Yael's Memories

Ruth's longtime friend Yael Dowker writes of her:


I have known Ruth for many years, but never had enough time with her, as we lived on different continents. She was a person of great personal integrity,  with a very warm heart. She was at the same time very discreet, and in almost all situations could find the right word or action to suit the occasion.  She lived her life according to her own straightforward human principles. She was independent of judgmental conventions, without any emotional need either to conform to the conventions or to consciously defy them. She judged everything on its merits, without emotional baggage that would be expected of most people in in situations associated with very difficult and stressful experiences.  She took things as they came, facing things with uncommon objectivity for a person, who had so many knocks, and with determination to surmount the next obstacle. She reminded me of the Jewish joke, which I told her, and which she appreciated:

Scientists discovered that in three months, a meteor would hit the Earth, and that as a result there would be no part of the Earth’s surface that would be under less than a hundred feet of water. The Pope called his flock and exhorted them all to repent and receive the last rites. The Protestant leaders also all exhorted their congregations to repent and pray for forgiveness. Then the Chief Rabbi made his address: ‘O Jews of the world! You have only three months to learn how to live under a hundred feet of water!’

She was resourceful, funny, very helpful, and great to be with.

Ruth photos

Ruth with friend Hannah, at Mark and Ellen's wedding

 Ruth with daughter Bonnie, perhaps

On left: Harry Klein, a lifelong family friend. At the 1980 Epstein family reunion.

Ruth loved going to Bagel Family with her extended family. Grandson Milo visible in mirror.

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Norm, Bev, Ruth

Ruth at NIH

We are eager to learn more of Ruth's time at the National Cancer Institute, at the Clinical Center and elsewhere at NIH.  Could anyone help us identify her co-workers in these photographs?

Ruth with NIH co-worker

Ruth in front now, one from righ, with co-workers, NIH.

Ruth photos 1960s

On a beach, Summer 1972 perhaps during our cross country trip from Berkeley, CA back to Washington dC

On porch of our house on Chevy Chase Parkway, c. 1968

At Fourth Lake, Adirondacks, Summer 1968

Ruth with Bonnie, Summer 1968

Ruth with Bonnie at water pump, Summer 1965

Ruth with Mark at 8 weeks (April 1961).

Ruth in front of Moscow State University, during her visit to Soviet Union in  August 1966. On far  right: Jeanette Greenberg. 

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Ruth, perhaps at Montreal Expo in 1968

At Mexico Pavillion, Montreal Expo in 1968. 

Ruth photos 1945-1955

Here are some photographs from Ruth's adolescence and early adulthood in Philadelphia.

Ruth, on left, c. 1948 in Philadelphia

Ruth in middle, to right. c. 1950?

Ruth swings bat, c. 1950

Ruth on left. c. 1950

Ruth, c. 1952

Wedding of Ruth's sister Anne to Dave Bruckner. June 6, 1953.  Ruth in rear, one in from from left.

Feb. 1946. Ruth in front row, one in from the right.

 

Ruth, c. 1954?

Ruth, c. 1954

Ruth Memorial Service Details

Several friends and family members have asked for the details on the music and poetry performed, as well as the order of speakers, at Ruth's memorial service. They are as follows:

The lighting of the candles was done by Ruth's grandchildren, Nina and Milo Auslander-Padgham.  Before the lighting, Rabbi Ben Biber recited, at the family's request, Walt Whitman's "The Last Invocation" from Leaves of Grass:

At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed
doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.
Tenderly--be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)

Ruth's daughter Bonnie Auslander then read her eulogy, "Truths about Ruth"

Lisa Rein, friend of the family, led us all in singing the Shaker song, "Simple Gifts" (Joseph Brackett, 1848)

Amy Kleppner, a friend of Ruth for five decades, read her eulogy, "Remembering Ruth"

Ruth's grandchildren play duet

Nina & Milo Auslander-Padgham, Ruth's grandchildren performed on violin the Waltz from Boda (traditional Swedish folk tune)

Ellen Schattschneider, Ruth's daughter in law, read Nina Auslander-Padgham's eulogy, "My Nana"

Eller reads Nina's eulogy to her Nana

Jon Padgham (son-in-law), Eric Epstein (nephew), and Danielle Foullon (friend of the family)  read reminiscences from friends and family.

