Theresa Rose Danko: A Mother's Love (and Death)

Last year around this time, I received word that my mother had passed away. This information came via the divorce courts that handle my father's alimony payments so the details were scant. I did a little digging and requested information through New York State Vital Records. When I got home from work one night, I received a UPS delivery—a copy of my mother's death certificate. She apparently died in September of 2015, shortly after my fiancé and I had moved to Michigan for what turned out to be about a year.

As you can imagine, this came as a shock. Although I hadn't had any contact with my mother in the many, many years since she left my father and me when I was 16, the idea that a mother could die and the only child—technically, the next of kin—would not be at least notified was a bit of a blow.

Almost a year later, I am still feeling a very peculiar mix of unsettled, angry, and sad all at the same time. Please don't misunderstand: I'm not sad because of the loss. I lost my mother decades ago—likely to an undiagnosed mental illness, probably bipolar disorder—and I've grieved the loss appropriately during the ensuing years. No, I'm sad because the last bit of information I'll ever know about her comes from typed snippets on a death certificate, nuggets of impersonal data that beg more questions than provide answers. News of her death brought back a flood of memories from my childhood (some of which I’ve shared on social media more as an emotional purge as Mother's Day approaches), and I was left feeling a bit sucker punched in the aftermath.

My mother apparently died at 12:51 PM on Monday, September 14th, 2015. She had been admitted to the Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, New York, ten days earlier on September 4th. She was cremated on September 17th at the Northern Bradford Crematory in South Waverly, Pennsylvania. According to her death certificate, she was a farmer who lived in Greene, New York. The person notified of her death was a woman named Dorothy who lived in Port Chester. Her attending physician is named, as is the fact that he had been attending her since July 30th, 2014; he last saw her alive on August 24th, 2015. Her manner of death is listed as "natural cause" but the copy of the death certificate is cut off after that and the remaining cause of death information is not included on the copy. Digging further, it looks like this woman who was notified of my mother's passing was a close friend; several months after my mother's death, there are records that this woman sold a piece of property that was listed as my mother's address on the death certificate.

Sometimes closure doesn’t come wrapped in a pretty box with a bow. Sometimes it’s messy, incomplete, and opens a Pandora's box of questions. It's an odd feeling, knowing that my mother no longer exists. Even in our longtime estrangement, I'd periodically entertain the fantasy of a death-bed reunion or even a post-death letter. Among the many things the woman denied me and did to me, it comes as no surprise that she would slip quietly from this world without so much as a nod in my direction—before or after her death. In some weird way, I can admire the fact that she made a decision and never looked back. Not even a pang of nostalgia could bend her resolve.

In any event, there was no obituary that I could find online anywhere. I find this sadder than any aspect of this surreal situation. Hers was still a life, and that life should be somehow marked. I'm going to post some photos of my mother to do just that, acknowledging that she was here, lived for 70 years, and then died.

Theresa Rose Danko

4-25-1945 to 9-15-2015

Rest in peace, Mom.

A caveat: After reading this, although you may be tempted to express a kind wish of sympathy, please don't. This is a weird situation for me and the customary rules simply don't apply here.