A Final Lesson From My Mother

In Loving Memory of Susan Gerson

From the eulogy for my mother, delivered this past Friday, 2/14/25

My mother was a teacher. She taught formally and she taught informally. As Rick [my brother] just explained in the varied and wonderful stories he told, our mother had an insatiable curiosity. If she did not know a subject, no problem – she would learn it. She learned to teach, and she taught to learn. Fraida Yavelberg, my mother’s dear friend of 55 years sitting right there, told me a few minutes ago that she always emerged from a conversation with my mother having learned something new. Me, as well.

But there was one lesson that she taught all the time. This was the way that she conducted herself, the example she set, the life she lived. She loved textbooks, and she was the quintessential text person.

As it is impossible — for me, anyway — to encapsulate the life in full of this magnificent woman in this brief time (or, perhaps, in any amount of time), I will instead recount the final lesson that I learned from my mother.

It concerns a Biblical passage. In late Deuteronomy, Moses blesses the tribe of Reuben — the firstborn of Jacob — by saying: “May Reuben live and not die.”

This is a fascinating blessing — because it seems redundant. To “not die” is to live. Why, then, would Moses distinguish “not dying” from “living” — suggesting that they are two different things? And if they are two different things, what is each?

Let’s go back to the Spring of 2022. I was in Florida, and I went to visit my Uncle Harvey — my mother’s beloved big brother. Harvey, who at that point was an 87 year old retired surgeon, was sick himself. He would pass away several months later. Like my mother — his sister — his body had broken down, but his mind was as sharp and wise as ever. And I’ll always remember what he told me.

My mother had already been sick for many years, from a variety of things and their interactions and complications. She had many broken bones. She had neuropathy. She had lupus. And she had cancer.

She was undergoing a treatment for something — I forget what. I asked Harvey when she would get better. He shook his head and said: “People like your mother – they don’t get better. It goes from one thing to another.”

“And then,” I asked, “they die?”

He nodded. “Right.”

He thought for a moment, and then continued. “What’s amazing to me is that she is still alive. Any one of the many things she suffered from would have been fatal for most people.”

”How, then,” I asked Harvey, “is she still alive?”

He answered: “There is no medical explanation.”

Fast forward to the Fall of 2024. Erica just spoke with Nancy Simpkins — my mother’s magnificent doctor, who shepherded her and cared for her through so much. Nancy told Erica — “Any one of the large number of things that Susan has had easily could have been fatal. It is medically inexplicable that she is still alive. Do you think Mark knows that?”

Erica responded: “Of course, Harvey said the same thing two years ago.”

So now we have a challenge. How did this elderly and frail woman — who was never more than 110 pounds — beat fatal ailment after fatal ailment, year after year, confounding the doctors who knew her condition intimately?

Fast forward to early January of this year. Elijah, Daniel [my son and nephew] and I just visited my mother in New Jersey, and were having dinner. I told them that their Safta was very sick — some of it was obvious, but the truth was even worse. She had developed a mastery, over more than twenty years, in disguising, downplaying and diminishing her illnesses as not to focus people on herself.

I told them what Harvey and Nancy had said — and explained that not even Safta could keep beating everything forever. I said that they should know that I did not know how it was possible that she lived for another year.

Daniel immediately and emphatically responded: “She can’t die.”

I said that it wasn’t a choice that is open to notions of can and cannot. He said: “Do you know how much she helps me with everything — school, assignments, friends, decisions about what to apply for and how to apply! She can’t die now.”

I said that we all have to die at some point, and Safta is close and that he and Elijah need to acknowledge that.

Daniel said: “Nope. It cannot happen. She cannot die.”

I asked him when, then, she could die.

He thought for a moment. “I graduate high school in two years. There is so much I need her to see me through – and then we can talk. But she has to live for at least another two years.”

This might be familiar to many of you — but in the past day I’ve been thinking about the things I wish I had said to my mother.

The top one: I wish that I had called her the next day — or told her anytime since — that Daniel said that she simply could not die for another two years! She would have loved that.

Fast forward just a few weeks. Safta had yet another very serious medical complication. The doctors thought it was a recurrence of cancer — which definitely would have been fatal. I met her at Memorial Sloan Kettering, where an ambulance brought her from NJ.

The doctors could not do every test they wanted, as she was too weak for many of them. But they did one that would have ruled cancer in or out. Erica and I went to her hospital room for the day when the tests would come back. It turned out that there was a huge mark on her lung. It was not cancerous but whatever it was — and we’ll never know — it was fatal.

Joshua [my son] could not come because he was a little sick — and any illness could have knocked out my mother at that point. So he called her, as he did every day. This was the only time I was privy to their conversation.

The conversation started with Joshua saying, “How are you feeling?” My mother answered in a few general words. They did not include the truth — that she was struggling for every breath. That would continue until she died, yesterday — the consequence of whatever was inflaming her lung.

She instead immediately pivoted to an assignment he had at school that they had apparently discussed previously. What followed was a conversation all about the history of the period he was researching (which she had lived through). After around a half hour, she asked him if he wanted to go — and he said, no, I still have a bunch more things to go over with you. They eventually hung up, without ever returning to her condition.

While Joshua was talking with Safta, I had been texting with Nina [my niece] -- who my mother also spoke with several times a day. The conversation started the same way — with Nina asking about her health, and my mother giving a perfunctory answer. What followed a long discussion of her social and academic endeavors at the University of Miami — which concluded with no further discussion of my mother’s health.

What was going on? Joshua, Nina and Daniel are the kindest and most thoughtful people in the world, and they were as close to Safta as any people can be to each other. Yet, they were barely talking about her condition! This got me thinking of my recent conversations with her. They often involved me asking about this doctor, that diagnosis or some treatment.

The conversations that I had witnessed Daniel, Joshua and Nina having with her were entirely different. They revolved almost entirely around her guiding them through every aspect of their lives.

Then I figured it out. I was talking with her about not dying. They were talking with her about living. They were living Moses’s blessing to Reuben — “May Reuben live and not die.” And they — with her, and because of the relationships that she and her grandchildren established together — taught me what it means to live: through the unique kind of love that is produced by the combination of affection, purpose and need.

Safta’s final lesson to me, though, is not complete. The verse says: “May Reuben live and not die.” We can now also understand Moses’ use of the word “and” — the connection between not dying and living. The way to not die is to live. By allowing my mother to live so meaningfully, her grandchildren enabled her to not die for so many years that the best doctors could not explain it.

There is a debate of sorts in the Talmud about whether it is better to teach Torah to or learn Torah from one’s grandchildren. I would like to settle the debate by stating that it is best to learn Torah by observing one’s children with one’s grandchildren, together.

With that, I can say thank you to my children — and Nina, Maia and Daniel, you know you are my children just as you are your parents’ children — for giving my mother many more years than she otherwise would have had, and for making those years so full of joy, meaning and purpose despite her insurmountable physical challenges.

And I can say goodbye to my mother and my teacher — with love and gratitude for all of your lessons, especially this final one.

It is customary to give tzedakah [charity] in honor of our departed loved ones. My mother cared deeply about my and Erica’s work with United Hatzalah and African Mission Health Care. Please consider making a charitable donation in her merit.