She came to one of the first memoir meetings and attended nearly every session for over a year except for her week on the cruise with her family to celebrate her 100th birthday last April.
She told her stories verbally and didn't write as one eye wasn't working. She'd scribble down her thoughts - a rough outline - and never look at it again, and once it was her turn she'd tell us these stories of her life. It was the energy and lilt of her voice I loved most. I listened to her life.
How her mother smuggled Maria's wedding gift of silverware out of Hungary and into the refugee land they stole to before moving to New York. How her only daughter had Tuberculosis and how she and Maria lived in the mountains of France for two years in order for her daughter to recover by breathing in the good, clean air. How much she loved being a teacher, and of her love for her husband of more than sixty years and her life with him, and how she missed him.
She told us how much she loved American parades especially the Macy's Thanksgiving parade for it was minus any military processions. She told us how she and her husband were robbed of their only $300 when they came to New York. Robbed on a bus. "We were so naive," she said, "my husband had the money in his pocket." But they survived. Both found jobs and survived.
At one memoir meeting, Maria called me over and asked me to put one of the earrings you see in the picture back through her earlobe. I did and felt her cool skin and remembered my own mother and felt the sting of mourn. Before the Winter holidays, I took five of her stories to her so she could take them to Long Island where she would stay for a week with her daughter and grandchildren. I began to record her stories late last year, transcribing them, and on some occasions would not have the story ready in time. But Maria never forgot - as I'd hoped - and would say, "Don't forget my last story," and I had to laugh.
She told us recently how she prepares every evening for bed and she looks about her apartment to make sure everything is in its place "in case I don't wake up." She said she always hoped to go and yet, when she woke up in the morning, was grateful, too. She said she'd begun to wake in the night, singing songs she simply could not do while awake. I sat there, knowing how miraculous is life, and how lucky I am to be among these emotionally resilient women.
Yesterday I got a call that Maria had flown. I'm so thankful our first Memoir Book has her stories included in it. Our memoir group will be less vibrant, less vocal, less formal and less present without her. Maria, I need for you to place your hand on my shoulder at our meeting tomorrow for I need your support. I feel the loss. And yet, I know, you have learned so much and you gave it to us in your oral stories. I only wish I could have captured them all.
Farewell strong and noble woman. You improved my life. You improved us all.
