Tag Archives: in-laws

Role Model

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Family, Historical, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

May 30, 2022- It’s been little over eight years since Pops left us. My father-in-law, Norman D. Fellman, regarded his two sons-in-law as the boys he never had. I got a ton of advice, the greater part of it useful, and I can credit that advice for much of how our son has grown into manhood.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Norm was taken prisoner by the German Army, in December, 1944, in the southern sector of the Battle of the Bulge. He was held, until just before V-E Day, at Berga, a substation of Bergen-Belsen Prisoner-of-War and Concentration Camp, just southeast of Gera, Thuringia. He, and a few dozen other “undesirables” (Jews, Romani and Mexican-Americans) were assigned onerous tasks, day in and day out. His crew went to a salt mine. Norm and one of the Mexican-Americans would prank the Germans, constantly, putting glue in the salt and adding gravel underneath a three or four inch coating of salt. He never said where he got the glue; in fact, he rarely talked about his experience, until President Clinton lifted a lingering gag order that had stifled World War II veterans, since President Truman’s tenure.

There were many aspects of his personality and ways of doing things, from which I have drawn wisdom. He made me realize that I was not a substandard person, and that my rights were the same as anyone else’s, but that I had to stand up and expect them. It is because of Pops that I became quite forceful in standing up for Aram, and for summoning every bit of inner strength, to care for his daughter, my wife, in her years of decline. He knew, when I was being attacked by state bureaucrats, who told him that I was lax in her care, that this was bunk. (The upshot was that they wanted her to be placed in a state home, thus giving them access to her disability payments. This, of course, did not happen-and she lived out the rest of her days in an environment of HER choosing.)

Pops-and Mother- had the bounty of being well-tended by their youngest daughter, still one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met, until their respective deaths in May, 2014 and October, 2018. That is the true beauty of a force of example: It redounds to the benefit of the role model, in one’s final days.

NanaBub

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Posted by on in Family, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Spiritual, Striving

October 24, 2018, Prescott-

Penny’s mother passed away, last night, at the age of 92.  She was the last of her birth family and had fought bravely against cancer, among other diseases, actually beating it, whilst in her early seventies.  Other ailments took cancer’s place, and she spent her last year in a most uncharacteristically sedentary life.

I was fortunate to have seen Ruth Faust Fellman at her most active best, and to have offered her solace, twice, when she was in one of her most despondent states.  Through all of her suffering, her youngest daughter took the reins of caregiving and worked the ups and downs of dealing with a still adolescent senior care “industry”.  As with any person who steps into such a role, she deserves the finest of accolades.

My mother-in-law was the youngest of three children, and had to be far above her older siblings, just to get the recognition and respect she deserved from them.  Ruth became a registered nurse, and devoted her professional life to serve in the public schools of northern New Jersey, as a School Nurse.  She threw herself, full tilt, into everything she did.  This example led to Penny being the achiever she was, as well.

She could be challenging, mostly from a lifetime of having to stand up to powerful men.  The number of times she set me straight could fill a small volume, but she was right, more often than not.  Her voice was often the last one that my at times willful son heard, before he decided to follow directions.  When there was a cultural debate over whether she was to be addressed as “Bubba”, in the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition or as “Nana”, in the British style of her youngest daughter’s in-laws, she selected “NanaBub”.  That stuck for many years, until both of her grandchildren decided they liked just “Nana”.

I have had to project into a future without her voice, though there were several times, even recently, when I half-believed her saying that she would reach the century mark.  That, of course, was unlikely, but I learned early on, never to count either of my mother figures out of anything.

Ruth was, above all else, one to stay close to home.  She extended herself to visit east Asia, on the occasion of Aram’s birth, but after that journey to several countries, which she described as “excruciating”,  no one, including her husband, could get her to leave the contiguous United States.

Now she has passed into a realm that knows no bounds. There, she is with her husband, Norm, daughter Penny, her siblings and their parents.  I sense there will be peace among them, and that they will help us to recognize each other’s true worth.