In Memory of Sylvia Gerson

My mother; My heroine

Sylvia's family suffered during the depression like the majority of Americans. Her mother and father were bound and determined to put her through college though, and they did even though her brother and sister were unable to attend because of money shortages. She was an outstanding student already. Sylvia graduated second in her high school group, and was an avid student of the piano, dance and had a great writing ability.  

  Since she was the only one in her family by nineteen hundred and thirty-six to earn a Bachelors of Science in Education, she was expected to use that career choice to secure a decent job. Sylvia was Jewish and the school district in the city she was born, didn't hire Jewish teachers. She learned how to use her government representatives to help her obtain a job in her field. 

  At that time, teachers weren't allowed to marry either. She waited five years, engaged to the man of her dreams whom she met at the University, before they married. Neither one had much money so they waited to start a family.

  Five more years passed and she gave birth to her first child, making sure that her husband and herself were financially secure. Then, the other two children came in progressions of five years apiece to make sure her family wasn't over- burdened financially. She and her husband became experts economically.

  When her husband was thirty-seven, he was diagnosed with diabetes and Sylvia had to monitor him constantly as he would fall into comas occasionally from low blood sugar.  He developed a heart disease along with the other illness and was put on Nitroglycerin.  Sylvia always took some in her purse and made sure her husband had his insulin with him and hard candy incase of a blood sugar imbalance.  She learned quickly to become a nurse for her family. 

  As time went on, she quit teaching school to pursue a dream of hers of opening a ceramic store, as that was her hobby for years. She was quite successful with this and involved many of her friends who used clay and paint to relieve stress. 

 As time passed, she found that she needed to be home more to take care of her daughter, her youngest child who had Attention Span Deficit Disorder but diagnoses for that problem hadn't been discovered yet.   She also had to help her middle son with his reading because he had a reading disability and Sylvia had to read to him all his lessons. She found that it was to her family's benefit if she returned to teaching school.

 After her retirement in nineteen hundred and sixty-four, she opened a small family restaurant catering to teenagers, and her husband and her daughter worked there until her daughter became pregnant out of wedlock. She was sent out of town to evade discrimination from the townspeople who frequented the restaurant. 

  Sylvia visited her daughter regularly and brought her fried chicken, Boston cream pies, and many foods that were her daughter's favorites but wasn't allowed in the home where she had become incarcerated until she gave childbirth. She watched her daughter's pregnancy progress.  She didn't want to but did agreed with her husband that the child needed to be adopted into another family. Her husband wanted to keep their daughter safe from a life of stress, and having to work and take care of a child as a teenage single parent.

  During this time period, Sylvia found herself having to take care of her mother, who was dying of lung cancer, by helping her with cooking and cleaning. She ran errands and was her mother's secretary while she worked and raised her three children. 

 As time progressively passed, she found out that her oldest son was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. She worked constantly writing letters and making enquiries to his disease to find how she could have him treated. He was hospitalized for many years before she took it upon herself to take care of him, believing that she could help him more by providing a loving home.

 During those years, her husband had several strokes. She was forced to retire from teaching to help her husband while she still took care of her son, worked for her mother and now her sister who was diagnosed with cancer. In nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, her husband died of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving her to a life of care provider for the rest of her family.

  After Sylvia's mother died, and her sister died, she still took care of her mentally ill son. She was able to maintain her health and find small jobs that she could do at home to make money.  Her talent for art, especially needlework and sewing, made her a living while she cared for her son. Then she found out that her daughter had married an abusive man who had encouraged her daughter to take and become addicted to hard drugs.  Her daughter had ended up shooting the man, putting him into the hospital, but not killing him. Charges weren't filed and her daughter was able to go free.

  While her daughter moved to another city to wait until her divorce was final and escape the abuse, Sylvia took on the responsibility of helping finance her daughter and raising her grandson who had Muscular Dystrophy. Now, she took care of her home single-handedly, her ill son and her grandson. Her grandson also needed help getting over post- traumatic- stress- disorder (PTSD) from the life he had been living with his mother and stepfather. He had witnessed the shooting and was quite afraid and depressed.

  Sylvia didn't smoke but tolerated her son's smoking even though it had negative effects on her health. The doctors diagnosed her with Pleurisy and Breast cancer within the same year.  She ignored the abuse she received from her son. She cancelled it out as the illness, and not how he would act if he were mentally sound.  She forgave her daughter for the drug abuse and the attempted murder. She loved all her children and grandchildren equally and unconditionally.

  When her daughter decided to move seventeen hundred miles away with another man, Sylvia started traveling with her son, believing that it would help him emotionally. She took him to places all over the United States to help him emotionally as well as herself.  When she returned home, she found that her daughter had to have major surgery and Sylvia needed to be with her daughter and her son was incapable of staying alone. She had him admitted to a nursing facility of his choice so he would have adequate care while she raced to her daughter's side.  She knew she had cancer but kept it to herself.

  He daughter came back home within the year, with only her son and not a husband. She was able to buy a house near her mother and saw that it was her turn to be the provider. She met and married one year later and this husband even helped with Sylvia's care as the cancer began a slow deterioration on her health. Sylvia's daughter found a health care facility for her mother and took up the job of helping monitor her brother's living conditions. She had to move him to a halfway house for the mentally ill. The cancer took hold of Sylvia and she ended up in hospital care until she died in 1993.

  Her paintings and needlework adorn her house still, along with the furniture that Sylvia and her husband, Morris used the entire thirty-two years they were married and her daughter lives there, still married to the same man she was married to when Sylvia lived. The daughter keeps the house repaired and clean, planting Sylvia's entire favorite flowers in every corner of the yard and manages a vegetable garden with Sylvia's favorite foods.  

 The old fig tree that her mother planted years ago has grown quite mature and provides the family with fig preserves all year. Sylvia's body may not be present in this home but her spirit lives eternally in the hearts and minds of her remaining two children and two grandchildren. 

  Her oldest son died in two thousand and three from drug induced Parkinson's disease. Her daughter took care of all the funeral arrangements and has lived to tell Sylvia's story.

I miss you, Mom.

Reviews

[Deborah Leah Krempa]

Such a beautifully written story, a genuinely wonderful tribute to your mom. Thank you for sharing. Debileah