My grandmother died on a Ferris wheel.

People in my family have looked back on this as a pretty good way to die – well, as far as deaths go, anyway – but it seems to me that it must’ve been hell for my Uncle Harold.

There they were, up high on the wheel, my grandmother Lillian – a large woman to say the least – and Harold, her then-30-something son. As the wheel churned upward, Grandma let out a loud stream of cackling laughter, clapped her hands and dropped dead.

The carnival crowd gathered in a pool like vultures with necks craned up to take in the sight, 80 feet above, of the dead fat lady and her son, penned in under the weight of his mother, for what would turn out to be the rest of his life.

Harold never crawled out from under her shadow.

As far as metaphors go, you couldn’t have written a better one to illustrate how women in my bloodline have dealt with their kids since … well, let’s just say for as long as anyone remembers.

Some families pass down an athletic gene, guaranteed to produce sports hero after sports hero like some giant jock factory. Other families may perhaps pride themselves on producing countless generations of perfectly dry Cabernets.

My family, at least the women in my family – which pretty much is the same thing if you ask them – has cultivated a different kind of legacy. We call it the bone-crushing guilt complex; BCGC, for short. My mom, her mom [the one on the Ferris wheel], her mom’s mom and countless previous moms have prided themselves on their ability to dole out a de-capacitating barrage of guilt from 100 yards away, or even from beyond the grave.

Actually guilt works best from beyond the grave. Generally speaking, death means the end to life, but in the case of properly seasoned BCGC, it only acts as an amplifier. The moment the pitcher (that would be the mom) takes her last breath, the catcher (the kids, the husband, sometimes nieces and nephews) are hit with a magnified burst of remorse. We call this BCGC squared.

Speaking of death, it has always been key to the success of the moms. This extra leverage comes from the fact that moms in my family die young. No one could contest this, since they have been dropping before their 60th birthday for as long as we Jews have been eating chicken livers, probably longer if you consider that there weren’t any chickens in the desert. If you asked any of the moms to explain their short life expectancy, they’d all give you the
same answer, “Rotten children!”

My mom broke the record and managed to live to see her 65th birthday. The last 10 years of her life were rough: a stroke, diabetes and severe depression caused by three selfish children who refused to keep living at home after they grew up. I marveled at her courage – wheelchair-bound and insulin-dependent, she was as feisty as ever. “Some people’s children actually write them letters,” she’d say on my answering machine, “or so I’ve heard.”

It wasn’t until after her death that I fully understood the magnitude of what we’d inherited, what she had flawlessly cultivated in the last decade of her life. It dawned on me the first day I tried to wake up from a deep sleep and realized that my dead mother was sitting on me. “You sleep until 10 in the morning?! I wish I could have slept so late, but with three kids kvetching at me every second, never caring how much my feet hurt, how could I have slept? Now I’m gone, and you sleep. Would it kill you to wake up and think about your mother for a change?”

I didn’t learn until the first day of Shiva after mom’s funeral that my
grandmother had managed to die while not speaking to my mother. She had disapproved of my mom’s choice of husband – no one really knew why, but that didn’t matter – and gone on a yearlong “I have no daughter” campaign. The campaign was still in effect when the Ferris wheel incident occurred. My mom, ever after, was penned in right there with my uncle Harold.

I do know Mom had a fear of heights, which I inherited, and a strong dislike of amusement park rides, although she loved amusement parks. She’s the only woman I’ve ever met who took great delight in going to Disneyland to watch other people plummet on roller coasters and log rides. Who knows? Maybe it was her way of re-enacting the scene, asking herself what she could have done if she had been there.

I committed the most heinous act possible for a child of my lineage. Cruel, inhuman, dastardly and horrific, I was the demon child moved who out of the house early. It was bad enough that I didn’t want to stick around till I was 40, but to move out at 16 was simply unheard of. Mom didn’t gear up for her full response until she discovered Federal Express. She started mailing me food.

It would arrive, rank and green from days of no refrigeration: packs of Hebrew National hot-dogs, no longer frozen stuffed cabbage and cheese-ends from the local deli. The ice bags were long-thawed and sat wedged between the festering edibles in limp surrender. Then I would find it, usually scrolled up like a tiny diploma and wedged into one of the rolls of generic toilet paper: the note.

Your father and I thought you might need some groceries, not that we would know for sure, since we haven’t heard from you in over a month. A month is a long time not to hear from your daughter who left you when she was so young and broke your heart. A lot has happened in that month. Not that you asked, but I’m not feeling well and your father has high blood pressure brought on by an absence of appreciation. Well, that’s all for now. Always remember your mother loves you. Love, Mom

P.S. Why not visit every once in a while so I can remember that I still have a daughter.

To this day, I can’t look at a package of Empire Kosher fried chicken without thinking of how my mother suffered so terribly on my behalf. There was the ordeal of opening the package, then sticking the chicken in a baking pan, then opening the oven and then waiting the 20 minutes for the chicken to heat up. Oy vey! My poor, poor mother! How she suffered so I could eat drumsticks!!

No.

BCGC will end in this generation, because my brother, well ... he’s a guy. My sister is too wrapped up in hair spray to bother doling out guilt. As for me, well, I’m a modern woman. I’m too busy giving money to the homeless – not that they noticed or even thanked me – and supporting my network of friends – 12 years I’ve been listening to their complaints, and do they ever stop to think about my problems?

While there does seem to be an enormous number of people out there who don’t appreciate me – one day when it’s too late, they’ll be sorry – I will never, ever, pass on the BCGC. No, this is my solemn oath to protect future generations from this plague passed down by my female ancestors. It will be my duty to make sure that no more of my people have to lament the labor pains their mothers endured while giving birth to them, for the rest of their lives.

Besides, I’m never having kids. All the years of baby-sitting, Broadway matinees and Chanukah gifts for my nieces and nephew, and not one phone call on my birthday.