On the Cover with Jeanne Beker
The heartbreaking impact of dementia hit home for Jeanne Beker the night in 2015 when she last saw her mother alive. Bronia Beker was a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor who overcame unspeakable horrors to build a fulfilling new life in Canada. But after years of coping with Parkinson’s disease, she was showing signs of cognitive decline.
“My sister Marilyn and I took her out for dinner. She sat across from us and asked, ‘You’re my daughters, right?’ She wasn’t sure,” said Jeanne.
She was incredibly vibrant, brilliant, a very dynamic personality, and it was so sad to see her withdraw, like she knew something was happening. That was always my mom’s biggest fear, losing her mind. That’s why she was so adamant about keeping her mind active.
Jeanne was speaking with Mind Over Matter® from her Toronto home, joined on a far-flung Zoom call by daughters Bekky O’Neil (on a farm near Cobourg, Ontario) and Joey O’Neil (from her off-grid cabin with sketchy internet service in West Dawson, Yukon). The subject was their mother’s appearance on the cover of the magazine, but the interview was suffused with memories and admiration for Bronia, known affectionately by Bekky and Joey as their “Baba.”
“My parents just taught me incredible survival skills,” said Jeanne. Her late father Joseph was also a Holocaust survivor.
“Very often (Bronia) would have that philosophy of expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed. But then she was just a shining example of living in the light. We wrote on her gravestone, ‘In the darkness, she found light.’”
After spending three years in a displaced persons camp in Austria after the war, Bronia and Joseph immigrated to Canada in 1948 with nothing. Not knowing a word of English, she had to put aside aspirations to be a cosmetician and found her first job in a factory, the initial step in a classic immigrant success story.
Throughout her life she had a deep commitment to service, community, and friends, making instinctive choices that are now known to foster brain health and, in the process, setting a powerfully influential example for her family.
“My mom was always engaged. She volunteered for so many things, with Hadassah, Meals on Wheels, and in a hospital, bringing books to patients in their rooms. She was such a doer,” said Jeanne.
Bronia’s drive to keep the brain and body active resonated down through the generations. Her love of puzzles and games was inherited by her daughters and granddaughters, all of whom are addicted to the New York Times puzzles.
In turn, Jeanne’s high-profile career as a journalist and writer, most notably her long run as host-producer of Fashion Television, had a deep influence on Bekky and Joey.
“One thing that my mother has taught me, is just to be creative and to be interested,” said Bekky, a freelance animator who also teaches at OCAD and Loyalist College. “That’s what makes her such a passionate interviewer, her ability to get interested in just about anything. That kind of curiosity is a big part of my life and something that keeps our brains quite active.”
“Our mother’s positivity is quite infectious,” added Joey, a musician.
Although Bekky and Joey grew up in downtown Toronto, they noted that they both now live on unpaved roads, a stark departure from the urban lifestyle they knew as kids. In Joey’s case, it means chopping her own wood and hauling her own water. She has been in the Yukon for 13 years, based in a small town where everyone knows everybody.
“I love the quiet and the peace of mind. It’s really lovely. I think the reason I stayed was because of the sense of community,” she said.
Bekky has lived on the farm since 2016 after spending several years in Montreal. She grows produce and flowers through a method known as permaculture, a low-impact form of farming that involves no pesticides and no tilling.
“We’re producing goods that are sustainably created and healthy to share with the community. I’ve been a vendor at the Cobourg Farmer’s Market since 2018,” she said.
JEANNE HAS BEEN INVOLVED WITH WOMEN’S BRAIN HEALTH INITIATIVE (WBHI) FROM THE LAUNCH OF THE CHARITY IN 2012, SERVING ON THE HONORARY BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
“When I learned about the overwhelmingly high percentage of women getting Alzheimer’s disease, that was, wow, a wake-up call,” she said. “Some of the stories I’ve heard are just so heart-wrenching, it’s such a horrifying condition. The mission (of WBHI) is so important. Any time you have an opportunity to be associated with that kind of work, it’s such a privilege.”
She has hosted several events for the charity, helping to facilitate important health conversations, while also speaking openly about her own experience with breast cancer in 2022.
THANK GOD FOR BEING IN A POSITIVE STATE OF MIND. POSITIVITY IS REALLY WHAT GOT ME THROUGH MY CANCER JOURNEY.
For Jeanne, appearing on the cover of a magazine devoted to women’s brain health has deep meaning. Not only because of Bronia’s life story, but because Bekky and Joey’s paternal grandmother, Dorothy O’Neil, died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2004.
“For a very long time dementia was swept under the rug and people didn’t talk about it too much,” Bekky said.
Putting things out in the open and starting to give people, women specifically, the tools they need to prevent cognitive issues is incredibly important. This organization where there are women supporting women is really incredible.
Jeanne observed that the Mind Over Matter® article is also an opportunity to celebrate another family trait: storytelling. Shortly before her death, Bronia Beker published a Holocaust memoir. It was co-authored with her late husband, Joseph. He died in 1988, but left behind a transcript, handwritten in Yiddish, which was joined to Bronia’s memoir in the same volume under the title Joy Runs Deeper.
Now their daughter and granddaughters are telling their own story in a magazine dedicated to sharing knowledge about a pressing health challenge.
“My girls inspire me every day,” said Jeanne. “What an honour to be sharing our experience.”
Source: Mind Over Matter V21