{"id":139,"date":"2022-03-09T05:15:57","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T05:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finkfinale.com\/elka\/?page_id=139"},"modified":"2022-03-23T23:28:56","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T23:28:56","slug":"reflections-anji-mysteryman","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/finkfinale.com\/elka\/reflections-anji-mysteryman\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections – Anji – MysteryMan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mystery Man\u00a0 <\/strong>\u00a0 (.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Preface to the story of The Mystery Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over 30 years ago, when I was fairly new to Bellingham, I invited someone I had recently met to join me for some sort of activity. She said to me, “I’m not really looking for more friends.”<\/p>\n

At the time, these words really stung. Now, when I think about someone expressing that sentiment, I marvel. That person couldn’t be more different from me, and I am my mother’s daughter for sure.<\/p>\n

My mother was seeking or was open to making connections in every small interaction she had until the very last week of her life when she mostly wanted to sleep.\u00a0 She enjoyed reconnecting with the garage door guy whenever it needed fixing, monthly reunions with the people whose reserved seats were next to hers at the Sunday afternoon symphony concerts, servers at her favorite lunch spots (she brought a new baby present to a restaurant once because she had called ahead to find out if the pregnant server she’d previously gotten to know had had her baby), the people who worked at the Food Co-op and the credit union.\u00a0 She looked forward to our annual May reunion with Nicole at Cafe Culinaire to celebrate my dad’s birthday and mourned the last two years it was closed due to the pandemic.\u00a0 A vendor at the Farmers Market became a close friend. She became close with the woman who cleaned her home, with several women who helped her with gardening, with the woman who cut her hair.\u00a0 She made a friend looking for a new bathmat at Fred Meyer.\u00a0 When at St. Francis rehab, she connected with two of the young CNA’s and talked with them about their academic plans and hoped she could continue friendships with them after discharge.\u00a0 She had at least two medical emergencies at her house when she was helped by the same lovely young EMT named Gabe, and in the ER she told me she hoped that somehow she could find a way to contact him and have him over for tea when she was all better.\u00a0 Her neighbors Steven and Maureen (some years back) and Jay and Helen (in recent years) became devoted to her, helping with troubleshooting TV and remote issues, bringing her mail to her door, stopping by for a visit and tea.\u00a0 For my mom, interactions weren’t just transactions, and differences in age weren’t a consideration.\u00a0 This resulted in Elka having diverse varied friendships.\u00a0 Some were short, many became deep.<\/p>\n

In 1999, when Julia was 12, she spent time in Berlin and made two good friends who subsequently visited us some years later in Bellingham. When my mom and I made plans to go to Holland together in 2009, we both decided we wanted to push through our prejudice against Germany and travel there also (my mom had always said that she had no interest in ever going to Germany, and out of loyalty I had decided that as well).\u00a0 I contacted the mothers of Julia’s friends about the idea of visiting them in Berlin, and one of them invited us to stay in their home.\u00a0 Both women took us all over the city, having researched places we might be interested in visiting that related to Jews during World War II.\u00a0 My sense was that both women had taken on this mission as a sacred pilgrimage.\u00a0 It may have been both painful and healing for them, non-Jewish Germans with their own family histories to contend with; it was both of those for my mom and me.\u00a0 And each morning, I found my 80-year-old mother, the woman who had never wanted to set foot in Germany, sitting at a beautiful breakfast table with a non-Jewish German woman in her 50’s and having quiet, intimate conversations. They continued to have meaningful letter exchanges until she died.<\/p>\n

The connectedness, the continuity over time, the way one person who was hers became a person who was also mine or had children who became mine, and the way that my people or my children’s people became hers — this was the essence of my mom.\u00a0 My mother collected and connected people.\u00a0 She valued connecting over anything else in her life until the very end. Two days before she died, she was mostly sleeping and barely speaking.\u00a0 But she still said “hi… hi… hi” in a very soft and loving voice when we walked into the room.<\/p>\n

Related to this, my mom asked me to include a particular story in her obituary, the story of “The Mystery Man.” This is about something that happened a week before she died; it was one of the last wonderful dramas in Elka’s very full life.<\/p>\n

The story of the Mystery Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

As my mom is lying in bed, she has lots of memories and musings about various people, long ago and very recent. A few days ago, she told me that she was feeling really bad about not being in touch with someone, and she asked me to contact him. “There was a man who wrote something that I really liked in a Hospice newsletter a long time ago, and I called him up and said ‘I liked what he wrote and I want to meet you’ (that’s what I like to do!), and we had lunch together.\u00a0 It was very special. And then soon after that I broke my hip and had weeks in rehab, and when I got home I did not get back in touch with him (I think he had left me a message).\u00a0 I feel bad about not responding, and I’d like him to know that I’m dying.\u00a0 And I wish I had had a chance to meet his wife.\u00a0 I would really like to be able to tell him what happened<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

