Ode to a Mid-century House, and my Mom, Josephine

Exterior view of the house

My parents built their dream house in the 1970s. I was a youngster at the time and I remember their architect coming by and them pouring over drawings at the kitchen table. I remember my mother leaving on furniture-buying trips to New York and Chicago. I thought that was so glamorous! I remember the groundbreaking cocktail party they threw on the newly bulldozed land where bar tables with starched white tablecloths and white-jacketed waiters waited for guests. I remember threatening to chain myself to the door of our old house as there was nothing I loved more than our family-filled dead-end street, Colonial Road, and I felt the end of my life coming with the pending move.

Mom and Dad’s wedding, Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 1956

Mom and Dad at the groundbreaking party, 1971

We were moving to perhaps the nicest street in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Provencal Road was home to prominent Detroit industrial families, such as the Strohs, Fishers, and Fords. The road was private, equipped with a gate guard, every house was large, and all had views of the Country Club of Detroit golf course.

At 6 years old, I wasn’t impressed. During our visits to the construction site, all I saw was loneliness. There were no signs of children, no lemonade stands, no rag-tag impromptu games of kick-the-can on sticky summer nights. As far as I could tell, everyone who lived on Provencal Road was ancient, unfriendly, and never ventured outside.

The house was enormous. I’ll never forget the first days of moving in. The strong smell of fresh paint and newly hung wallpaper piqued my senses. The upstairs hallway with sunny yellow wall-to-wall carpet whose endlessness filled me with terror. My bedroom, replete with antiques, and custom curtains in Pierre Deux fabric with matching wallpaper, felt like a place I had to be careful in.

Photos from StylishDetroit

When I push myself to remember childhood, I remember feeling my happiest when I was outdoors and being active. Where the sheer physicality of the new house felt less than ‘homey’, to my delight, the outside was a haven. A trampoline and swimming pool provided hours of unfettered goofing off for me and the occasional visitor, and the best climbing trees were right at our doorstep.

Outside enjoying myself, 1970s

My mother, known to all as Josephine, Jo, or Josie, had exceptional taste and a discerning eye. Not my taste, but exceptional, nonetheless. On furniture-buying trips, she scoured stores, worked with dealers, and frequented auction houses for English and French country antiques. Edward Fields rugs covered the downstairs floors, equine antique prints and oil paintings adorned the walls, while mostly 17th and 18th-century furniture filled the rooms.

People loved our house and would always say so with a kind of whimsical, dreamy look in their eyes. I never really got it but in retrospect, I’d like to think they were not only complimenting the house but showing their awe of Mom.

An outwardly principled and elegant woman, she didn’t suffer fools lightly and made her opinions known with full force. Most of my friends who dared to come over were scared of her, with good reason. Mom had a quick temper, sharp wit, and an equally sharp tongue. You always knew where she stood, and frequently we stood at opposite ends.

Me and Mom, 1960s

The house saw happy times, stressful times, engagements, arrivals of grandchildren, divorce, back-to-school preparations, snowed-in Christmases, and countless sneaky summer parties when my parents were away, where Marlboro Red and Stroh’s Beer deliveries from Farms Market were plentiful, and the Guess Who reigned.

The house also finally saw death.

My mother died at 93 years old in her bed on May 20, 2024, around 6:04 PM. I had just made it through the door from Morocco, having received ‘the call’ 48 hours prior. I vaguely remember walking into the kitchen, greeting some family members and my mother’s trusted Emma, washing my hands, and heading straight for Mom’s bedroom. I was in a panic and desperately needed to be right next to her.

Similarly, my daughter, Margot, who lives 5 hours north, decided to leave work and get in her car that morning. She walked into Mom’s bedroom by 4 PM.

