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My beautiful wife Jane, my guiding light for 47 years died 15 days ago. I wasn’t sure I would write a column on this. Besides being just plain hard to do, I didn’t want the piece to sound like I’m feeling sorry for himself, an exercise in maudlin self-pity. I have no right to subject strangers, let alone loved ones, to my personal grief. But after some internal debate with myself I decided that I would attempt to get something, for better or worse, on paper.
Everybody dies. Some easier than others. Some younger than others. Some more tragically than others. I can’t begin to measure other people’s grief in losing a loved one. I know there are many stories of loss so horrific and unfathomable that have literally destroyed entire families. For example, the death of a young child is devastating for those parents who will never hold their baby again.
I commiserate with all who have experienced the loss of their loved one. What I can’t do, however, is actually know their individual despair. I can offer condolences, hug them, attempt a few encouraging words, but that’s all. Their sadness is unique for them and for them alone. Just as no one can fully understand my grief at losing Jane. She was my life.
She died just 9 days before would have had our 47th wedding anniversary. It felt like everything happened at once; she died, she was buried, our wedding anniversary was three days after the funeral, and on top of it all, Passover the next week. Passover meant a lot to Jane. She loved to cook for the Jewish holidays and she loved having my family over for the Seder. Her family was all back east so she took pride in making the Seder dinner for my family.
Growing up my family never celebrated Jewish Holidays, my father claimed to be an agnostic, my mother, a first generation Jewish American, came from a religious household who followed the practices and observances of Jewish traditions. In addition to Russian, her mother and father spoke Yiddish in the home. But when my mother married my father she dispensed with a lot of the Jewish holiday rituals in our home. She believed strongly in God and she lit yahrzeit candles for her parents. She talked about the importance of being Jewish to us, she wanted us to know and take pride in the fact that we were Jewish, and during the holidays she brought Jewish food into the house for us. She made a wonderful Matzo brie. My father was never against it, he just was not a participant in it.
When I married Jane, she brought a new level of Jewishness into my life. Not just my life, the lives of my brother and sister too. Jane had a special relationship to G0d. She make Shabbos every Friday. She prayed every single night. She observed the important Holidays, not all of them, I admit, but certainly Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover. We said Yizkor together, we read the bible and other Jewish books together, and she taught me to speak a bit of Hebrew. She taught me to keep a pushke, a tin box, like a bank, with its contents going to charity.
It was because of Jane that my brother gained a greater appreciation of Judaism. He had both his sons circumcised and both had their bar mitzvahs. My sister felt closer to Jewishness through Jane as well and started lighting Friday night candles and keeping a pushke.
Jane and I had no children. We only had ourselves and for 47 years that was enough. Now our house is empty and I walk around it intermittently crying and thinking about her. Every now and then I get a feeling that I’m waiting for something. I don’t know what that is, but a sense of waiting comes over me and it’s eerie. When I cry, I cry not for me, but for all the pain and torture my little wife went through in her last 8 years.
Beginning in 2017 she encountered a strange skin disease which no dermatologist, no allergy specialist, no one could help her with. She was literally covered from head to foot with red sores. Finally she had to be hospitalized and put on a strong antibiotic. It did fade away, but what it was all about no one could tell us.
That same year she developed an acute case of hepatitis. Then late in the year came the most devastating blow of all. She lost most of her eyesight through something called NAION, which they said was like having a stroke in the optic nerve of the eye. She just woke up one day and one eye was dark. The doctor said the chances of it happening in both eyes were extremely rare. But several weeks later the other eye went too. In the end she lost total vision in one eye and most vison in the other. She could only see vague shadows in the good eye. She could never see facial features again. Reading books, gardening, cooking, shopping, sewing, all gone.
This was a tremendous life change for a women 75 years old. She also suffered from Diabetes, chronic gastritis, neuropathy in her legs and feet and especially in her left arm and hand. And then in 2023 she had a heart attack. Three blockages. They couldn’t do bypass surgery or a stent because her veins were too small so they treated her with medication. From then on it was downhill. She had fainting spells and several trips to the emergency room courtesy of 911. For more than a year she suffered a tremendous amount of chest pain. The GI doctor said it was her heart, the heart doctor said it was gastro. Nobody knew.
Her last two weeks of life were spent being tortured in the hospital. She was in constant pain, even with the morphine and other pain medication they gave her.
On April 1st she left me. My beautiful, sophisticated, classy partner in life left me.
I had a cute little nickname I gave her, "Nussbaum." She loved that name and every time I called her that she would smile. I don’t expect anyone to understand the meaning of that name, it was our little love word.
I know she is reunited with her beloved father and mother now. But I am so sad. So lost. I miss you, Nussbaum. I love you.
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