A Post from Rachel & Carla

Hello, this post is from Rachel & Carla, Ceil’s daughters. We’re sorry to have to tell the readers of this blog that our mom passed away at the end of January 3rd.

As she mentioned in her last post, Ceil was able to spend the holiday season with family and friends, and although her energy and appetite were waning, she thoroughly enjoyed visiting and being visited by loved ones. On New Year’s Eve we noticed that her energy and mobility were severely decreased. On New Year’s day she received visits and phone calls from friends and family, but didn’t have the energy to leave her bed. It became apparent that she was very dehydrated. We kept her as hydrated as possible, and on Friday we brought her in to see her doctors, who recommended that she be admitted to the hospital for more comprehensive rehydration and observation.

Our hope and expectation was that they would rehydrate her, perhaps give her a blood transfusion, and she would regain her energy and vitality and then return home to resume her fight against the disease. But on Saturday, despite excellent and thorough treatment, it was clear that something was not right. The doctors at NYU Hospital quickly took her to the ICU and determined that the melanoma had aggressively spread. It was very sudden and unexpected, and her liver had failed. The doctors were very patient and helpful, but they made it clear that the melanoma had won.

We had seen what the disease was doing to her, especially in the past couple months, but I think we all really believed, as many of you did, that she could beat this thing through sheer force of will. It was an extremely difficult day, but she was comfortable and surrounded by loved ones.

We know that this blog was very important to her, as a way to make sense of her struggle against this illness, as a way for her to communicate with people and as a way for her to practice her love of writing. We have attempted to contact people we know, but she also touched many people through this blog that we would not know how to reach otherwise.

We will be holding a visitation/memorial service for Ceil on Thursday, January 8th from 3-7pm at the Hawthorne Funeral Home. We welcome all of her friends to join us. See the site for directions and details.

In lieu of sending flowers, please consider making a small donation to the NYU Cancer Center in Ceil's name. They were so incredibly wonderful and supportive of our mom, throughout the time she was fighting this disease, and they continue to do very important research. (NYU Melanoma Research Fund, NYU Clinical Cancer Center, 9th Floor, 160 East 34th Street, NY, NY 10016. Attention: Dr. Pavlick, In memory of Celia Silver Rosenfeld)

Please feel free to leave comments here for Ceil, her friends and her family. We would like to print these comments out and have them available at her memorial service. Let us know if you would prefer not to have your comments included in this event. If you would rather send a private message to the family, or have questions about her or this blog, we will continue to receive email at Ceil’s email address (ceil[at]ceilsilver[dot]com) or you can use Rachel’s email address (mirka23[at]gmail[dot]com).

Thank you all, our mom was very special to us, and I know she was very special to so many people.

I miss my mother

There isn’t a day goes by I don’t wish to pick up the phone and dial my mother at the same number we had when we first moved to Long Island in the mid-50’s. What a long line of Bell cable connected that number back to the phone that witnessed endless hours of conversation with and about boys through my high school years! But that’s a different story… losing touch with personal history. In the moment, I miss my mother, who died suddenly at eighty, a year and a half ago.

Heaven knows, my relationship with my mother wasn’t always smooth. And when I say I miss her, I’m not sure if it’s the woman she was at the end of her life, the young woman who cried and fretted and called the police when I arrived home late from kindergarten, or some version selected from millions of other moments before, between, and after. Truth is, there were many times during my life when I longed for a mother who lived only in my heart, and missed her even while facing her.

But again, that’s a different story.

What I’m struck with right now is the unfairness of death. Not death itself, of course. Death is truly the fairest thing about life. Everyone dies, no matter the circumstances of their lives, no matter how much or how little they contribute, no matter how happy or miserable they feel from day to day. Everyone dies. That’s fair.

Earlier this summer, a man was walking through the small suburban town where I live. At the same time, an elderly woman drove down the hill toward the town’s main intersection. She had a seizure right at that moment, lost control of her car, and proceeded to run into and kill the man walking on the sidewalk.

What is unfair about death is the timing and the trappings: Young people robbed of a future; accidents that randomly pick off unsuspecting, unprepared victims; people of any age ravaged by debilitating diseases; acts of cruelty and violence meted out by cowardly bullies. To be truly fair, death should allow everyone the chance to expire of natural causes at the point where they can no longer care for themselves or feel connected to life.

What is further unfair is how death affects those left behind. Regardless of the circumstances that take the one who dies, the rest of us are never ready to lose a loved one. It’s difficult, if possible at all, to integrate the fact that we’ll never see someone again, never get their opinion or advice, never do lunch, have an opportunity to tie up loose ends together, or simply sit in their presence and feel their warmth. We counted on consistency, but now we reach out to touch and get no response. How very unfair.

Needless to say, I’ve thought about this a lot this summer….