Isiah Johnson performed on piano the Impromptu in G flat major by Franz Schubert, one of Ruth's very favorite musical works.


Mark Auslander, Ruth's son, read his eulogy, "All real living is meeting"

David Margulies, an actor and Ruth’s cousin through marriage, read Jane Kenyon’s poem Happiness.

The service, at the Kay Spiritual Life Center of American University, was authored and officiated by Rabbi Ben Biber, Humanist Chaplain at American University.


The reception was held at Le Pain Quotidien, 4874 Massachussetts Ave, NW, a restaurant Ruth loved.

At memorial reception. From left: Carl Epstein, Mike Bruckner, Mark Auslander, Bonnie Auslander, Mark Bruckner, Bonni Epstein

Floral arrangements were by Chevy Chase Florists. The music and flowers were made possible by the generous gift of a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. 

Amy Kleppner's Eulogy of Ruth

Remembering Ruth
Amy Kleppner

(Delivered at Ruth Auslander's Memorial Service, June 25, 2014)

I met Ruth over 50 years ago when my husband was a new member of the Math Department at the University of Maryland. It didn’t take long to discover that she was among the kindest and most generous of all the people I have ever known—one who was warm and welcoming, who was a loyal friend, and who loved to bring together people whom she thought would like to know each other, something that kept her circle of friends constantly expanding.

During those years when our children were small, it also became clear that Ruth was a font of knowledge. When I once asked her about footwear for babies, she knew instantly that Pedibears were what I needed. She knew that if you’re on the phone trying to explain to the doctor the croupy noises your child is making, that you should “just put the baby on the line.” She knew that children were the most important thing in our lives. But not as trophies or evidence of our own success, but as individuals who would find their own way.

In recent years, since my family moved to Vermont, my friendship with Ruth became focused on the trips we took every year to a major arts festival. These included four incredibly rewarding trips to Santa Fe, to the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-on-Avon and the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada. These trips remain among my happiest travel memories. One could not ask for a better travel companion; Ruth was uncomplaining, cheerful, undaunted by minor mishaps, and willing to try almost anything, with the exception of unhealthy food.

Not that Ruth was a flawless traveler: on one trip she forgot her passport and missed her plane. Fortunately she improvised the rest of the journey and arrived at her destination only a few hours later. She neglected to check the weather in Santa Fe so nearly froze at the first opera we attended. And in one near-catastrophe, she lost her glasses. I’m convinced that it was only divine intervention that allowed us to find them since there were probably 50 places where they might have been.
It’s only fair to say that I was far from a flawless traveler as well. Ruth had to ask that we upgrade our accommodations after an awful stay at a shoddy motel in Santa Fe whose sole merit was its proximity to a Whole Foods. I forgot that she was not the serious long-distance hiker that I was, and consequently I sometimes dragged her on long, exhausting walks instead of calling a cab or getting the car. There were walks that on the map—to the Folk Museum, for example-- looked short and easy but turned out to be weary miles long and uphill both ways; galleries that went on forever along never-ending streets that left us weary and footsore, but they all had to be seen.

And there were differences in style as well: I prefer to follow maps and discover places on my own, while Ruth liked asking strangers (no better informed than we, in my opinion) for directions at regular intervals. But one way or another, we always managed to find our way, and we never argued about it.

It is not that we had spectacular adventures on these trips. But we took enormous pleasure in the many wonderful performances that we saw: operas at Santa Fe, plays at the Shakespeare Festival and the Shaw Festival, and a great variety of music, drama, and experimental art at Spoleto.  We managed to see almost everything. When tickets were unavailable for the Philip Glass interview, we just sneaked into the hall and waited. There’s a moment, late one night at Spoleto, that epitomizes our whole experience. It was a day on which we had attended a chamber music concert in the morning, choral music in the afternoon and a play at night, with gallery-visiting in between. As we left the theater after the evening’s performance, Ruth asked me, “Where do go next?” She was always ready for more, even though at that point, the only proper response was “Straight to bed.” Those were some of the moments that cemented our friendship and kept it going all these years.

