Lillian Wisnia's Memorial

People who see my mother's gravestone ask why it has a medalion with a mosaic flower pot, in a place where some other peoples' tombstones have a photograph of the deceased, or as is common in our religion, a star of David.

A "curious event" happened when mother passed away at 8:50 AM January 20th, 2000.  She had lived 94 years and had been declining in the hospital for the past 25 days.  Her doctor had told us that the end of her life was imminent.

I was preparing breakfast for Judith and me prior to heading to the hospital to visit mom.  We had been going there each morning and evening and reciting the 23rd Psalm, which was her favorite prayer.  It seemed to calm her.

For no reason, a dish slipped from my hand and broke in the kitchen sink. I'm not usually klutzy, and I couldn't remember breaking any tableware since I stomped on a wine glass at our marriage ceremony 23 years earlier. (That was the first and also the last time I got to "put my foot down" about anything in our marriage.)

The uniqueness of the event seemed significant, and I was pondering it when the phone rang.  It was mother's doctor calling to tell me that the hospital had just paged him to say that my mother had passed away, "about three minutes ago".

While informing the relatives about our loss, my cousin Janet in California reminded me that one of mom's artistic hobbies in the 1950s was turning plain terra cotta flower pots into colorful works of art by covering them with  bits of broken dishes in mosaic patterns.  Janet urged me to find a way to use that plate which I broke when mom died . . . as part of her memorial.

The pieces of the broken plate were retrieved from the trash and put aside.  After our lives settled down I followed Janet's suggestion and used what I learned from my father when, as a teen, I worked in his jewelry factory.

I made a wax model for a plaque with a flower pot shaped recess and had it cast in bronze at a local art foundry.  Pieces of that broken dish are set into it. The name "LEE" at its top is how she signed the many splendid oil paintings she created in her midlife years.  The medalion is set into her memorial stone where it reminds visitors of her beautiful and artistic spirit.

Mother is buried in the "Emerald St. Shool" cemetery in Woburn, Massachusetts. We miss her.

                Jeff Wisnia
                Summer 2001