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.