My Extraordinary Great-Aunt Ibi
Tuesday, June 29th 2010 @ 12:00 AM
My great-aunt Ibi passed away two weeks ago. She was 96 years old. And she was amazing—absolutely amazing, and surprising, and inspiring. So I want to share with you some things about this woman who was, in so many ways, unique.
Ibi—her Hungarian nickname for Violet—survived the Holocaust, but she lost her parents and all of her brothers and sisters in the concentration camps. After the war, she was miraculously reunited with her husband, my great-uncle Zoli, who was my maternal grandmother's brother. They came to America and settled in Brooklyn, in a modest apartment on the 11th floor of a tall building on Ocean Parkway.
So far it sounds like your typical, miraculous story of survival and starting over. But Ibi was anything but typical.
First of all, she was a pediatrician, long before women generally did that kind of thing. More than that, she was one of the top pediatricians in New York at one time, when apparently she was responsible for mentoring virtually all newly-minted pediatricians before they were turned loose to practice the art of healing.
Her husband was an anesthesiologist. So when he read enormous medical textbooks for enjoyment, she could relate. They were a perfect couple.
When my Uncle Zoli had a stroke, she supported him with great love. I have memories from my childhood of visiting them, and watching her take care of him. Like everything Ibi did, it made an impression on me.
They never had children, due to medical complications, much to their regret. But Ibi expressed her maternal side in her medical practice; she loved children, especially babies.
I'm not sure of the exact chronology, but somewhere along the line—after Zoli died—Ibi retired from her medical practice, but she continued to work at the hospital several times each week on a volunteer basis. What did this by then 80-something lady do? She did something no one would expect, of course: she took care of "crack babies," babies who were born addicted to drugs because of their mothers' habits.
When she wasn't making her rounds at the hospital, she was going to the senior center for Shabbat services, or walking blocks and blocks to do her shopping in Boro Park (always dressed appropriately for any inclement weather), or eating in her favorite little kosher diner, or playing a bit of music on her old upright piano, or enjoying the oil paintings she and Zoli collected over the years, which hung on almost every inch of wall space in their apartment.
Without Zoli, and lacking children or any relatives at all (other than a few cousins in Israel and Hungary), Ibi was quite alone in New York. She had a few nice friends, and later, a wonderful caretaker who checked up on her and assisted her daily. But no family. So, inspired by my mother, who did the same, I would call Ibi every Friday before Shabbos.
We talked about the same things every time. First I would need to establish who I was, loudly enough so she could finally hear it and figure out that it was not my mother calling, but me. (Ibi was stubborn and usually refused to wear her hearing aid.) Then she would ask me to remind her how many children I had, were they boys or girls, and their names... and my husband's name... and then she would go on to list for me the names of all of her siblings, and her parents, and trail off part-way into a sad reminiscence. Then I would tell her what I was cooking, and she would tell me she would be going to the senior center, and we'd say Good Shabbos.
A year or two ago, Ibi became unable to live alone safely anymore. My mother—who had become like a daughter to Ibi, and who took care of Ibi the same way she took care of my grandmother at the end of her life—made the decision to move Ibi to a senior residence in the Boston area.
And so began a new, very happy—and final—chapter in Ibi's life. Surrounded now by family—my parents, my sisters and me and all of our children, including new babies for Ibi to meet and give her famous "once-over" and stamp of approval—Ibi became an honored presence at holidays and other gatherings.
And we learned new things about her. She loved to sing—mostly Hungarian folk songs, like my grandparents used to sing to me. She had a feisty, slightly snippy side to her that emerged only over the course of more casual, frequent contact. She was affectionate, and I think she really basked in the love we all gave her in her last year (although I think we tired her out, too, with our noise and commotion).
My Aunt Ibi, Miriam bas Esther, Dr. Violet Friedman née Frisch, died quietly when her heart finally stopped beating, after living a very long and full life—an extraordinary life. She was an entirely different kind of woman from whom I learned so much, and I will miss her.
