Mom of Eric Rosen, former Kansas City Rep director, dies of COVID-19 at nursing home
Eric Rosen’s biological mother wasn’t alone when she died from the coronavirus. That gives Rosen, the former artistic director of the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, some peace and comfort.
Their relationship had been complicated: Divorce from his father. Early-onset dementia. A life fraught with hardship. Rosen, after having been long parted from his mother, would find her again 15 years ago, after she lost her home to taxes and she sent him a box of belongings. He found her and helped place her in long-term care.
Cynthia Greene, 72, died Wednesday from complications from COVID-19 in a nursing home in Hendersonville, North Carolina. She had developed dementia in her 50s.
“I had an amazing conversation yesterday with the nurse who took care of her, who called me right after she passed,” Rosen told The Star on Thursday. He spoke by phone from Upstate New York, where he is staying while the pandemic ravages New York City. Nursing homes across the country have banned visitors because of the pandemic.
“She was crying,” Rosen said of one of the three nurses who cared for his mother. “She said, ‘The three of us went in and held her hand and we stroked her forehead. And her fever went down. She wasn’t in pain. She was breathing comfortably and didn’t struggle.’”
The nurse, he said, “was just crying, and she said, ‘We just need you to know she wasn’t alone.’”
Rosen’s voice caught with emotion. He called the three nurses heroic.
“To help my poor old mom, who couldn’t even speak, to her death, to put themselves at risk to comfort a dying woman, is amazing.”
Rosen said he never shared much about about his mother or his family in the 10 years he led the Rep, which he left in 2018 to live and work in New York. His mother, he said, had long suffered mental illness. She was Southern Baptist. His father is Jewish. The couple eloped when they were 18 and would divorce 11 years later, when Rosen was 6.
Rosen, born in North Carolina, has one older brother and a younger half-brother, now in jail, from his mom. He had three other siblings others from his father’s marriage to his stepmother, Susan Rosen.
“Not many people know I had this really struggling, very American Southern story,” he said.
From age 10 on, Rosen lived with his father and his stepmother, whom he says is the mother who raised him.
On Facebook, Rosen alerted friends what was occurring at a quick pace where his mother lived, at the Brian Center Health & Rehabilitation nursing home in Hendersonville.
On April 4 he wrote: “So here is the thing. I post cute videos and nice pictures. But there’s a slow motion tragedy unfolding in my life, as in all our lives. My mother — my biological mother — is in hospice and not expected to live. She’s not the mom I talk about often. … But my bio mom is most likely going to pass soon,” having contracted the virus in the nursing home. “It’s been a long sad story, the kind that happens to poor people in North Carolina.”
Two days later, he wrote that there was “a glimmer of hope, my mom’s fever has broken and she’s doing better. Not out of the woods but just wanted to let you know.”
Before the post ended, he provided an update:
“I posted this too soon. I think we will all cling to whatever good news there is, but she’s not doing well enough to think she will make it through this. Still, my thanks are profound and the love we are all showing each other is wonderful. Keep safe, stay home, and please know how much I appreciate you.”
Then Wednesday: “My mother passed away today, peacefully and in the company of three courageous nurses who held her and prayed for her during the pandemic that caused her death. They are heroes. … She wasn’t alone, and she was peaceful, and that’s all I could hope for right now. And tonight is Passover. I’ll certainly never forget this one. No need to worry about me and my family, but if you are celebrating, think of her. This is how we live now, rolling from profound sorrow to joy and back again, within minutes. Sending love out and a prayer that next year, we will all be free.”
Rosen said his mother’s remains will be buried near her parents’ grave in Weaverville, North Carolina.
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 6:19 PM.
