{"id":48952,"date":"2026-05-08T01:23:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=48952"},"modified":"2026-05-07T15:11:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:11:33","slug":"recalling-a-shining-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/recalling-a-shining-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Recalling a shining star"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mother, Joyce, met my father, Bernie, at a dance at the Jewish Community Centre in Vancouver. She was selling tickets. He just wanted to talk to her, but she sent him upstairs to check out the other young women at the dance. He did, then came right down and asked her out, even though she told him she had two children and was in the middle of a divorce.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Joyce Freeman with Ria, her first grandchild. (photo from Cassandra Freeman)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My mother was both elegant and beautiful. When I was a child, she ran a \u201cmodel and poise\u201d class for teenagers out of Kerrisdale Community Centre. My sister and I modeled there for an audience when I was about 4 years old. Later, I did some ballet on stage as well, with my partner from the dance school. I still remember how nervous I was, but it was so much fun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I grew up with the many people in the house my mother invited over. They were from all over the world and spoke English, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and other languages. (Looking back, I see why I chose to get a degree in international relations!) Mom would literally ask people she met shopping or on the street back to the house for dinner. A lot of them were single and lonely.<\/p>\n

My dad worked as a court reporter and often had late hours, so refused to go out. My mother, therefore, had parties at home. I remember pancake and waffle brunches with at least 50 people going in and out. The toppings were cherry, pineapple, strawberry, blueberries, peaches and, of course, whipping cream and syrup. All my friends from the neighbourhood would be there, too.<\/p>\n

My friends got an education in Judaism, including the Jewish holidays and the basics of keeping a kosher kitchen. One friend, Madeleine, credits my parents for her choice of a career that involved prosecuting war criminals. I\u2019m guessing that\u2019s because dad was a court reporter and she learned about the Holocaust from us.<\/p>\n

I was thrilled when my mother invited the National Ballet of Canada company over for dinner after their performances \u2013 if my Uncle Sam had not been performing with them, she might have done it anyways.<\/p>\n

I remember two things about the dancers. One was that they seemed to go back to the table and eat at least three times. The second was that, even though they were athletes, they didn\u2019t have a hope when playing table tennis in our basement. Apparently, they had little hand-eye coordination. I remember meeting Karen Kain. She said I had a nice straight back and should continue to dance \u2013 and she left me all her beads.<\/p>\n

My mother had good friends she would call almost every day. One was my godmother, Helen Friedman, who became like a grandmother to me. We spent a lot of time together. I took on her left-wing perspective and voted NDP for a very long time. She was also a feminist with a capital \u201cF\u201d and I took that on, too.<\/p>\n

Growing up in my parents\u2019 house, it was like all three of us kids \u2013 Devorah, Tzvi and me \u2013 ate social justice for breakfast. Now I see that this was clearly the ancient Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, healing the world. My sister said I had it so bad that, at age 8, I wrote to the Vancouver Aquarium and demanded they let their whale go back into the ocean.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother was clairvoyant. She taught me how to send her a psychic message about what I wanted for lunch on my way home. I normally got what I requested but that\u2019s likely because I either wanted macaroni and cheese or a salami sandwich. My father says that, when we kids left home, my mother could make us call her at will, which I believe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mom\u2019s favourite psychic story was about Dad and Grandma. Dad would come home from work and say, \u201cJoyce, I don\u2019t know why I bought that.\u201d And Mom would say, \u201cOh, Grandma wanted that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I inherited my mother\u2019s ability to communicate with spirits. Just before my Uncle Steve\u2019s funeral, I was ironing. He said, \u201cHurry up and get to the funeral.\u201d Mom got a message from him, too. During the transmission, it feels perfectly normal. Sometime after Uncle Sam died, I got an energy hug from his spirit. It didn\u2019t diminish the sadness, but it was comforting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At some point, my mother began doing I Ching readings for guests and family. I have her I Ching book and display it proudly. It is a book of strategy above all. It doesn\u2019t tell the future, as most people think. It says that, if you are in this situation, you should do this; if you are in that situation, you should do that. It\u2019s difficult to read but my mother was smart and seemed to know exactly what it was saying, even if it talked a whole\u00a0 <\/span>lot about princes and generals and varied states of mind. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The other thing Mom did was cook \u2013 and she is famous for it. I remember helping her by cutting cucumbers. They all had to be about one-eighth of an inch thick or they were no good.<\/p>\n

My mother got sick when she was 40 and was never really well after that. She had become a Chabadnik, which I believe helped her with the pain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We knew when she was going into hospital because she would cook meals for us and put them in the freezer. In her late 70s, she was diagnosed with a cruel disease called Supranuclear Palsy. They tried a Parkinson\u2019s pill, but it didn\u2019t work. Mom died, at age 84, just as the sun was setting, bringing in the first night of Passover. We recently marked her yahrzeit.<\/p>\n

A few days after she died, both my sister and I got the same message from her spirit. She said, \u201cI am skipping.\u201d I took this to mean she was ecstatic at being without her painful body. Now, I imagine she is a shining star in the universe. And that\u2019s how I remember her.<\/p>\n

Cassandra Freeman <\/b>is a Vancouver storyteller and improviser.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mother, Joyce, met my father, Bernie, at a dance at the Jewish Community Centre in Vancouver. She was selling tickets. He just wanted to talk to her, but she sent him upstairs to check out the other young women at the dance. He did, then came right down and asked her out, even though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[21519,4526,3709],"class_list":["post-48952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-family-history","tag-memoir","tag-mothers-day"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}