The calendar says today is 17 years since my mother passed away.

The yahrzeit candle I lit last night confirms that. Yet, as so many of you understand, it feels surreal for it to be that many years. That means it is 17 years since I last heard her voice though I hear her voice in my mind so often.

I miss her voice, a distinctive a voice one subjected to years of childhood elocution lessons at home arranged by her father perhaps to remove any trace of Brooklynese. But despite her precise pronunciations, that characteristic generational, location snuck through and I loved it.

It sneaks through in my own voice at times taking me by surprise (don’t ask me to say “porn” or “pawn”) though I have no connection to that borough but through blood.

Several years ago, a childhood friend who hadn’t seen me for years, immediately remarked that  I sounded just like my mother Betty, whom she knew, and it made me teary. Perhaps I inherited her inflections, or more likely, the sweetness I always heard in her voice.

I hear her voice in my mind and I see her image everyday as she is with me not only in my heart but in every room of my home, not only in photos but in objects, ephemera and the minutiae, of her life. I inherited the saving gene from my mother and I am grateful. I come from a family of savers though I like to think of us as saviors of the past.

Discovering Myself

A few years ago, when I went through the arduous job of closing down my parents home, the home they moved into when I was 5 months old to my surprise tucked in closets and stacked on the ping pong table downstairs were multiple large white boxes of hundreds of drawings, paintings and doodles I had done as a child and teenager.  It was not only an homage to my prolific output of drawings but to the big department stores she once frequented, boxes from Lord and Taylor, A&S, Best & Company.

She had saved all these papers, pads, and canvas boards all these years, all out of love, appreciation, and respect, honoring me.

It brought me to tears. It still does.

So today in my house, I have many boxes labeled “BFE Ephemera” containing all her notes, her cards, scribbles she wrote on envelopes, the stuff that tells a story. Her story and I will continue to honor and give voice to who she was.

She was the woman who allowed me to be me, through her imagination, kindness, love, and empathy.

Sitting on the shelf in my office is a mounted wooden plaque that commemorates my mother Betty Joseph’s time at sleep away camp where she was  awarded All Around Camper of the Year in 1942-1944  at her beloved e Rose Lake Camp.

Her camp years were some of her fondest, and whenever she reminisced about them, she lit up with joy.

Whenever I look at the plaque now, it brings me back to her last week of her life, when she lay infirm in a hospital bed. Confused at her frail state that she couldn’t just get up and go, she looked up at me with her  big blue eyes, wide, childlike, and confused at her current state, remarked, “But I used to be Camper of the Year.”  Yes, she could no longer play tennis, or canoe, throw a mean softball, or shoot hoops, but I assured her she was eternally Camper of the Year.  That she would be All Around Camper again.

After she died, I found this plaque buried in the basement of her home, and kept it close to me to remind me of her spirit.

Today in physical therapy, as I was feeling a bit discouraged at my own progress I shared the Camper of the Year story with my physical therapist Nina who told me that in my determination, spirit  and commitment in physical therapy I was definitely “Camper of the Year.”

Tonight, I light a yartzeit candle for my mother, who in my world will always be “All Around Mother.”