On Saturday Doris Ingerman's friends and family had a party for her. She died in December, just weeks short of her 97th birthday, but for various reasons the celebration of her life was saved for a time when travel would be easier. She would have had a wonderful time...
This is my contribution to the memorial:
Let me take you back about 60 years ago when Sid and my husband Lee were in graduate school at UC Berkeley and the day I first met Doris. Sid and Doris, Lee and I had been invited to the wedding of one of their graduate student colleagues.. I'm not sure I'd even met the guy, let alone his fiancée, but it sounded like it would be quite a party. Big wedding in a synagogue in San Francisco, with a cocktail reception and a sit down supper afterward.
I don't remember too much about the wedding service itself, other than a vague memory of the groom grinning from ear to ear, and of his bride looking very lovely. Nor do I rememmber who we sat with during the ceremony, but it probably was with a group of other graduate students and their significant others. What I do remember was the crush as friends and family headed for the doors which led from the sanctuary to an adjacent hall where the party was to be held.
Okay, there we are in a sea of merry makers, and then there was the receiving line, and shaking hands with people I didn't know, and mumbling greetings, and smiling, floating along on the good feeling that radiated from the bridal party. Suddenly though I was through that bottle neck was in the banquet hall with a glass of bubbly in one hand a plate filled with little canapés in the other. Neither Lee nor Sid was anywhere to be seen, but there was Doris, right next to me, also with wine glass and goodies. We'd made it through the formallities in record time, and obviously we thought we could finally get down to business. Boy, she's a woman after my own heart, I remember thinkning: she knows what's important: good things to eat and drink! What joie de vivre! I would also have thought if I had known French at that point.
Yes, joie de vivre is what Doris exlempfied. Yet elle n'avait pas sa langue dans sa poche, as they say around here. that is she didn't keep her tongue in her pocket, she told you what she thought about anything and everything, frequently with humour and always with conviction. She also was extremely generous and kind. Even though she didn't know us well we arrived in Montreal the year after they did, she opened their home to us where we stayed until we found a place of our own.
There followed lots of good times. She took me New York in the spring of 1969, we had numerous picnics and barbecues and holiday celebrations. She drove me and the kids down to Albany, New York--a day trip, would you believe--to see Pete Seeger perform as a protest against pollution on the Hudson. For a couple of years we had season's ticket for the Opéra de Montréal together, she enlisted me to keep her company at many swimming meets. I usually left a visit with her energized and, often, joyous.
That continued until the end, even though last fall it became clear that she was declining. But on Thursday December 3 when I arrived for my regular bi-weekly visit she was wide awake and wanted me to do something for her. It took a little while for me to understand exactly what: go into her bedside stand and get some nail polish and paint her fingernails. Which I did, and which seemed to please her. A few days later she died, with mauve fingernails, ready to party. A woman whose joie de vivre is sorely missed.
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