Finally, I will end with a metaphor and a poem, even though they are both somewhat counterintuitive. First, I think it is true that life deals us a number of hands—some good, some bad—and we have to play them as best we can. Ruth played the hands she was dealt with courage, skill, and equanimity. She never despaired, never gave up, never tossed her hand in.

And last, because Ruth loved all the arts, it seems appropriate to end with a poem that to me speaks to the occasion. It is an old-fashioned poem by Ben Jonson, not the sort of poem that is popular today, but one that I love all the same.

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night—
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.

We all know too well that life is never perfect, and yet in Ruth’s life, we see just beauties.  We were fortunate that her life was not cut short, but on the contrary, exceeded the stipulated “three score and ten” that we are allotted. Her life enriched us all, and she will be in our hearts forever.

Ruth photograph

Joel Shapiro's Memory of Ruth

Memory of Ruth

Joel Shapiro (son of Maurice Shapiro)

Holding Ruth's memorial at a "spiritual life center" is just right, for hers was indeed a spiritual life  Not in the sense of being doctrinaire, sectarian or other-worldly. She was anything but.  It was the human spirit that mattered to her -- connecting with the core of goodness that survives every disappointment and adversity.  Ruth had more than her share of those things, but it did not stop her from being the positive person she was.  

The Shapiro family joins in mourning Ruth and celebrating her life  -- her energy and determination, her passion for justice, her continual desire to make a difference for the better.  We are thankful for the love she shared with us and, especially, the good times she and Maury were able to share with one another.  

May her memory always be a blessing.

Nina's Eulogy of Ruth

My Nana 

Nina Padgham-Auslander 

June 25, 2014
(Read aloud by Ellen Schattschneider at Ruth Auslander's Memorial Service)

I have known my grandmother since, well, I was about 15 minutes old, and ever since that day she has been an inspiration to me. I would love to know how she could have made delicious brisket and matzoh ball soup every Passover. I would love to know how she managed to go to an organic food store at least once practically every day. I also wonder how my Nana was able to stomach macrobiotic desserts. No way was she completely human.

My Nana was about 5’2” with dark curly hair and purple rimmed glasses. She walked rather slowly, with a slight limp from a knee injury years ago. She was very gullible, which amused my whole family quite a bit. And sometimes she mangled the English language, for instance, saying, for example, getting something that was worrying her “off her head” instead of “off her chest” or, when talking about computers and the Web “on the line” instead of “online.”

One characteristic that my Nana has always had is being extremely neat. I think she might have been the only person in the world who knew where everything was at any given time. She was also very friendly. She was the kind of person, that, given a crowded elevator, would know everyone’s name by the end of the ride. My grandmother was, in general, a very calm person, and would get mad only when my brother and I fought. She always told me that cleaning my room and keeping things organized would lead to a calmer state of mind and less stress. Then I would remind her that I am a teenager and therefore keeping my room straight is impossible. She would laugh and we’d then move on to another topic.

My grandmother was a highly caring person. For instance, one day when I was about nine, my Nana and I were buying something at Sears when the cashier suddenly started talking to her warmly, thanking her for some reason or other. My Nana smiled and chatted and paid for her purchase. I asked her in the parking lot what that was all about.

“Well,” she said, ”a few years back I was shopping here, and I noticed the woman at the cash register was standing in a puddle wearing only thin shoes. There was a leak of some kind and her feet were wet. So I went out to the drugstore across the street and brought her a pair of rain boots.”

 “Wait. You really did that?”I ask.

 “Of course.”

I rest my case.

Recently I wrote a report for school about elders, so I interviewed Nana. She told me that one of her best memories at age 6 was of the ice cream parlor. Her brothers would always send her to get ice cream for them because the ice cream man was fond of her.”Every time I would go, the ice cream man would always give me the cone with the slip of paper at the bottom that allowed me to get a free ice cream cone. And because each cone that I bought had that slip of paper, I would always come home with three or four ice cream cones. My brothers loved me for that.”

She told that school was, for the most part, exciting and fun. Nana loved learning new things. One of the things she did not enjoy, however, was the first grade teacher, Mrs. Stern. (I’m not making this up.)

“Boy,” Nana said during our interview. “Do I have a story for you about Ms. Stern.

“One day I brought  a plastic ring into school. The kind you find in cereal boxes. I was really in love with that ring. So was another girl, Jackie, from the rich side of town. Well, I loved that ring, but I liked the one Jackie traded me even more. It didn’t matter to us six year olds, because a 5 cent ring was the same as a fifty dollar ring.

“That is, until the day Jackie wanted  to trade back. The problem was that I had lost Jackie’s ring. Jackie, now upset, told the teacher. Mrs. Stern started yelling at me, screaming at me to come to her. But I didn’t. I ran. I ran all the way home and told my mother the whole story. She told me not to worry, that she would fix it. And she did.

“The next day at school, a nice social worker named Ms. Bridges brought me out into the hall and said that that I didn’t need to worry any more about the ring. It turned out that my mother had marched straight into the mayor’s office, demanding in her limited English that her child not be harassed. So the mayor sent the social worker over. “ ‘Don’t worry, Mrs. Stern will be nice to you from now on,’ ” she told me. Nana paused to take a sip of water. “And you know what? Mrs. Stern soon became my favorite teacher.”

I asked Nana whether it was easier growing up now or then.”Times were simpler, of course back then,” she said. “But more rigid. If you were a man,  you only had a few career choices; forget about it if you were a woman. Growing up today,you have so many choices about what you want to be. Then she put her hand on my knee, looked me in the eye, and said “Have you thought about medicine? You would make an excellent doctor.”
 

Bonnie's Eulogy of Ruth

Truths about Ruth

Bonnie Auslander

June 25, 2014
(Read at Ruth Auslander's Memorial Service)

I’m so glad we’re remembering my mother today with a rabbi who is not only is a secular humanist but who also advises the atheists on campus. He would have struck my mother as supplying the perfect degree of Jewishness. She would have adored Ben, and I regret that she never got to meet him, though it’s typical of my mother that even while dead she is helping bring new friends together.
She would also have been pleased that we are here where I work at American University—not just because it is a place of higher learning but because she would have found it convenient.  Convenient for me, I mean--Just think, I’m only a few feet from my office in case I need to step out during the service to take a conference call. My mother’s vein of pragmatism ran very deep, and the funniest manifestation of it was our winter holiday. When Mark and I were kids, we didn’t celebrate Hanukah at all, and we celebrated Christmas in early January. When we finally noticed that all the other little children in our neighborhood unwrapped their presents on the morning December 25th and not January 1st or 3rd, we demanded an explanation. She told us it made sense to postpone. Why? So she could take advantage of the after-Christmas sales.

Ruth was also, as most of you here know, extremely warm-hearted. Often I saw her hug people she’d met only moments before—people whose crossed arms and stern faces clearly communicated their need for vast personal distance. At those moments, as she reached out towards them with her arms open wide, I would cringe and look for the nearest exit, but inevitably the faces of those grim types would be transformed by smiles. Sometimes they’d even return her hugs! Looking back,  I can’t imagine why I ever bothered worrying. She could have charmed an injured bird from the paws of a cat.

Ruth’s pragmatism and warmth belied an intense need for privacy. This sense of privacy ran so deep that it bordered on secretiveness. Perhaps she had to be so reserved to balance out that tremendous warmth. But whatever the reason, she definitely had an enigmatic side. Take, for example, what you would assume to be the straightforward question of her birthplace and birthdate. She was born in Reading but always gave her birthplace as Philadelphia, where she’d moved to when she was six. In the same way, she gave her birthday as February 22, when in fact she was a Leapyear baby, just like Frederick in the Pirates of Penzance. Thus when she died twelve days ago she was not yet 21.

This tendency towards fictionalizing came to her as naturally as breathing. She didn’t tell me her true birthdate till I was a teenager, which is about the age she found her birth certificate and confronted her mother, whom Ruth always described as a superstitious Russian peasant. It seems my grandmother told her oldest daughter that her birthday was a full week earlier, February 22, since to my grandmother to be born on Leap Year was unlucky and would attract the evil eye.

And it was not just about her birthdate and birthplace that my mom was known to freely embellish the truth, especially when authority figures were involved. We visited Rome when Mark and I were teenagers, and I remember how she put her one word of Italian to good use while we looking at the beautiful art of the Vatican. Because of the tremendous crowds there, tourists are required o walk through the museum one-way. You can’t loop back. Mark and I were perfectly safe and ahead of her, which she well knew, but she wanted to see a particular painting a second time. So she found a guard, adopted a worried expression, pointed to the room behind her, and said “Bambini!” Of course the guard let her through.

Thus far I’ve told you about my mother’s pragmatism, her warmth and her secrecy. I’ll wrap up by telling you about two more characteristics: her abiding belief in provisionality and her teaching abilities.

First, provionsality. My mother was a great shopper, and she loved the stores of Rockville Pike because of the easy access it affords to its many great temples of consumerism. But though she was a great shopper, she was an even greater returner. The trunk of her car was always full of shopping bags with clothes and objects that hadn’t quite worked out. I guess this was because she didn’t like to be tied down. For those of you who know the Myers-Briggs, when it came to shopping, she was firmly rooted in the P or perceiving end of the great Perceiving-Judging divide. Indeed, much as some people with terminal illnesses will themselves to stay alive until a certain holiday or wedding has passed, Ruth did not succumb to the last stages of her cancer until she had dragooned Mark into taking her to return several unwanted items to the Container Store and what now strikes me as the mystically named Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

I’ll conclude by telling you about her teaching. First, I must admit that although my mother was a great, if somewhat overbearing, teacher, I was not always a great student. Among the many things she tried to teach me and failed were these: how to fold the towels in the linen closet with the rounded part facing out; how to keep your macrobiotic seaweeds alphabetized (A is for arame!)—oh, and I’m told when she was first married she kept the iron under the “Is”  in the filing cabinet ”; how to put on lipstick perfectly without looking in mirror; how to keep your hair neat; how to keep your kitchen neat; how to keep any-part-of-the-house neat; and being eternally patient and loving with your children. Mark and I can hardly recall her directing a single angry word at us. I’m afraid Milo and Nina cannot say the same about me.

In other areas I have earned passing grades in the School of Mother Ruth: I am good at spying out better seats in a theatre and then moving up to occupy them with an air of total authority and entitlement; clever at navigating an unhelpful clerk on the phone (hang up and try again if you don’t get the answer you want); consistent at making the bed in a motel room even on the morning of check-out (this helps you find things you might have left behind), knowledgeable at interpreting nutrition labels; and an ace at comforting a sick child.

But the biggest teaching of all, and one which we would all do well to try to put into practice, was to assume the best of everyone. She had a way of looking for the good in people, even in ones who come across as crabby or difficult, and under her affectionate gaze it turned out she was right—they weren’t half bad--they actually became better people.

So I hope I’ve given you a sense of my mom: a warm, practical, bossy person who spent a lot of time at the customer service desk returning things and who was also something of a mystery. She really did embody  more than one thing at a time: she was both an elder of 82 and a young adult of 20. This contradiction continues even after her death: Mark and I couldn’t decide what birth date to put on the program. And we intentionally chose a photo for the cover that makes her forever girlish. Mark your calendars now for Feb. 29, 2016. On that day, raise a glass to Ruth—she’ll be 21 at last.

Suggestions donations in Ruth's memory

For those who wish to make donations in Ruth's memory, the family suggests two institutions that were important to Ruth:

1. The Washington Waldorf School Capital Campaign:
http://www.washingtonwaldorf.org/giving/build-our-vision-capital-campaign/

or

2. The Foundation of the National Institutes of Health
https://secure3.convio.net/fnih/site/Donation2?df_id=1581&1581.donation=landing

many thanks,
Mark and Bonnie Auslander

Mark's Eulogy to Ruth

Remembrance of my Mother
“All real living is meeting”

Mark Auslander

June 25, 2014
(Read at Ruth Auslander's Memorial Service)

Going through my mother’s papers a few days after her death, I came across an essay on the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.  Ruth had circled a passage from I and Thou:  “All real living is meeting.”  For Buber, “meeting” is not simply a matter of going through a conventional script of polite exchanges.  It is, rather, the dedicated pursuit of dialogue, grounded in the commitment that all knowledge emerges through our dynamic relationships to persons and things outside of oneself.  A real encounter, a transformative meeting with the Other is thus the most central imperative of our lives as human beings.

This afternoon, I  find myself thinking of some of striking moments of “meeting” in my mother’s life, in Buber’s sense of the term.

She often told the story of standing on the street, one night, with my father Joe in the early years of their marriage,  gazing up at their apartment as firefighters fought a blaze in an adjacent unit.  Joe said to her, “If this was a war, we wouldn’t even be safe on the street.”  At that moment, she said, she was filled with a sense of love for all those, everywhere, suffering the loss of home.  My mother’s story of that “meeting” was characteristic of her: a reminder that one’s own suffering should never be an excuse for self-pity but rather occasion a greater sense of compassion for others.  In Buber’s sense, these are meetings, occasions of “real living,” that take one beyond the conventional confines of the self, even as they help us discover the self.

Other transformative meetings followed her divorce, when she decided to pursue, full time, her education to become a nurse.  She started attending Georgetown University, at age 47.  Simultaneously, she began work in the National Institutes of Health, during the mounting AIDS pandemic.  Ruth, like many of her fellow nurses, quietly reached out to the families of the dying, to arrange for final meetings of reconciliation.  She would describe poignant late night meetings with mothers who were clutching only a letter, seeking a dying son, pleading that Ruth would not let their husbands know that they had come.  Ruth told me that she felt this was the most important work she had ever done, helping those mothers find the courage to come up to the ward and embrace their sons, before their end, acknowledging and accepting them as gay men.

A child of the New Deal, who came of age in the shadow of the Great Depression and the Holocaust, Ruth’s politics were deeply personal, born of her love of individual human beings rather than abstract ideological principles.  In Women’s Strike for Peace, the anti-vietnam war movement, or her later political and ethical engagements, she took her greatest joy in friendship with those who shared her passion for peace and social justice.

Mom also had the gift of knowing how to end a meeting. I remember the moment in October 1987, as I was just about to return to Mtizwa village in Eastern Zambia to complete my doctoral research.  Months earlier, I had been medically evacuated out of the country with cerebral malaria, and nearly died.  Now, I was physically ready to go back, but terrified of doing so, even though, as my mother well knew, I wanted more than anything in the world to return to Mtizwa and pursue my career as a cultural anthropologist. Ruth was herself consumed by worry over my health in Zambia. That moment standing by the airport shuttle van, I was about to prevaricate over leaving, willing to be convinced to do an historical project and never go back into the field. Without warning, Mom suddenly reached out, hugged me, and said proudly, “This time, I know its going to be wonderful.”  And then she quickly turned and walked back into her building. That remembrance-- of her complete, unconditional faith in me and her certain knowledge  I would exceed my expectations of myself--sustained me during the hard months ahead back in Africa.  It sustains me now.

Then, there were other partings, other endings. After her diagnosis with lung cancer, three years ago, she was tireless in her quest for treatment.  She enrolled herself in a promising clinical trial at Sloan Kettering.  Once or twice a week she took the Vamoose bus up to New York City, for treatment and tests. She took great pride in doing these trips on her own, and often returned energized with stories of the fascinating people she had met along the way. She knew, she explained, that she had tried everything.

“All real living is meeting.” This principle infused, in a manner that continues to astound us, her final day of consciousness. Two weeks ago to the day, my mother awoke, after a difficult, painful night, in her Hospice room, with full clarity of mind. She proceeded, when confronted with difficult medical choices, to choose a pathway that would suspend treatment and allow her to end her suffering while maintaining her dignity.  She then drew up a list of many people, nearly all of them women, she wanted to speak to by telephone to make her farewells. Each conversation was different, but each was full of compassion, concern, and grace. We must, she told each person, hold on to what we have shared together, which has been so full and beautiful. To the last, she comforted each of her interlocutors. That evening, she presided over an impromptu dinner party in the hospice’s common room, of Burmese take-out.  Characteristically, she insisted for this event on getting out of her wheelchair and sitting in a proper seat, at the head of the table--concerned for everyone’s welfare, taking pleasure in the free-ranging conversation. 

