Carol Unger, 1931 - 2003

Welcome

We decided to remember Carol by having a community service. Here’s how it works. We’re sitting on the deck looking out over the water, a view that Carol enjoyed these past 9 years. This is a great place to sit and remember her. While we are here I invite people to stand up and say something. It can really be anything, long or short, or nothing at all. Between we’ll have quiet remembrance. I’ll start by saying what I have. Then I’ll sit down. When it feels that enough time has passed and everyone has spoken Kate or I will stand up and close the ceremony.

Early Memories

I don’t have any memories of my mom from before I was born. In fact, my first memory of her is about her absence. I was sitting on my father’s foot holding on to his leg – that’s how small I was. I would sit on his foot while he sat at a chair. He would straighten his leg swinging me up into the air. I though that was great fun.

This time sitting on my father’s foot I remember asking my dad where mom was. I believe the answer was something to the effect that she was at the hospital after giving birth to Kate, though I didn’t have the context to really understand that.. This is probably the first time my mom and I were separated for that long and this is my earliest memory of my mom.

I think that Carol was somewhat unconventional. I am told, though don’t remember myself, that when she noticed that I often had more fun playing with wrapping than the presents she gave me as a present several rolls of tape to play with.

I do remember her taking us on many trips to the beach, sledding, and family camping. Our family had string of small sailboats and in these I learned how to sail. I inherited her love of water, sailing, and camping and that has shaped my life.

Her father had a saying: Don’t pay anyone to do something you can do yourself. He built his house on Grosse Ile and his children helped. From this and other projects Carol learned there were many things she could do her self and to not be afraid to try. Also that she had a moral obligation to do any task she could herself. She was particularly proud of her ability to plaster a wall, able to put on a smooth, finish layer requiring little sanding. From my mom I learned a there are many things I can do and I have. But I’m also learning, slowly, that it is OK to pay people to do some projects.

There were many ways that our family was different. At one point my parents went crazy with cars and we had 5 old cars for only 3 licensed drivers. They were parked 2 across a 1-lane driveway, often with a 19ft sailboat thrown in. Eventually we cleared out the garage and figured out how to get two cars into a one-car garage. These were mostly older Japanese cars. At one point mom bought herself a nice Toyota station wagon, which was so nice that it was not to be driven. I think she was saving it for later. This while we lived in Birmingham, an upscale suburb of Detroit, the car capitol of the country.

One year Mom’s siblings decided to give their parents a framed set of portraits of each siblings family. My parents put this off until we were near the deadline. Then they had us stand out behind our house while my friend Scott took a couple pictures. We are wearing old jeans and t-shirts, standing in front of the pealing paint on the back of our house. When we got a copy of the framed portraits we saw that every other family got dressed up and went to a professional studio. This portrait set has hung in her father’s and her siblings’ houses for over 20 years, a testament to our eccentricity.

That pealing paint was a problem for years. My parents knew it was a problem but they didn’t want to spend the money to repaint the house. Their thinking: Where does that get you? 5 years later you have to pay someone else to repaint again. Not much of a solution that? Their solution, which was ingenious and silly at the same time, was to take the current siding off, turn it over, stain it, and put it up inside out. It was all good rough cut cedar siding, far better than the new wood we bought to fill in. My father bought enough scaffolding to cover one side of the house. The first summer we did the north side as a proof of concept. The next summer the rest of the house. I was hired to do the high work.

That left the garage. The following summer Carol went back and did the garage herself, even the north side which no one ever sees. I think that kind of follow through came hard to her, but she did it anyway because she believed it was the right thing to do.

Moving to Port Townsend

In the early 90’s after her father died and she no longer felt tied to Michigan Carol started thinking about moving to Maine so she could live by the ocean. But Maine’s winters were notoriously cold and she worried about that. I remember a phone call in which I reminded her that we have an ocean out here and the winters are mild. One month later she was visiting me. She liked it here. Two months later, with a loving push from Elaine, she had packed her belongings, sold her house in Michigan, and was back to look for a place to rent. When she wanted to she could move fast.

She took off in her car and didn’t call for two weeks. We were really beginning to worry when she finally called. After looking at some disappointing houses the property manager finally showed her a house further east on this bluff. I came out to visit. None of her stuff had arrived yet so the house was empty and she was sleeping on a foam pad and had one light. All rooms had large windows looking out on this view. She had found her place. She lived there a couple years until this house came on the market then she bought it and moved.

After she had the deck built she called and said it is great: it is like another room to her house. This has been a great place for her to live.

Depression

Carol suffered from depression for all of her adult life. This made it hard for her to feel connected to people and hard for her to trust that people cared about her. It was difficult for her to make friends and she was uncomfortable in the friendships that she had.

But it did not diminish her ability to care deeply about people. She was very smart and insightful. I’ve often been startled by her insights into herself and other people. I think that this made her inability to find her way through the tangles of human interaction to true human connection all the more painful to her.

She often worried about how her depression affected Kate and me. I have no real answers to that, having never had any other mother. I know that she always cared about me. I know that she tried her best to not let her difficulties affect me. I know that she wanted the best for me. I know that she did her best.

Death

When I learned this spring that my mom would not live much longer I realized how much I did not like death. I am not resolved with death. It was going to take my mother. It will take my friends, and it will take me.

In 1987 my father was diagnosed with cancer. My parents had recently divorced. My mother took him back, re-married him, and cared for him until he died. He died at home on Christmas day, 1988, with his family.

Carol also helped care for her father, Edward Koonmen, as he was dying. For these and for other acts of love and devotion I knew that my mother richly deserved to be taken care of at her time. I also knew by example how she wanted to be cared for.

After diagnosis in mid May, she stayed in Bremerton for radiation treatment then moved to Marie and my house at the end of May. My sister had been living with us for a week already. We hired 24-hour caregivers. We enrolled with Hospice and they came frequently. It was a surprise to me that death would bring so much life into my home.

Death is often described as “hard”. It was that, but it was many other things as well. There was a softness in the house while my mom was there. I felt much sadness but I also felt much love. Through most of the experience my heart was open. It was a surprise to me that death would bring me so much love and closeness to my Mom.

I feel death as a two edged sword, which cuts me two ways, one with sadness and the other with love. I do not fully understand this, but I do know death better.

We all gave Carol the best care we could. I know she felt that and I hope that it helped heal her belief that people didn’t care about her. Carol died on June 8th at our house with her family.

I realize that she is gone in small increments. When I think to call her about something or when I see a shirt she gave me and remember that I’ll never again receive another shirt from her. And when I see a note she wrote to her self.

Eras

As time passes I go through different eras in my life. The eras are marked by many things, but primarily by who I relate to. Eras can be short as a weekend trip or last decades. Eras start when I’m willing to let something new into my life but I often do not recognize an era until it has ended. I know this about life and try to be flexible, ready to let people leave my life and new people enter my life.

With each passed era I feel sadness. Not sadness at the passing, but at its inaccessibility. There is no returning. What I had then I do not have now. Places, circumstances, and friendships are all gone or changed. Of friends I still know, we have each become different people and can never return to the friendship that we had then. Life is good now – I don’t feel regret. But life was also good then and I miss it. For me this sadness accumulates with each passing era. As the years go past there are more and more eras lost to time.

The era of my family is over. My dad died 15 years ago, my mother this spring. I will never see them or speak with them again. This is how life works. There is nothing that I can do about the passing of time and the changes that it brings. The only thing that I can do is live fully in the present time and the present era. While doing so I will remember the past eras of my life – my mother, my father, and my family as it was. And I will always look forward to the new eras to come.

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