Sylvia Steeper Berg with two of her beloved granddaughters, Natalie and Mandi, circa 1984.

I am fifty-eight.  In the past year I have lost two people close to me;  my father and my mother-in-law, Sylvia.  Their deaths were both expected.  They were the same age.  But the endings were very, very different.  One was terrible, the other was a joyous celebration of a life well lived. This is about Sylvia.

Sylvia was a friend.  She and I got along fabulously. We both loved to talk and could talk for hours without stopping, to her son's enormous dismay.  We both loved people.  We both loved art and literature.  We could talk about children and grandchildren and parenting until the leaves fell off the tress.  We both loved dancing, and our friendships with women.  We both loved her son.

 When that son, Gregg, and I divorced, she told him that she would always be my friend. I stood by her for thirty years, through her divorce, her move to Iowa, and a difficult break-up with a friend here.  She was still my friend, but I found it difficult to see her.  I had the feeling that the new wife had taken my place.  She was a nurse, and in those last months, a nurse was just what she wanted.  Gregg didn’t tell us when  went to the hospital for falling and hitting her head, or when she had an infection. We might hear about it later, but always with the admonishment “not to come, because she wouldn’t be up to seeing anyone.”  She hated  for anyone to see her without her makeup, let alone when she was sick, even though her three granddaughters were family, and I was for many years. In what would be her last weeks, I did go to see her two times, for visits that she seemed happy about, but she still cut short. 

I felt like when we divorced, Sylvia was had a part in that.  Maybe it was because her son followed in her footsteps, waiting until the children left home to leave an unloved spouse. Maybe it was my own insecurity that had blossomed from a long dormancy with his remarriage to the "girl of his mother’s dreams." The new wife was so many things that I was not.  Organized. A compulsive housekeeper.  A predictable companion who always does exactly what she says she will do and who, I assume, doesn’t get distracted and forget what she went out for. A woman not unlike Sylvia, except that NW didn't talk as much.

Sylvia was truly a loving and positive woman.  She was organized and neat.   I tried for years  to be more like her, and failed utterly, although I did finally get so I could put aside my mother’s German stoicism, and give a genuine hug.  

Sylvia liked to be in control, even to her death.  She had, years ago, planned everything out and paid for everything.  She picked out the picture she wanted in the obituary, the minister to conduct the service, the one piece of music, and of course the site for the ashes to be interred.  Her daughter and son followed her wishes to the point that they themselves seemed to put nothing into the service except lots of expensive flowers and their presence.  None of her daughter’s step children came to the service, even though Sylvia had treated them as full grandchildren as Wendy wanted.  None of Gregg’s step-children or step-family came to the service.  Gregg did not seem to want to include our children as part of the family, until I insisted.  When I decided to also come as part of Sylvia’s family, I was grateful he and his new wife seemed comparatively comfortable with it.  

Sylvia had a horrible death.  That’s what Gregg said.  She had been in nearly bedridden, and in cardiac failure for months,  On the last day, Gregg called his sister to come from St. Louis, but deliberately did not call his children to come.  Later they seemed hurt, but tried to understand.  They wanted to be with their grandmother.  He decided to save them from the horror of death.  In fact, Gregg and his wife were with her, but not his sister.  She and her husband went to bed early.  I know she hated seeing her mother die.  Sylvia struggled to breathe. until she couldn’t any longer and passed away in the early hours of March 25th, the day after our wedding anniversary.  

I wonder what it was like, being there.  When his father was in the hospital, I had been with him all day, talking to him and silently praying the Lords Prayer over and over.  When he died, we were on the other side of the curtain sitting on the couch talking with each other.  Gregg noticed his loud wheezing breathing had stopped.  We went to the bedside, and Gregg, then the nurse took his pulse.  It was slowing and erratic.   Gregg told the nurse that he was gone.  The nurse argued that there was still a pulse.  He said that it doesn’t stop all at once.  So that was that.  We stood for a minute, then called the on-call doctor to pronounce him because Gregg didn’t want to be on the Death Certificate as the doc to make the call.  

I was thankful for the honor of being with him during his last hours.  After reading Ram Das on how he had eased the transition for so many people, I realized how important the people around the dying person are.  Being there and trying to do what the loved one wants, as you are able makes a huge difference. There are as many ways of dying as there are of living, and knowing what is normal helps.   I don’t know how much I helped him, because it was Gregg he wanted, but I hope it did.  It helped me.

I wonder if they held her in their arms, giving her the loving hugs she was so free with in her life.  I wonder if they breathed with her in her last breathes, praying to whatever deity they honor, touching her as her spirit left the body it had used up.  I wonder if they were off to the side, on the other side of the curtain, talking with each other when she choked out her last breathe.  I wonder if they felt the honor of escorting a loved one to the other world.   Or was it a duty, an obligation to be filled?  I wish I could have been there, but her son who was always her favorite, in whom the sun rose and set, was there.  He was the important one to her.

The funeral was short and common.  The minister, who at least knew Sylvia, said a few words about her work in the church, which none of her family knew about, and a lot of words about “Jesus saves,” which none of her family believes.  The funeral ended without anyone in the family saying anything about how they felt about this woman who had been outgoing, vivacious, unstoppable, loving, intelligent, and caring.  She made a difference in thousands of lives in her more than fifty years as a kindergarten teacher in the Shawnee Mission district in Kansas City.  She taught tolerance  about different countries and ways of life, and taught compassion by having pets in her classroom.  She controlled her kindergartners without ever raising her voice.  She adjusted for all levels of hyperactivity, and was able to excite students about learning, giving them a positive start in school.  She accepted all people, believing ardently in alleviating racism, accepting gays, and in feminism.  She was a loving mother and counselor to many many people, young and old.  She volunteered at Tanager Place, an inpatient facility for troubled youth, in her later years, and was able to love and accept kids who used every kind of foul language, and had experienced all kinds of abuse.  She was amazing.  

I so wish we had a chance to say some of those things about her to everyone instead of being rushed out of the chapel.   Her body was taken without ceremony and burned at the crematorium, and put into a small box in a wall by cemetery workers.  When I asked Gregg about it, he said that he didn’t know where it was, and that was HIS family’s way.  

I know “she” wasn’t there.  But funerals and interments are for the living.  To give us a chance to celebrate her life, and to mourn her death.  When we cut the mourning short, what does that mean?  That we are denying that the death ever occurred?  That we really don’t want to face it?  Or that we don’t want to focus on it?  

They were going to go out to dinner after the funeral.  Go out to dinner?  When some family had driven fifteen hundred miles to be there?  When Gregg’s house was newly redecorated and spotless as usual?  Go out to dinner!  I called him at eight on the morning of the funeral and said, “You HAVE to provide a place for people to relax and talk after the funeral.  This may be the last time many of them see each other, and see Sylvia’s ailing sister.  Even if you don’t have food, or the traditional shared meal, it is rude not to invite everyone.“ 

They did it; put together a lovely event.  Maybe they would have without my suggestion.  The whole family spent several hours at Gregg’s beautiful house in the woods after the funeral, drinking wine and beer and pop, and eating spiral cut ham sandwiches.  How wonderful to be together.  It was right.  So I guess one thing I did learn from Sylvia was to not be afraid to say what I thought was right.  She would have told Gregg the same thing, I think.  

In the end, everything is as it should be, and we all mourn in our own ways. His family was loving, but very private with emotions.  My dad's funeral, on the other hand, was a huge joyous celebration whose story is for another day.

Love to you, Sylvia, from me.