Ona Brill

Ona Brill was born Ann Makris in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on April 16, 1931, to Mary Brody and John Makris. With too many Anns in her family, she was always called Ona. She lost her father at a very young age to heart disease, and was raised by her mother, famous for her ability to take her daughter to the Thanksgiving Day parade and then come home and prepare an entire feast by herself

Ona often regretted having been tracked into the “vocational” program in high school, but she was able to get a full-time job as a legal secretary the moment she graduated. In addition, it was high school where she met her lifelong best friend, Rhoda Beller, with whom she maintained close contact and a powerful bond for close to 80 years after.

At her first office job, Ona met another lifelong friend-to-be—Helen Fader, who some of you know as “Little Helen.” When another friend tried to convince my mom--who at age 29 was practically a “spinster”—that she should ask my dad, who she’d been dating maybe six months after meeting him at a party on 2nd Avenue, what his intentions were—it was Little Helen who told my mom to zip it. She listened.

On December 23, 1962, Ona married Maurice Brill while a blizzard raged outside. Everyone showed up in spite of the snow.

In 1965, they welcomed Adam, and in 1970, Amy arrived. Ona left the workforce for 15 years to raise her kids, during which time she got a drivers’ license, was active in the PTA and her childrens’ scout troops, braving the wilds of an actual campground during a Gypsy Moth hatch to accompany troop 4282, though she hated dirt, bugs, heat, and every type of outdoor activity.

She spent much of the school year, and summer as well, driving her children around Queens and beyond, to ballet lessons, to Little League, to her beloved Silver Point Beach Club, to Hebrew School, and everywhere else, nervously humming a tuneless melody much of the time.

Ona and Maurice loved exploring the city, finding markets and shops and street fairs and especially restaurants to try. They disliked planning in advance and would often call friends at 3pm on a Saturday to say: “We’re going to drive to Sunset Park to eat dumplings at this place we read about—do you want to come?”

Some people were more likely to say yes. Phil Schneider, especially, who was my father’s and then my mother’s beloved friend for many, many decades.

Ona loved to know things. All the things. She read the paper religiously, paid close attention to the news, did the Wordle every single day, and wanted—needed—the details on every move her loved ones made. I have been to many, many parts of this world and every single time I left the state I was required to provide my flight details to my mother. Even at age 50.

She wanted to know when I arrived anywhere, how my husband was getting wherever he needed to go, who my kids were playing with and if those kids’ parents had made up after that fight they had five months ago.

She remembered social details beyond the grasp of most people half her age. Who didn’t get along with whom, whose mom had gotten Covid and whose partner had lost her job. She asked me about my friends, their kids, their lives, every single week.

She especially loved her kids, son-in-law, and granddaughters. She delighted in their accomplishments, fretted over their sorrows, and even when she was suffering from knee pain or anxiety or mourning, she never lost her ability to laugh. She loved to laugh, at the world, at herself, and it was delightful to laugh with her.

Ona worried a lot about a lot of things, but she was so kind, so attentive to other people’s needs and cares, and so loving. Even when she drove me crazy, I never doubted for one second how much she loved me, and my brother, and Ivan, and Isa, and Alma.

Though she was not very religious, Ona had interesting ideas about the afterlife. She felt that after death, we would all just live our lives… again.

“The same life?” Amy asked her once. “Like, a do-over? Do we get to change things?”

“No,” she said. “We just live it again.”

“Over and over? Like how many times?”

She didn’t know, and she didn’t know why, either.

“That’s just what I think,” she said—the classic Ona conversation-ender.

Hopefully she was right, and that she’s at the part of her life in which she is sipping a Manhattan beside my dad, at Fire Island, in her strong young body, watching the waves hit the shore. I hope the best parts of her life are ahead of her, and that she gets to relive them all as many times as she wants.

We will all miss her very much. Thank you for helping us honor her 93-plus years in this world.