Elisabeth Ann Batura

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A Remembrance

To paraphrase the opening lines of Erich Segal’s best-selling 1970 novel: What can you say about a 63-year-old woman who died? That she was beautiful, and brilliant; that she loved Mozart and Bach, and the Beatles, and me. Those qualities by themselves would have been more than enough for me, but Lisa was also so much more: sensitive, compassionate, loving and kind, fiercely loyal, thoughtful in all the ways that invite stimulating conversation and unfailingly helpful. She was, in every respect, the consummate partner and brought great joy to my life and to those of all whom she touched. I am quite certain that I’ve never been loved more by anyone, nor loved anyone more in return.

Lisa, whose given name is Elisabeth Ann, and I often marveled at how close we came to not meeting, but thanked God, our family members and a confluence of fortuitous circumstances for bringing us together. She’d remained single for all of her five previous decades and, at the time we met, I was weighing whether another prospective long-term relationship was worth the emotional risk. Fortunately though, the online dating site, eHarmony, brought us together just about the time she was preparing to sign off for the last time and I, encouraged by my Dad, who was widowed and ailing, but nonetheless the first to broach the subject, endorsed my belief that life was too wonderful and precious to be experienced alone.

Serendipitously, the site suggested that – despite living 115 miles apart, we had more than enough in common to justify meeting. Although I was admittedly a little skeptical, once I discovered where Middletown, NY is located and found my way there, we quickly fell into a rhythm of regular email exchanges, then lengthy phone conversations and finally, agreed to meet – one month after first connecting, in person. On that first date, which Lisa later described as three dates in one because we began at her office at the West Side Presbyterian Church in Ridgewood, NJ, continued on two separate walks – one around the neighborhood and the second around a beautiful park nearby, and concluded with a romantic dinner that ended with a frantic dash back to New Jersey Transit’s last train for the night back to Penn Station. During that dinner, I learned that Lisa used her parents’ courtship as the measure of the distance between us and had much earlier concluded that the distance between Orange County, NY where she lived and Suffolk County was, in the grand scheme of things, negligible. More weekly, multi-part dates followed and, in a relatively short time we came to feel we’d known one another for a much longer time. We became engaged exactly one year after first meeting and married slightly less than six months after that.

Lisa’s father, John, met his future bride, Unni, in the course of a self-guided tour of Europe undertaken with another young friend while both were in their late twenties. Shortly after arriving in Norway, they landed in Oslo and met up with one of John’s companion’s relatives who invited them to a birthday party scheduled for that evening. Upon meeting, John and Unni were quickly smitten and, for that reason, John elected to jettison the latter third of his travel itinerary in order to spend more time with Unni, who was – at the time, training at culinary school to embark upon a career in Europe’s finest restaurants. After corresponding by mail and telephone throughout that autumn, the two agreed to wed and John returned in December for a Christmas engagement and wedding that was followed by a New Year’s honeymoon in Norway. Although Unni would wait several months before receiving the papers necessary to emigrate to the U.S., she and John reunited that spring in New York and raised three children over the course of 43 years of marriage.

Although Lisa and I were not blessed by anywhere close to that number of years together – I can confirm she was absolutely right, (as she most often is) that the miles between us prior to marrying were simply an inconvenience. I will, though, always be grateful that we were able to share such a wide variety of experiences together. In the course of looking back at our photos, I know we were blessed in having the energy and opportunity to share so many things, some simple and others quite profound. While marriage brought an end to our weekend travels between Middletown and West Babylon, it didn’t eliminate our daily work-related transit to Patchogue (for Lisa) and Manhattan (for Jim), which made for some very long days and some correspondingly short evenings together. Luckily for us, though, the invisible hand of modern management consulting and reorganization, (to channel the spirit of Adam Smith), enabled us both to retire in2019, granting us two “bonus” years of happy, healthy retirement.

We’ve done and seen a lot in the seven and a half years that comprised our courtship and marriage, but our bucket list nonetheless remains long and varied. Like many young strivers who pursue professional advancement in order to meet their financial obligations, we both spent a good portion of our adult lives in school and then at work. As those who’ve followed Lisa’s career know, she approached every opportunity that was offered to her deliberately and her commitment to helping those in need remained undiminished from her first position to her last. From the outset, Lisa was well positioned to follow her dreams, graduating near the top of her class of several hundred students from Monroe-Woodbury HS in Orange County, NY, attending Northfield, Minnesota’s prestigious St. Olaf College on scholarship, where she pursued a dual major of Mathematics and Norwegian, and finally, earning a Master’s Degree in Education from St. Thomas College in St. Paul, MN.

Along with her academic pursuits and professional obligations, Lisa pursued a wide range of artistic interests and animal welfare concerns. She played the piano beautifully and was a member of a number of Orange County, NY church choirs and secular vocal ensembles. While in High School, she was a leading force behind the Monroe-Woodbury Drama Club, appearing in both the school’s spring and fall productions during each of her four years, including – as a senior, starring as the lead in the “Madwoman of Chaillot”. Throughout it all, she continued to draw, paint and sculpt, producing many beautiful works that grace our walls and adorn our tables and bookshelves. Many of you will also know that Lisa was a consummate animal lover, rescuing homeless felines from shelters up and down the Eastern seaboard and, over the course of her adult life, adopting a total of 19 cats. Although she gave her first pair the somewhat cartoonish names of Boris and Natasha, she later adopted a naming convention based on classic Russian literature and gave homes to Sophia, Yuri, Misha and Maximillian, to name but a few. Lisa’s heart was a seemingly bottomless reservoir of love from which she generously showered not only her pets, but also her friends, family members and me.

