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THE AGONY OVER LOSING MY MUM
URI GELLER reflects on the sudden death of the woman who was
with him every step of the way...
I KNEW as I placed my hand to her door that my mother had
passed and that when I stepped into her room I would find,
not her, but only her body.
It was not the silence that told me - it was the emptiness.
My house was suddenly empty of the woman who had shared every
step of my adventures, from the moment I was born, throughout
my childhood and adolescence, in my heart as my career exploded,
and then in my home as my family grew.
Thank God, her passing was swift. Though she died alone,
probably after waking in the middle of the night, she knew
that Hanna and I were close by, just up the stairs.
I had been sitting with her the previous evening, encouraging
her to lie down and shut her eyes because she had become uneasy
about going to sleep in recent weeks.
My mother was in her 92nd year, and she packed three or four
lifetimes into that century.
My
beloved mother (below) Margaret Gero Geller Freud is in Heaven
now, she crossed over on the 24th of July 2005 she was 92
years old, God bless her, we will love her forever.
Her capacity for work was inspirational: Whenever I've felt
tired, whenever I've wanted to skip a show or dodge a signing
or miss a deadline, I have thought of my mother and how she
would come home from her day job as a waitress, pick up a
needle and slave into the night as a seamstress.
I've been praying for my father's memory, too, these past
days, and I believe that he has been reunited with my mother
now, but I cannot gloss over the fact that it was her earnings,
not his, that put food on my plate when I was growing up.
My mother fought for me when we lived in Israel, a country
that was as young as I was.
She fought for me even before I was born, for my father wanted
her to have me aborted.
And I vowed, as soon as I was old enough to see what she
was doing for me, that one day I would look after her, just
as devotedly.
By 1969, I was able to start keeping that vow -though the
roll of cash in my pocket was my pay as a male model, not
a paranormalist.
My mother thought it was fantastic to see her son's picture
in magazines, and she didn't seem to mind that most of the
shots featured me in nothing more than underwear.
In 1972, as I headed out to the States, I was able to purchase
an apartment for her, but the toughest thing about my rocket
trip to fame was knowing that Muti, my name for my mother,
was back in Israel.
By 1975 I could stand it no longer. I picked up the phone
and told her: "You have to live with us in New York."
From then on, whether we were in Connecticut, in a simple
house at the foot of Mt Fuji in Japan, in a luxurious London
flat or in the Thameside home that we bought 20 years ago,
Muti has always been with us.
She's seen every day of her grandchildren's lives, from the
moment they were born, and that's a blessing that any doting
grandparent must treasure above all others.
She was born in Berlin before the outbreak of World War One,
the middle girl of three sisters named Freud. Sigmund the
infamous psychiatrist was a relative.
When Margaret was one year old, her parents took her, Violet
and Rose to Budapest, Hungary, where the family had a furniture
and kitchenware business.
My parents met in Hungary and spent their courtship walking
beside Lake Balaton, outside the city, or rowing on it.
My mother liked to tell how her boat capsized one afternoon
and she was trapped beneath the hull - my father dived to
save her, pulling her leg free and dragging her to the surface.
Whatever else she said about him, and she said a lot, Muti
always knew that the man she married had the courage of a
lion.
Decades later, when my father remarried, Muti befriended
his new wife, a woman named Eva.
They were kindred souls, and right up to her death Muti sent
regular packages to Eva in Budapest. If I ever forgot to send
Eva's jam and aspirins, I'd earn myself a real ticking-off.
It's so strange to think that she'll never send another pot
of strawberry preserve or blackcurrant jelly to Eva, or open
the parcel that came by return post, a bundle of paperback
romances.
It's these details that remind us when someone is gone. The
big fact of death is too huge to understand, so we focus on
the minutiae.
My mother did not fear death. I told her I knew beyond doubt
that our spirits go on, and she was always content to trust
what I told her.
I felt sometimes that we were a pair of trapeze artists in
a circus act, our movements synchronised so that we swung
in perfect harmony even when we were furthest apart, always
ready to leap and catch and hold each other safely.
My mother is in God's hands now. But I sense the lack of
her hands on my wrists, and it's a frightening feeling
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
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