I always knew that Mom feared death while also wanting to orchestrate it. Around the ripe young age of 12, Mom reminded me annually that ‘when the time came’, she didn’t want to suffer and we were to remember where she put the phone number of The Hemlock Society, America’s first ‘right to die’ organization. I was never sure about the process, though. Was I to concoct the concoction that she would then ingest that would peacefully hasten her demise? Would a Hemlock Society member appear and handle the administration? Would I go to jail if I was an accomplice? All these questions aside, I always felt proud of her ‘right to die’ stance and smiled at her adoration of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Michigan’s very own ‘Dr. Death’.

As I was cleaning out her home post-mortem, it was more than bittersweet to find the now-faded Hemlock Society pamphlet and a folded, handwritten note from 2016 in an old wallet addressed, ‘To any hospital’. It read: ‘I do not want to be resuscitated. I do not want life support.’

A non-religious woman from non-religious, possibly even atheist, parents, Mom took an uncharacteristic step years ago to become baptized. This was a surprise to me as I never heard her utter any religious references. In fact, she seemed to openly ridicule the faithful, and those who attended any kind of religious service, especially if you were catholic. When asked about this step she replied, ‘Well, just in case, you never know, Brooke!’. ‘Scotch guarding against Satan’, was the phrase that came from my lips.

Mom feared pain. Physical and mental. Wine, cigarettes, and later in life, her best friend, ‘Norco’, dominated her days. We all knew about it and tried to make light of it. She did all three of these things until the last week of her life. And no, she didn’t die of lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver. She died of old age on her terms.

In love with her home, Mom wanted to die there and forever made it known. Where there were understandable disagreements in the family about this, I stood by her wish.

An extremely large house with stairs, my uncle installed an electric stair lift years ago. Up until her last week, Mom would shuffle along the sunny yellow-carpeted long hallway that connected her bedroom to the chair, her trusty walker safely guiding the way. Once in, she would flick the switch that brought her down to another walker. All this shuffling brought her to just a few destinations; the desk in the kitchen, the sofa in the TV room, her dressing room chair, and her bed. The rest of the 9,000 square feet of her house saw neither hide nor hair of Mom for the last 4 years.

While I cheered her mobility and independence, her caregiver schedule was limited to 5 hours a day, 7 days a week, which was worrying. She relied on two women to make meager meals and clean and wasn’t too interested in their conversation or company. In fact, she had pretty much pushed away any friend who was left in those final years, including family members whom she once adored.

Always put together, Mom’s hair was eternally coiffed and her clothes ironed to perfection. Pantyhose peeked beneath the razor-sharp seams and cuffs of her fine wool trousers revealing nearly-new Ferragamos. Jewelry was sparse yet strategically placed. Nail polish was barely there, just enough but never garish. Fiercely concerned with her, and her family’s, image, being seen as any less than the old-school elegant woman she was, would have embarrassed her greatly. This fact is one I relied on to explain her retreat from friends and society at large.

She always told me, ‘Make this my obit photo!’

The size of the house, her addictions, her age, her solitary nature, all of this weighed on me, and I often found myself wrestling with societal expectations (‘WHAT?! She’s still alone in that BIG house?!!”), read: put Mom in a ‘home’, and the wishes of a fully developed human being who still had her faculties. What guided me? Every time I asked her;

Me: ‘Mom, do you think it’s time to go to a nursing home? What if you fall?’.

Mom: ‘Oh for God’s sake, Brookie, if I fall I fall! At my age, who the hell cares?! And if I fall, let it be swift! If I go to a nursing home, I’ll die a miserable death and haunt you for the rest of your life! I want to die here, in my bed.’

Margot and I were lucky enough to have been lying next to her when she took her final breath. Was she waiting for us? God only knows. But I would like to believe that.

As painful as it was to witness her final hours, I was grateful that she got her fervent wish to die in her bed. I was also grateful for hospice, whose palliative care hopefully eased her transition in place of a cocktail from The Hemlock Society. I was grateful that three generations were together in that room as she transitioned and that our hands were in hers. I was grateful to the house who, for 52 years, gave my mum so much pleasure. And I felt enormous gratitude for the woman who gave me life.

Sources:

Wikipedia, The Peak of Chic Blog

Except where noted, all photos are from family archives or taken by the author