Page 259 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text
P. 259
Reminiscences
Papa told me, “I don’t have a lot of money to leave you, but I
have something better than that: my carvings and the papers I’m
writing.” So he had a set of values that were very specially his own:
you should know your history; a people shouldn’t fade away. He’d
had emphysema, but what carried him off was his stroke. We noticed
that he’d fall asleep a lot, but he managed to keep on going. Rudy and
I had gone to Arrowhead for the weekend, and when we got back my
sister was frantic. She said, “Papa’s very sick, and I can’t get him to
do anything about it. You do it.” I think she was afraid of him.
So I went over to his place. He was at the table and falling
forward, with his head on the table. I told him, “Papa, if you don’t let
us take you to the hospital, I will call an ambulance and you’ll have
the embarrassment of being carried out in front of all your
neighbors.” So he agreed to go. We went to Midway. He had a
wonderful doctor, Simeon Marcus. But he would never tell a doctor
anything. It was the doctor’s job to find out what was wrong, he
would say, and he wasn’t going to help him. Marcus told us it was a
stroke, and he would do what he could, but it got worse and worse.
Papa was transferred to a convalescent hospital, but his mind
wandered. We went to see him one day and he gave me a lecture, that
I should obey my husband. Then he gave Rudy one of his shoes,
asking to have it fixed. And that was a shock, because Papa had
always done his own cobbling. Finally, he no longer knew me. The
doctor finally said to us that there was no more hope, and that he
would no longer “give orders.” And that was a great kindness on his
part.
By that time we knew about the urn, and now I’m sorry I obeyed
his orders—which were to place his ashes in it. It was a magnificent
piece of work. It conformed to state laws regarding thickness and the
lead lining. He covered it with copper, chased with images of the
twelve tribes all around it, and his name and date of birth. It was
always wrapped in a towel up in a closet in that little apartment. He
wanted to be cremated, but I wish I’d kept it, because it was so
beautiful. So there it is, in the columbarium. Quite unorthodox, of
course.
255