Jan. 30, 1933 - Jan. 9, 2024.
Wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, teacher, cancer warrior.
I lost my mom today. Words I knew one day I would have to type, but never believed the day would actually come. She was so damn tough. Fought through so much.
"Strongest woman I ever operated on," one surgeon marveled six years ago.
"Heart of a 20-year-old," her cardiologist said last year.
"Her grip -- what strength," her physical therapist said during a session last fall.
Strong enough to endure the death of her oldest son David to cancer in 2009, when he was 50.
Strong enough to keep going after the death of her high school sweetheart, lifelong soulmate and husband of nearly 65 years, Bob, in 2019.
Strong enough to survive and thrive after a Stage 4 Melanoma diagnosis in December 2017, with immunotherapy and radiation treatments obliterating tumors in her brain and lung, and surviving brain surgery to remove scar tissue in February 2020.
What a blessing to have her spend her final two years with me.
What joy to see her texting and Facebooking and doing word puzzles and walking up and down the block with beloved aide Rosemarie, and light up with delight every time her lone grandchild, Natalia, came for a meal or visit, or her son Stephen came to go over the weekly football pool or reminisce about the past.
She didn't quit. Not on my brother David after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a college student, a gut punch that would have destroyed lesser families.
Not on a teaching career that she loved and re-embraced after raising her three sons, going back to work with 3-year-olds at a pre-school, crouching low on creaky knees in a little chair to read to them every day.
Not on life, even when she could have thrown her arms up in despair and given up so many times.
She was born in the Bronx during the Depression, an only child, lost relatives in the Holocaust. She grew up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and met my dad at Lincoln High School. They went to Brooklyn College, wed, and she worked as an elementary school teacher while he went through dental school.
They lived in the same house in Mill Basin for 55 years and raised three boys, a New Yorker who never lost her accent or passion for her city. She loved the beach and playing tennis, loved the theater and never threw away a Playbill, adored her summer trips to Tanglewood, Montauk and the U.S. Open in Flushing. She loved the Mets, tolerated football (learning the basics when I covered it), but mostly was happiest when walking country trails, sandy beaches or the streets of Brooklyn or Manhattan.
She hated soda, Champagne and bubbly things in general, loved to sip on a mug of hot tea and the occasional Bloody Mary (tomato juice, not too spicy).
She cooked and ate well, and could denude a pork spare rib to the bone (from Richard Yee's in Brooklyn or Christine Lee's at Gulfstream) like no carnivore I've ever seen, even after her 90th birthday last year.
"Never waste a drop," she'd say, going back to her Depression roots.
She squeezed every last bit of it from a life well lived.
Rest in peace, Mom.
We love you.
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