Thanks everyone for coming to share this farewell to Raya Gindin.
Her father called her Rasheleh. I always loved the sound of that name, especially how my grandfather said the syllables: full of affection but also capturing the innocence he saw in his daughter and his concern to care for her.
The defining historical event for my mother and others of her generation was of course the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath. She was born in Poland in 1926, just as Hitler was emerging in Germany and was thirteen when WWII started – about the age of three of her great grandkids – and by the end of the war she was married with a child and living in Siberia, where the Soviet Union had relocated Jews for their protection as the Germans advanced. The family spent the next five years in refugee camps, where they had their second son, Jeff and then reached America and soon after Canada, where Barry was born.
The survivors of the Holocaust were all scarred by its horror, though their attempts at coping varied. What was common, as it is for refugees the world over today, was the loss of family and friends, the displacement from home and community, and the forced option of starting over in a strange land with a language they could not speak or understand.
Rasheleh’s anxieties were sometimes set aside but they were always nearby. That she adapted had very much to do with her joy from, and commitments to, the family. Crucial as well was the remarkable resiliency of Rasheleh and her husband, Meyer. For both, it was not enough to survive; their passion for life demanded more than simply enduring.
Rasheleh loved singing with friends around a crowded table. She enjoyed shopping – catching up after decades of poverty – and her elegance was much commented on. She especially loved dancing and more dancing. If Meyer needed to rest, she danced with others until he recuperated.
She had a radiant smile with eyes to match and a particular joy for her grandkids was seeing her watch I Love Lucy and laugh uncontrollably, tears rolling down her cheeks. When it seemed the need for air was forcing an end to her laughter, she’d stop for a second but quickly burst into another round of uncontainable laughter until sheer exhaustion forced her into a lurching stop.
Her last few years were especially hard, but she had the best care possible from Eunice and her “angels” and, in the last months, also from the nurses and doctors in the hospital, where she died peacefully.
Her loving family includes her three sons: Sam, Jeff, and Barry; our spouses Schuster (Barbara), Susan, and Eve; grandkids Jonah and Lucas, Mathew and Tony, Elia, Benji and Joey, Roxan and Slateon; and great-grandkids Ruby, Mollye, Mira, Zev, Bryn, Skyler, and Dev.
As we say goodbye to Rasheleh-Mom-Bobeh- Gramma-super-Bobeh and move on in our own lives, a part of her lives on in us in ways deep and small, and there will be loving memories to share when we gather together again down the road.
If she could reappear for a moment to say farewell for herself, her predictable counsel – familiar to everyone in the family – would be to “Dress warmly and drive carefully”.