Thank you, Mom
Sam Davis remembers his mother, who died this year at 107
Mother’s Day will forever smell like lilacs to me.
My mother, Ruth Davis, who left this world at 107, loved many things — opera, Yiddish, a well poured glass of wine — but she didn’t love anything quite as much as she loved lilacs.
It wasn’t just the flower. It was the color, the fragrance, the feel of those soft clustered blooms, and their quiet, perfect association with spring and Mother’s Day.
In our backyard on South Washington Avenue in Bergenfield stood two towering lilac trees, each more than 15 feet high. You could see them from the street as you drove by. In many ways, those trees were the center of our childhood lives. When the breeze blew from north to south, the fragrance would drift into our kitchen, unannounced and unmistakable. And when it did, you could count on one thing — my mother would smile.
That scent is permanently intertwined with her memory.
My earliest recollection may be of clipping a handful of lilac branches, unrequested, uneven, probably half destroyed, and dragging them proudly into the kitchen. “Here, Mom.” I was five or six. She received them like a royal bouquet.
That was her gift. She elevated the smallest gesture into something meaningful.
In 1978, we sold that house to a developer. The plan was simple and ruthless — to demolish the house and clear the land, trees included. But before the bulldozers came, we took cuttings from those lilacs and carried them with us, living fragments of memory, transplanting them to our new home in Haworth.
Haworth was, in many ways, a return for my mother. She had grown up there, the daughter of a tailor who ran a small shop on Terrace Avenue. Her family lived in a modest apartment above it. So when my wife and our two young daughters chose to raise our family there, less than a quarter mile from her childhood home, my mother was thrilled. Four generations, we were circling back to where her story began.
Two transplants later, those original Bergenfield trees have grandchildren of their own. Today, their descendants bloom in my grandson’s backyard in Upper Saddle River, tended now by my mother’s granddaughter and great-grandson. Roots traveling through time, just like the family she nurtured.
Losing her vision 10 years ago only deepened her appreciation for the world she could still experience.
Music became richer, food more vivid, and the fragrance of lilacs more profound. She never saw Ella, Romi, or Nate, yet she knew them intimately. They would sit in her lap, and she would trace Romi’s hair, feel Nate’s long frame, and gently hold Ella’s face, remarking on her “cute nose.” From touch and presence alone, she could describe them almost perfectly.
She also formed deep bonds with many of my younger brother Dan’s friends from temple and from school. After she turned 100, many of our friends would seek an audience with her, eager to spend time with the oldest person they had ever met. They left awestruck not just by her age, but by her extraordinary memory and the scintillating conversations she had with them.
From the time I left for college, I made a personal pilgrimage home each Mother’s Day. Whether I was in Boston or studying in Tel Aviv, I would find a way to ring her doorbell unannounced. For 56 years, that moment, her surprise, her delight, was my rite of spring.
What do I miss most about her on Mother’s Day? The answer lives in a kind of emotional contradiction, profound sadness wrapped in enduring joy.
My mother had a legendary memory. She kept track of more than 100 friends and relatives, their names, their children’s names, their pets, their birthdays, their anniversaries. Long before AI calendars and automated reminders, she was our living archive.
And she didn’t just remember — she told stories that made each person feel known.
She also gave with intention. Little treasures for the children, earrings, coins, antiques, sentimental objects, each carefully stored away, and, remarkably, always remembered.
But what I treasured most was her gratitude for the simplest things. Sharing a kosher hot dog, and later a sloppy Joe from Foster Village Deli. Opening a bottle of her favorite wine and listening to her pronounce “Merlot” with a flourish. Hearing her call out recipes to the two extraordinary aides who cared for her around the clock in her final years.
And always, the barometer of the matzah balls. “Too soft” — back to the kitchen they went.
We called it “the truth from Ruth.” She never pulled punches. If she liked you or what you were doing, you knew it. And if she didn’t, you knew that too. But there was no cruelty in it, only clarity and honesty.
In her final moments of consciousness, she was exactly herself, a song on her lips and a glass of elderberry wine in her hand. She passed peacefully, pain free, at 107 years old.
What a blessing.
On this first Mother’s Day without her, I find myself thinking not only of her voice, but of her soundtrack — opera arias, Yiddish expressions, and the quiet music of a life fully lived. And I think of lilacs — their fragrance, their persistence, and their ability to return year after year.
In Jewish tradition, we say zichronah livracha. May her memory be for a blessing. My mother’s memory doesn’t sit quietly. It blooms. It sings. It drifts into the room when you least expect it.
And when it does, I can still see her smile.
Sam Davis of Englewood is the proud father of Ariel Davis, Alexa Davis, Alana Feinstein, and Joshua Davis, and Saba to Ella and Romi Feinstein and Nathan Davis Adler. He has practiced law in Teaneck for the past 45 years with his partners Marc Saperstein and Garry Salomon, who all met at the Bergenfield Dumont Jewish Center Hebrew school in 1965.