After graduating from St. Olaf College, Lisa began work at the Luther League in Minnesota, leading their youth groups and a variety of special programs. During that time, she began work on her Master’s Degree and, upon receiving it, transferred to Benilde St. Margaret’s parochial high school where she taught math for a number of years before transitioning to North American Phillips Electronics. There,

she quickly rose through the ranks, ending her career in Human Resources with the Company’s Lighting Division and remaining there until it was sold to an overseas competitor. She then took up teaching again, but not before first working as an instructional designer/trainer for KPMG. Her penultimate employment stop – and her favorite position, was at Ridgefield, New Jersey’s West Side Presbyterian Church, where she worked as the organization’s business manager for more than a dozen years. The staff and congregation at West Side became an extended family of sorts for her and Lisa reveled in celebrating their individual milestones and providing comfort during less happy times. Our marriage and Lisa’s move to Long Island necessitated big changes, though, and once here, she landed a position with Long Island Head Start’s Early Childhood Education Division in Patchogue, where she worked closely with a variety of Suffolk County day care providers.

When we first met, Lisa offered that she had “three strikes against her”, beginning with the fact that, after 56 years, she’d not married, had worked for a church for a dozen years and had cats. I was sufficiently beguiled by then to overlook the logical follow-on question of just how many cats she had, but – after letting my Dad know that, after just two dates, I’d found the woman I’d been seeking, I learned that Lisa was caring for nine (mostly geriatric) cats. After considering our options, though, we agreed that – upon marrying, we’d apply some of the proceeds from the sale of her home in Middletown to adding an all-purpose sun room/feline sanctuary to the house I’d recently purchased. While many new couples cut their financial teeth with the rent of an apartment and/or the purchase of new appliances, we opted – after knowing each other less than one year, to plunge into the realm of new construction. Suffice to say, that experience only served to further underscore our shared values and to demonstrate just how easy it can be to work with someone who shares them. The extension we added is now home to two middle-to-late age cats, numerous books and a lot of the furniture that Lisa depended upon in her former home in Middletown, NY.

Our seven and a half years together constituted a conscious attempt at re-balancing our obligations in order to create more time together and to nourish our souls and psyches. Lisa knew instinctively that those who are happy with all they have are rarely disappointed or desirous of more. Fortunately, by the time we met, I’d finally begun to cultivate my own “attitude of gratitude”, but it was clear – based on Lisa’s example, that I had much more to learn. Put succinctly, she exulted in the ordinary, neither of us – up until that point, having had the opportunity to share the quotidian pleasures of neighborhood walks, shopping trips or spending time reading quietly with someone who shared those same values and desires as deeply and completely. To that end, we pursued road trips throughout New York State and New England, sampled the South, visited Colorado and Oregon, sailed the Caribbean, volunteered at a variety of beer, wine and cider festivals, attended a number of concerts and saw numerous Broadway shows. We considered each day together a blessing and remarked often on how fortunate we were to have found one another.

Among the hobbies Lisa pursued most fervently during the pandemic period was genealogy or, as she often referred to her afternoon sessions of acoustic folk rock, feline company and online research using archival newspapers, gravesite listings and census data as “communing with the ancestors”. In the course of her searches, Lisa unearthed an incredible array of information about not only her family, but also about mine and those of the families of friends with whom she and those close to her remained in

touch. Some of those findings have been published in the Orange County Genealogical Society’s quarterly newsletter, where she served as editor, but most served mainly to augment what we previously knew about our ancestors, their trials and tribulations and the difficulties they endured in immigrating to our Country.

Lisa and I joked that retirement prepared us splendidly for the current pandemic. We were already accustomed to spending most and – in some cases, all, of our time together, and were well-attuned to the excitement of discovering new mutual interests and probing previously undetected differences. Unlike some couples for whom circumspection is the norm, we were never restrained in declaring our love for one another or in remarking on the gratitude we each felt for all that God granted us. We began each morning by embracing, reiterating our mutual affection and then laying out our plans for what lay ahead and discussing how we’d manage to integrate it all, usually incorporating a trip to the local gym, breakfast and our usual evening news dinner/happy hour ritual into the mix.

Our final trip together brought us to Gettysburg, a journey that Lisa anticipated eagerly and planned meticulously. We talked throughout our drive about all we hoped to do together there and about what lay ahead once the pandemic was finally over. We also shared memories of the many day trips and overnight excursions we’ve taken since first meeting, feeling a sense of exhilaration in planning for the future. To have those dreams and realities torn from us so quickly and utterly not only serves to amplify and encapsulate how precious life is, but also provides a potent reminder of just how little control any of us has in how it plays out. I am, in all instances, exceedingly grateful for the time we shared and for all we were able to see and do during it. Lisa was my best friend, my soul mate and a constant reminder of why the beauty and novelty of God’s creation is only enhanced when it can be shared with, and seen through the eyes of, another person. My daily prayer, therefore, is that she’ll continue to guide me in ways that will deepen my faith in ways that will help others and honor her memory.

In addition to me, Lisa is survived by her sister, Kitty, her brother John and his wife Lisa, Kitty’s children, Tim and Katie, John and Lisa’s children, Tyler and Emily and our two cats, Pasha and Jasmine