Half Century In Memoriam: Rosetta Gochis, My Mother

I had planned to be more attentive to the anniversary of my mother's death on November 25, 1974, fifty full years since the day at Bronx Lebanon Hospital I was quickly ushered out of her room to the realization that she had just passed. But this past week, I managed to get the first real flu I have had in many a year, and so an entire week got away from me while I tried to escape from the misery of stuffed head, stuffed nose, nausea, and wild nighttime coughing instead of reflection and prayer over the enigma that she was, and will always be to me.

I write with a sadness compounded by the fact that one of my few friends who knew my mother well, who in many ways was more like the daughter my mother would have liked to have had, with whom I would have loved to share this day of remembrance, has unfriended and blocked me (along with at least one other friend) because of my expression of my political beliefs. So, in a way, I write of two variations of an experience of death. Much of life is indeed defined by loss and how we handle it. 

I mention my friend, (and she remains my friend, whatever she considers me to be after all these years, since we were about 12), because the last picture I have of my mother, fuzzy and imperfect, 

was taken at the wedding of my friend's sister. It was October, 1974. For most of the years I experienced my mother, she was not particularly interested in gatherings outside her immediate family. She had a distinctly anti-social streak, as far as I could ascertain, along with huge expectations of the world and those in her immediate orbit, in which mostly, it seemed, we all failed. She had dreams that did not include living in a one bedroom apartment in the Mt. Eden Section of the Bronx, and even an improved location near Riverdale. She had married at 18, for reasons that were not clear to any of us, including my father, who often said, after she died, that he had committed a sin in marrying her. She wanted him to provide a Manhattan life on a Bronx salary. He did very well by her and by me, but he never did get her the place with a doorman. My mother was a dreamer, so much so, that I believe she invented a whole other life--though even that is not entirely certain, that it was an invention--full of people with only first names, allegedly in the modelling industry, name Robert (pronounced "Robaire"), Lisa (pronounced "Leeza"), and Evelyn (pronounced "EVE-lyn") with whom she worked as a hand model in some undisclosed location in Manhattan. It was my therapist, of many years ago, who reminded me that I once described her as a "cold volcano" during one of our sessions. The family refrain regarding my mother was "That's just Rosetta". My father and I walked on eggshells. And then she got sick. Very sick, in June 1973. She had not been to any doctor since I was born nearly 20 years before. But it was hard even for her to ignore a rock hard place in torso, and the fact that she was turning yellow from the jaundice that meant it had spread. Metastatic. The first time I think I ever heard the word. Metastatic breast cancer. She was terminal. My father and I never agreed on what were our next instructions, but I know for a fact that for the remaining 14 months of her life, a gift, given the prognosis, no one ever mentioned the word "cancer" to her or to anyone regarding her. The view of doctors "in those days" was that the patient would not fight hard for survival if she knew for certain it was cancer. Of course, as the several articles I found after her death about miracle cures for cancer demonstrated, she knew. 

But something in her changed. The parapets, the walls, the moat that had surrounded her and separated us from her, fell or disappeared. Although religion did not feature in the change (looking back I wish it had, but then even I wasn't practicing anything, well into what would become an over a decade lapse), she did seem to appreciate life in general and her life in a way I had never seen. My father went into overprotection mode. Angry overprotection mode. He and I clashed. My mother had become. . . .well, mother-like, in the emotional sense. But we really couldn't talk about it. She visited relatives that she had ignored for years. She met with my aunt downtown at Schrafts. Despite the treatments and the side effects, which for her in the early days of chemotherapy, were fairly minimal (as such things can be reckoned in a horrible situation), she seemed, well, happy. The picture above was an example of the changed woman--she was enjoying herself, sick as she was, she was enjoying herself. I never sensed before that she enjoyed herself much. It was nice to see. But not to be commented upon, certainly not to her. 

I remember picking out that wig with her, somewhere on Fordham Road. It really did seem like her own hair--although it was the first time in years, in all my knowing her, that I had seen her in other than other than a tight, torturous bun. As a young woman, there were many shots of her with long flowing brown black hair. But not in my childhood or teen years. And then once she got sick, she did indeed, "let her hair down". 

That friend who has blocked me came over to the house and the two of them bonded over fun furs, these little fake fur jackets my mother had bought, the two of them going through the closet and trying them on. My mother was a giddy teenager with my friend. By this time, my relationship with her had become complicated. I couldn't relax with her the way I wanted. But I was glad to see her free in a way that maybe she had never known. And so, even if my friend never unblocks me, as it were, I won't forget that little moment of joy that she gave to my mother, which I couldn't. 

A month later, my mother calmly told my father she needed to go to the hospital. She applied her makeup and they went to the hospital. I left from the college radio station, WFUV, to take the bus to meet them at the hospital. Assigned to her room she got into bed and fell into a coma on November 15, 1974, never recovering consciousness, and dying on Monday, the 25th. Thanksgiving was Thursday, November 28 and it was necessary to hasten the wake and funeral. The wake was on Tuesday. Burial was on Wednesday. 

Today is Monday, the 25th.  Thanksgiving will be the 28th as it was all those years ago. I haven't had the heart for Thanksgiving, the holiday, since then. Maybe, particularly this year, that is true, though happily I will spend it with friends. 

I arranged for a perpetual enrollment (via the Seraphic Mass Association) for my mother, who I hope, I believe, has finally found the happiness life did not afford her in the hands of a loving God. 

Rest in Peace, innocent, sad irish girl, dead at 48.