Martha, My Dear...

I miss my aunts in the summer...oh, I miss them year round, but the summer memories are most vivid...Brooklyn beaches with Aunt Sharyn...all it took was one glance and I was in stitches as I knew exactly what she was thinking, as the knish man lingered by our blanket...and Aunt Harriet...summers in the sixties at Lake Carmel...and then Montauk...her contagious laugh sailing in the wind...her loving smile in the sun...and I think many times about my great-aunts...my Grandmother Bella's sisters...Ida, Dinah, Irene, Shirley and Martha...and have to shake my head and laugh about my Great-grandfather Sol...six daughters!...the Tevye of a shtetl in Romania...and then Brooklyn...I look inwards for memories...and they are there...crowded seders...family weddings and bar mitzvahs...but it is my Friday night memories of the seventies that crest to the top...over the Verrazano back to Brooklyn...cramming into my grandparent's kitchen...impromptu Shabbos...coffee and homemade cookies and loud, loud talking...my Great-aunt Ida lived in that same apartment building so you never knew which cousins would be there...when I think of those Fridays...I always think of my Great-aunt Martha...the youngest of those six sisters, who passed away yesterday, just a few weeks shy of 92...my memories are of an independent, loving woman...single, when marriage was expected...a great conversationalist...and listener...talking with me about books and movies and whatever I wanted...I cherished those moments when I really got to know Martha...and my large extended family...a family that is now spread out across this country...as so many families are...we keep track of each other on Facebook...and now even Zoom...we do not see each other for years...but still kvell at the good news...and cry at the bad...and it really gave me pause to realize that dear Martha was the last of those Blitman girls to be with us...and with her passing a generation goes too...and so I wish that our dear Martha's memory be for a blessing...amen