What Really Matters

my Shoshana guitar

I went to a funeral today. Last Friday morning, my friend Shoshana collapsed and died. All signs point to a heart attack. 

Shoshana claimed she retired, but the only thing she actually retired from was practicing medicine. I think she was busier as a glass artist, as a small farmer, and as business manager of their family owned Double F Arena.  Did she ever just sit and do nothing? I don't think so. That would not have been the authentic Shoshana.

A couple of weeks ago, she was getting ready for lambing season and we texted about when I could come up to the farm with the kiddos. Lambing season started off with one of  the sheep dying right after delivery, and the orphan lamb went right into the laundry room where she could be bottle fed every four hours. That was so Shoshana. I mean, doesn't everyone  keep a lamb in the laundry room?

And if that wasn't enough, she was busy getting ready for this past weekend's Art-A-Whirl, the Nord'east Minneapolis art festival where her fantastic glass would be shown and sold at her space, Designs by Shoshana, in the Northrup King building. About her art, she wrote:

Glass has always held a special place in my soul.  I grew up with clear and colored cut Bavarian crystal from my German immigrant grandparents. In the early 1980’s,I started with stained glass and slowly switched to fused glass in the early part of the new millennium.

I have always been fascinated by the interplay of color and light. This interaction and my life is what I try to express in my glass pieces. Since moving to a farm in Stacy, I have become fascinated with the colors of the changing seasons. I have tried to bring the feel of nature and the seasons into my new glass panels.

She never got to open her space on Friday. 

I am damn thankful she gave me my guitar pin. She said I needed it. I did. I especially needed to wear it today. 

Shoshana was a lifetime imbiber of knowledge, a looker-up of stuff. I think that's what we like best about each other....or maybe it was because we were two New Yorkers living in the passive/aggressive heartland. She read this blog regularly and periodically lobbed hard questions and pithy comments at me....usually via text. And when we got started texting, well... 

At this point, I would also like to add that I have a left eyeball because back in December of 2000, my ophthalmologist and Shabbat morning pew buddy, DR. Shoshana, told me if I didn't get that thing on my eyelid taken care of immediately, she would remove it the next time she sat next to me in shul. I believed her. And then, not ten minutes later, that thing exploded. She got me in to see her colleague, Dr. Quist, on Monday morning. Turned out that thing was a basal cell carcinoma gone amok and a bigger deal than anyone could've guessed. I lost a chunk of the bottom eyelid which was rebuilt from skin behind my ear; this was better than losing the whole eyeball thing. The eyeball was saved and still works reasonably well. She always took a quick look at the eyelid every time I saw her. I always said thank you for my eyeball. And we always laughed. Shoshana had a great laugh.

So instead of writing another screechy, pithy, angry episode about the demise of civility and reason in these here United States, I just want to sit here and be sad for a bit. Sad for my friend David as he begins to navigate the world without his partner and love of his life, and their sons Noah and Ben, and the grandkids. My heart goes out to them all. 

Been there, done that. It sucks. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Hug someone you love. 

You never know when it's gonna be the last hug.