Marcia Caller Jaffe’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2024
Marcia Caller Jaffe shares her thoughts and inspiration for the Jewish New Year.
After 37 years with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and now with the AJT, , Jaffe’s focus is lifestyle, art, dining, fashion, and community events with emphasis on Jewish movers and shakers.
Losing a sister, the hard way
I’m no stranger to reciting kaddish, over parents, the natural order of things. Never did I anticipate burying my only sister, Susan Caller, just 12 weeks ago succumbing to the cruelty of Alzheimer’s. I still don’t know why she died so quickly. One week hiking, then going under hospice care and round-the-clock, in-home aides in what seemed like “no time.” I understand the forgetfulness of dementia but am still left with discerning what really clicked in her mind to shut down. Was she fearful? In pain, but where? The brain forgets to eat in just 10 days?
Since she had no children, her decades of belongings, after teaching in public school for over 40 years, were left frozen in time to dissolve. What’s left to keep or toss to remember a soul? Now I am throwing out her Ohio State diploma, Hebrew school report cards, old National Geographic magazines, lipsticks, and packs of travel photos; then deciding to keep (and wear) some of her athletic outfits, wrapping paper, cell phone, exotic green tea bags … things she treasured and held onto for years, just to toss? I drove dozens of two-feet-high tennis trophies to Goodwill. It darn near broke my heart.
Her funeral on July 2, just 10 days shy of her 79th birthday, was “one for the books.” Extra tents were set up to accommodate the generations of inner-city students and fellow teachers, family and friends. Midway though the service, the blue sky turned jet black, and the heavens opened up in thunderous lightening and pounding rain on a newly dug open grave. Attendees ran for their cars, and commented, “This is just like Susan to make her presence known.”
Friend Martha Jo Katz summed it up best, “You can always get another husband, but you can never get another sister.” Worse than tossing material “things,” the greatest void is the overlapping memory bank. No one else remembers our dancing the Maypole in grammar school, or that our driveway was so steep, we were not allowed to get our driver’s license on time. No one else would even care.
Marcia Caller Jaffe is a freelance writer for the Atlanta Jewish Times.
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