Remember

Ann and Sam at my brother Mark’s bar mitzvah around 1955

With ALS, I saw my parents at their best and at their worst. From My Father’s ALS, here is one of the best, from December 1979, two months after the ALS diagnosis.

They did not stop quarreling after receiving the ALS diagnosis. This madcap normality continued, but their conflicts no longer seemed significant. One moment, they were bickering over a trifle; another, they were holding hands and laughing. Dad spoke warmly of protecting Mom from her fear of disease. She once had a cancer scare, a misdiagnosis, that had been traumatic. Mom spoke with unabashed admiration for Dad’s courage in facing the future, their future, with ALS.

Now at this moment with ALS, I saw something big and brave in how they turned to each other in this greatest crisis. To me, they were heroic, as I wanted.

Mom’s birthday came a week after I arrived, and Dad wanted to give her a special gift. She tearfully explained, “He wants me to have something to remember him.”

One Saturday morning I drove them to a fashionable north suburban jewelry store. With girlish excitement I never had seen, Mom tried on one piece of jewelry after another. She lingered over an elegant diamond pendant, hesitating at the cost. Dad insisted on buying it, with the pride and abandonment of a man no longer concerned about money.

Outside, sobbing, Mom vowed she always would wear it. She did.