She could not remember his name, but she thought his last name ended with “nk,” so she and Paul went through her address book and looked for who it might be. Paul gave me a name:\u00a0 “Mom is 90% sure this is the right person.”\u00a0 (His last name did NOT end with “nk” though it did start with “k” and end with “n”!)<\/p>\n

With some trepidation but also committed to helping my mom with any requests, I called that number and got a voicemail.\u00a0 I left a message about what my mom had said.\u00a0 I think I did a good bit of crying in that message so I’m not sure how much he could understand.<\/p>\n

Three days went by.\u00a0 Every morning when I visited my mom, she asked me whether I had heard from him yet.\u00a0 After that amount of time had gone by with no response, I didn’t think we were going to hear from him, and I wasn’t even sure I had called the right guy.\u00a0 We started to call him The Mystery Man. It felt crazy to me in some ways that my mother wanted to reconnect with someone she barely knew and that it was on her mind so much. It struck me as one of those loose ends that maybe some dying people feel like they need to put in order before they go, and my mother is all about putting things in order:\u00a0 she is incredibly organized, still keeping track of many many people and details.\u00a0 Then last night she asked me again if I had heard from him, and again it was “No,” and she told me that I needed to call him again today.\u00a0 I thought, “Oh my God, that is so weird for me to call this man a second time!”\u00a0 I decided I would do it, but I had a lot of mixed feelings about it.<\/p>\n

Well, this morning before I called him I got this beautiful text from him:<\/p>\n

I am filled with sadness and regret.\u00a0 One lunch together … how significant could that be?\u00a0 Well, amazingly so, actually. In those two hours, I quickly realized I was being blessed to have time with an extraordinarily wise, loving, kind, and compassionate soul. I made pathetically poor use of that gift; have been aware often since of that being the case; and STILL failed to reconnect. My spiritual life was deepened by that experience, and as I try to “do better”, I will silently know that your Mom is helping me do so<\/em>\ud83d\ude4f\ud83c\udffb.<\/p>\n

In gratitude<\/em>,<\/p>\n

Then he called and we talked, and he learned that he still had time to connect with her, and then he called my mom, and tomorrow* he’s coming to visit her.<\/p>\n

So Elka’s Mystery Man is no longer a mystery.<\/p>\n

The moral of the story?\u00a0 I want to go on record as saying that I stand corrected. We joked with my mom that trying to find this man with the purpose of saying goodbye to him was like saying “Hello-Goodbye” — and what’s the point of that???\u00a0 But what she is teaching me is that saying Hello-Goodbye is still very meaningful.\u00a0 You don’t have to save your Hello’s only for people with whom you have a long time to spend. Having a connection, sharing an experience: that person now lives in me, takes root in my heart, enriches my experience of being human. That matters. How can you not really be looking for more friends?<\/p>\n

* Elka’s Mystery Man visited her twice.\u00a0 She was glowing each time she told me, “He’s going to visit today<\/em>,” and after he visited she was very content.\u00a0 He wrote us, “My lasting memory will be of sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, with a big smile on her face.”\u00a0 Elka had many<\/strong> visitors, and she appreciated them all.\u00a0 The degree of focus she had on this man reflects how she was completely alive to forming new relationships up until the day she no longer wanted visitors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Belonging<\/strong><\/p>\n

And if it\u2019s true we are alone,
\nwe are alone together,
\nthe way blades of grass
\nare alone, but exist as a field.
\nSometimes I feel it,
\nthe green fuse that ignites us,
\nthe wild thrum that unites us,
\nan inner hum that reminds us
\nof our shared humanity.
\nJust as thirty-five trillion
\nred blood cells join in one body
\nto become one blood.
\nJust as one hundred thirty-six thousand
\nnotes make up one symphony.
\nAlone as we are, our small voices
\nweave into the one big conversation.
\nOur actions are essential
\nto the one infinite story of what it is
\nto be alive. When we feel alone,
\nwe belong to the grand communion
\nof those who sometimes feel alone\u2014
\nwe are the dust, the dust that hopes,
\na rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
\nthe dust that dances in the light
\nwith all other dust, the dust
\nthat makes the world.<\/p>\n

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mystery Man\u00a0 \u00a0 (.pdf) Preface to the story of The Mystery Man Over 30 years ago, when I was fairly new to Bellingham, I invited someone I had recently met to join me for some sort of activity. She said to me, “I’m not really looking for more friends.” At the time, these words really … <\/p>\n

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