The other day at Hospice, Stuart showed me a book that he and Richie presented to their parents on their 50th anniversary. It was filled with photos of their parents’ lives, step by step.
I’ve seen a thousand photo albums, so I’m not sure why this one had such an effect on me. Maybe it was because Evelyn was lying there on her deathbed. Maybe it was the feeling of walking through a time tunnel, seeing Evelyn at every stage of her life and then looking at her as she was now.
But the strange thing was that somehow, all this did not pull me down. I was uplifted. I thought about Evelyn, from an immigrant family, who had to come through Canada to get to America. And I thought about this daughter of Jewish immigrants whose family left Europe to build a better life for their children. (more…)