Remembering Elliott

March 8, 2016 – Remembering Elliott

at home on February 19, 2016

One week ago, we held a memorial service for Elliott at our synagogue, Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, Virginia.  The previous day, when planning the service with Elisa and the rabbi, I initially didn’t think I’d be able to give a eulogy.  I’d never given one before and I doubted that I’d be able to retain my composure during such an emotional time.  Then the rabbi asked me to tell him about Elliott.  That wasn’t hard for me at all.  There is so much I can tell others about the remarkable man I was married to for more than 32 years.  When I was finished talking, the rabbi said, “That’s exactly what you should say at the service.”  So, with Elisa’s help, I stayed up late and drafted the following remarks.  When it came time to speak before the assembled family members and friends, Elisa accompanied me to the bimah and stood beside me as I spoke these words:

Thank you all so much for being here today to remember Elliott.  He was a very special man, special to so many people, in so many different ways.  To me Elliott was friend, lover, husband, my Viking hero, and my role model.  I’ve never known anyone who embraced life more than he did. 

From an early age, he had a tremendous sense of adventure – stealing watermelons out of the farmer’s field in DC at age six, playing hide and seek among the tombstones in Congressional Cemetery.  When he was 14, he told his mother he was going out to take a walk and ended up hitch-hiking to Florida.  In his early 40s, he took a government position in Paris although he didn’t speak a word of French and instantly fell in love with the city as his taxi from the airport sped across the Place de la Concorde. 

At age 71, he had mapped out his retirement plans to spend his remaining years painting in the South of France.  But he quickly changed course when he met a much younger woman standing in line at Orly Airport.  Little did he know that he’d be married three months later and would be starting a new family. 

But Elliott was also a very practical person.  He prided himself on his problem-solving ability.  He’d never hire someone to do a job he could do himself – even if he shouldn’t, such as replacing the ceiling light fixture in the kitchen, which resulted in a fall off the ladder and drilling through his hand.  In typical fashion, he cleaned up all the blood and then drove himself to the hospital before I came home from work. 

You could also see his practical, analytical mind in his art.  While continuing his budget work for the U.S. government in Paris in the 1950s, he was also studying painting at a French art academy.  His art would later evolve in the direction of geometric abstract.  He carefully planned out his paintings with meticulous measurements and mathematically based patterns. 

Part of the secret to Elliott’s long and happy life was never acting his age.  Elliott never felt old.  He always had friends decades younger, especially during the time he taught at the Corcoran School of Art.  In his 70s, he was driving the pre-school carpool and in his 80s and 90s, he was traveling around the world.  When he turned 99, I finally convinced him to stop climbing up the ladder to clean out the gutters.  But the day before his 100^th birthday, he was out there mowing the lawn in 90-something degree weather.  However, he loved asking strangers to guess his age and found it hilarious when they were wrong by a couple of decades – he even told a waitress that Elisa was his wife when they were out having dinner one night. 

Elliott always valued his family and friends.  His relationships brought him great joy throughout his life.  Even as he came to terms with his own physical decline over the past several months, he took special delight in his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  He leaves us all with wonderful memories of someone who lived life to the fullest.