Obituary of Jean B. Christiansen

Christiansen, Jean B. (Badura) Rochester: Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at the age of 83. Predeceased by her brother, Robert Badura. She is survived by her children, Randi Streb, Paula Christiansen, Guy (Giulia Frumento) Christiansen; grandchildren, Erica & Amanda Streb, Nicolas & Sophie Christiansen; sister-in-law, Sandra Badura; nephews, Scott, Roger, Grant Badura. Services and Interment will be held in private. One Last Gift Wednesday, April 29, 2015 My mother died yesterday – one day after her 83rd birthday. She was at home, with my sister and my niece. She did not suffer and her last months were spent in her home with her family, as she had always wanted. My mother did not have a very easy life. Her father died while she was pregnant with me. She went through a long, painful divorce when I was very young and never remarried. As far as I know, she never even went on another date after the divorce. To support me and my sisters, she spent 10 years working in a state psychiatric hospital caring for geriatric patients who would bite, hit and spit on her. She would often come home with bruises on her arms, but never complained. About 12 years ago, her younger brother was driving home from his weekly dinner with her when his car broke down. It was snowy and dark and as he walked along the road to call for help a van hit him killing him instantly. My mother had to go to the hospital to identify the body. Three years later her mother died, then her best friends Joyce and Mary Joe – both of cancer. She watched one of my sisters go through a bitter divorce and the other gradually lose herself to a mental illness that destroyed her life and made her unable to work. The last trauma came 3 years ago when we learned that my niece Amanda had an aggressive form of brain cancer. And I can’t help but think that I too was a source of suffering for her. I was the youngest and the only boy. I spent the last 10 years of her life living a continent away, seeing her only once or twice per year. When she died holding my niece’s hand, I was sitting in a hotel room in Zagreb. While I was able to say goodbye when I saw her a month ago, I lied to her – telling her I’d be back soon. I couldn’t admit to her or myself that I wouldn’t see her again. She died before I could get back to be by her side. I am tempted to say that death was a relief from a life filled with suffering, but the way in which she died taught me that this was not the case. It also showed me how lucky I am to have had her as my mother. Over the last year, my mother developed Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s has a reputation for being a horrible disease that slowly destroys a person’s identity, but the way it manifested in my mother was actually quite the opposite. In fact, it was something beautiful. The disease robbed her of her short-term memories, but it left the core of who she was. You would think that someone who went through the suffering my mother did would bear the scars of those experiences on her soul. She didn’t. The Alzheimer’s stripped away the layers of memories she had accumulated over her long lifetime but left untouched the essence of who she was. That essence was a wonderful, happy, loving person. Although she was confused about what was happening when I was last home a few weeks ago, she still knew who I was. She would ask over and over again where I lived, how long I was staying and then say with the look of a child who had discovered where the cookies were hidden: “I think I love you guy!” It made me smile every time. I don’t have a single memory of my mother ever singing, but one night when my sister kissed her goodnight she started singing a happy little song that went “I love you truly, truly I love you.” I don’t know if she made it up or if it was something she knew from when she was younger, but she sang it like a teenager coming back from her first date. I asked her to sing it for me every night when I was there. She had throat cancer and in the last few months could only consume liquids, but she brought herself to sing to her children every night. Each time she did, it sounded beautiful. The most enduring trait of my mother was her infinite capacity to love and to give. Not even death could stop her from giving. My mother showed me that whatever happens to us in life, nothing can harm the goodness at our core. No wrong done to us, no tragedy suffered by us, no disease destroying us from within can take away who we are. Anger, jealousy, bitterness, hatred – they are all products of our own making. The outside world cannot change who we are and how we act – we do that by choice. And by that same choice, we can also love, give, create and inspire, just as my mother did. That was the last and greatest gift she ever gave to us.