, loving, talented woman, Adele Mildred Wallach Eron, the woman that all of you called your friend and we called, Mommy and Grandma. There is so much more to say but now let us be strong and gather even more strength from the special Torah, the special heritage she left us as we continue to tell her story and learn to live from her life.