Helen Reiss and Rose Wasserman, 05.29.04

Two elderly women.

One wears a flamboyant hat, colorful beads, a huge smile. She looks to the future, it seems, ready for whatever might happen.

The other is smaller, more conservatively dressed in a sensible sweater. She looks at the camera, a small grin playing across her face.

These women were each a huge presence in my life, and within a few weeks of each other, they were gone.

The woman on the left is my great-aunt Helen Reiss. She passed away in the first week of February, soon after having checked into the hospital for the first time since giving birth to her second child. At 91, she was the kind of lady who would corner strangers (on the street, in stores, on buses and subways) and demand that they tell her how old they thought she was. Once that conversation started, she would tell her new friend that she had made the hat and jewelry she wore, showing off her latest work. Helen lived alone until the end, the very model of the independent elderly woman. At her funeral, both the rabbi and Helen’s daughter, my father’s cousin Jessie, told stories that illustrated these observations, commenting on Helen’s independent streak, her occasional lack of tact, her warmth, her giving nature, her way of becoming the center of attention in the room.

On the right is my grandma, Rose Wasserman. Her older brother, Sam, was Helen’s husband, but he died, with my grandma’s other brothers, young. I can’t think of any other way to say this, but Rose pretty much was the center of our family’s life for as long as I can remember. She was always the quietest person in the room–I can’t remember her ever raising her voice (though I’m sure my dad can, from his teenage hellion days), nor can I remember anyone ever getting angry with her. Grandma and Grandpa lived in a smallish apartment in Queens until they moved permanently to Florida and Grandpa died. Grandma spent the last years of Grandpa’s life caring for him, bringing him back and forth to the hospital when it was needed, nursing him back to health when he came home. When he died she started to deteriorate herself, and it came on quickly.

Remarkably, Grandma held on for ten years. She suffered from Alzheimer’s, hearing loss, vision problems, decreasing mobility, and a host of other ailments. There were times when she didn’t recognize visitors, when she stayed up waiting for Grandpa to come back home, when she was convinced that she was back in the Bronx of her girlhood. But there were glimpses through all of this of the old Rose, the quietly funny lady who wanted nothing but the best for her sons, her daughters-in-law, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “What’s new, Rosie?” we’d ask, visiting her in the nursing home. “Not a damn thing,” she’d reply, and the old smile would play, quickly, across her face. Then it was back to sitting quietly, Grandma occasionally humming a Broadway tune or saying hello to everyone present.

I don’t know which of these two women lived the “better” life, or the “better” old age. Helen, who maintained her independence until the end, was a character. Rose, deteriorating mentally and physically every day, maintained her ways as well.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. I grew up knowing these two human beings, two old ladies who were always there. They were the constants–Helen’s Sunday morning phone calls, in which she announced “Helen’s all right!” before we could even say “hello”; phone calls from, then nursing home visits to, Rose, bringing her up-to-date on what all the grandchildren had been up to–and now they’re both gone, buried in the same plot at the cemetery in New Jersey. Twice we’ve gotten together with relatives we rarely see to mourn at the cemetery and to talk at the Saddle Brook Diner. Twice we’ve left, saying, “Under better circumstances.”

There aren’t too many more from Helen and Rose’s generation left in my family. There certainly aren’t any whose passing will likely affect me the way these two did. Helen Reiss and Rose Wasserman, you’re missed and will continue to be missed.

עוֹשה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו הוּא  יַעֲשֶֹה שָׁלוֹם עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשְֹרָאֵל וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן