Bunny Maron Looks Back Through Her Poetry

Bunny Maron’s life changed forever nearly 2 ½ years ago when her husband, Mell, died in January of 2022. The 91-year-old Maron, who lives at Sunrise at Huntcliff Summit, a senior community in Sandy Springs, was married for 70 years to the love of her life. Even though he was 90 when he died of congestive heart failure, his passing came on suddenly.

“On New Year’s Eve, we were sitting in the corner table at Huntcliff Summit, and we danced, and he kissed me, and we went to bed. And then the next morning, he couldn’t get out of bed,” Maron said.

She sat by his bedside for the next 13 days, as he slipped away, praying from a small book that her rabbi had given her and holding his hand. They had such a full and happy life together, but even after all these years, she was still looking to the future.

In May, Bunny Maron became a bat mitzvah at Sunrise At Huntcliff Summit in Sandy Springs.

“My only regret is that that we didn’t have a longer life together because I felt vital. And I thought he was vital, and I just never. I never really thought he would die.”

These days, she busies herself with projects that she describes as creative. She paints, does needle point, and performs in a small theater group that performs at her independent living community along Roswell Road not far from the Chattahoochee. She had a bat mitzvah this summer in Huntcliff’s large activities room and spoke in her speech to the many guests who filled the room, that it was something she had wanted to do all her life.

She’s a great-grandmother and a few months ago there was a brief news item about how she and the three generations of her family had gone to a matinee of “Annie,” the Broadway hit of years past that’s a favorite of her five-year-old great-granddaughter. And she’s taken up writing about her life now.

When she can’t get back to sleep in the middle of the night, she finds a sudden inspiration to sit at her computer and write reflectively about her life now as a greatgrandmother.

“The outer shell of a Great is cracked,” she wrote in one poem about her life with the youngest members of her family.

“We cannot get down on the floor to play (because we can’t get up). Our fingers are numb, our legs are stiff, and our memories are faded.

“I have 4 Greats. But now the Grands are treating you as a child. Use your walker, use your cane. Take your pill and don’t fall. Don’t fall! Don’t fall!”

She raised three children. They are all successful and happy in life. One son is in the entertainment business and produces movies and television series in London. Another son is an oral surgeon in Atlanta. Her daughter is a physical therapist who helps her clients recover from the effects of facial palsy.

Her husband had been a Hollywood movie executive. He had started out as an office boy at MGM and had worked his way up to running what were called the “road shows” at MGM. He brought back “Gone With The Wind” when it was re-released in a 70MM widescreen format with six track stereo sound.

There was an overture at the beginning an intermission in the middle and you made a reservation to see it, just like a Broadway show. He did the same for such classics as Stanley Kubrick’s, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and “Doctor Zhivago.”

Later, he helped introduce martial arts actor, Bruce Lee, to audiences here. He was instrumental in popularizing the Japanese-made “Godzilla” series of films to America. He helped make them so successful that so far, the series has produced 38 films, with the last one, “Godzilla Minus One,” earning an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects this year. She says her husband would have felt proud of the Oscar if he was still around. As it was, he was still trying to promote a friend’s movie just before he fell ill.

Today, she looks back on all that they did together. The travel, the premieres, their life in spotlight on the red carpet and looks, as she did recently, in the mirror at herself, without him, and asks, “Who is the fairest one of all?”

“The old lady in the mirror never answers me back, until one day as I turned away – she said, ‘I cannot answer that question because I cannot see what is inside – if you are kind and loving, forgiving and generous, you are beautiful.’

“I smile at the old lady in the mirror and said, ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall – I feel beautiful after all!’”