Around 4:30 a.m. that morning she slipped into what would be her final sleep, about 28 hours in a “non-responsive state.”   We will never know what she was conscious of during this period of rest, as she breathed steadily, sixteen times a minute. She was surrounded throughout this time by family and friends. The grandchildren played a beautiful violin concert;  we shared family memories as we looked through old photograph albums; Bonnie played for her a haunting compilation on the recorder of all the songs she had sung to us as children.  I noticed again and again that however the nurses rearranged her on the bed,  Ruth would return to a characteristic gesture, her right hand resting lightly over her left forearm. She was, we all felt sure, still present

Friday morning, it was raining heavily, and I was alone with Ruth by her bedside. I was holding her hand as her steady, quiet breaths continued. The rain stopped and the clouds parted. “Look, Mom,” I said, “The sun has come out.”  I heard two softer, quieter breaths.  And then all stopped.  I gazed at her face, bathed in the sudden, unexpected sunlight. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she was about to say something, suspended in mid-thought.  I like to think she was in the midst of yet another meeting, a new encounter, the very stuff which all real life is made of.

Yet, that is not the moment I will hold most clearly of my mother. Rather, in my mind’s eye I see her recounting, so many times, her very favorite joke.  A story, appropriately, about a meeting.

 This is the joke, she would always explain, with which her dear friend Amy Kleppner invariably started her Introduction to Philosophy course: 

A nervous young man, about to go out on his first date, anxiously asks a more experienced friend for guidance. There are three conversation topics that can’t fail on a date, he is counseled; food, family, and philosophy. 

So at dinner with the young woman, he carefully consults his list: Food.
He asks her, “Do you like lokshen?” (the noodle kugel served at shabbat)
“No!” she says,
He consults his list again: Family. “Do you have a brother?” 
“No!” she says.
Back to the list. Philosophy.
“If you had a brother, would he like lokshen?”

Amidst my sorrow, I still hear her mischievous laughter erupting over that hilariously awkward meeting, a tale which so embodies her love of paradox, the absurd, and of the impossible quest that sustains us all, to truly know another person in the face of our all-too-human frailties. The truest meetings, Ruth taught us, are to be found in humor. And somewhere,  I am sure, she is laughing still.


-------
Ruth loved the theater and loved the work of the actor, David Margulies, who was a cousin through marriage.  David will now read to us a poem by Jane Kenyon, entitled “Happiness."

Please see:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/28400

Ruth Auslander Obituary

Open-hearted and curious to the last, Ruth Auslander died on June 13 at Montgomery Hospice’s Casey House. She had been treated for lung cancer for three years. Born in 1932 in Reading, PA, to Isidore and Yetta Epstein, Ruth moved as a child with her family to Philadelphia and lived in the Washington, D.C., area for over 50 years. A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Nursing, she worked as a nurse at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in units ranging from oncology to mental health. Her first marriage, to Joe Auslander, ended in divorce; her second husband was the late Maurice Shapiro. 

 A woman of enormous warmth, generosity, and intelligence, Ruth made new friends even in the last weeks of her life. She loved classical music, especially opera, museums, good theatre and movies. She was also a dedicated student of macrobiotic cooking and a deep believer in social justice. 

Ruth (c)1950s

Ruth is survived by her children, Mark and Bonnie Auslander; her grandchildren Nina and Milo Auslander-Padgham; her children-in-law Ellen Schattschneider and Jon Padgham ; the Epstein, Zeltzer, and Shapiro families; and, her great and diverse circle of friends. Instead of flowers, donations can be made in her memory to the Washington Waldorf School Capital Campaign or to the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health. Memorial services will be held at 1:00 p.m on Wednesday, June 25, in the Kay Spiritual Life Center at American University (Massachusetts and Nebraska avenues, N.W. Washington, D.C.)

Ruth 1984

Ruth and brother Norman, 2003

Ruth 2010

Ruth and son Mark, 2000

Ellen, Mark, Ruth, Nina, Jon and Bonnie, 2003