December 19, 2007--Barbara Cohen, R.I.P.

She grew up in hard times. So hard that some days there wasn’t enough money for food for Barbara and her brother and sister. But her mother still managed with what little there was and also found ways to put aside a few pennies each week to use to buy books. She was a reader and also wanted books in the house for her children.

Many men in those days saw it to be their responsibility to be the sole provider for their families. Not being able to do so was humiliating to them and drove many to despair and anger. Anger that they often turned against their family, especially their wives.

Just a few days ago, as we sat beside her bed in an effort to bring her some brief comfort, Barbara in a haze of medication, told us stories from those days. Many sweet and joyous but others of a more ominous kind. How one evening, when there was barely enough for them to eat, her father lashed out at her mother and said, “Why don’t you eat your books!”

But her mother took the risk to continue to find ways to save so she could acquire more; and as a result Barbara became a voracious reader and died very early this morning in an apartment filled with light, her mother’s books, and others that later in life she bought for herself, devoured, and cherished.

I came to know her that way, as did Rona, through her love of books and the places to which they transported her. She and Rona were classmates and students of mine at New York University; and, along with Lillian, their mutual friend, who in effect became a loving second sister to Barbara (all members of Barbara’s immediate family predeceased her in spite of Barbara’s tireless ministering) the inseparable three of them were among the best students I encountered during my many years of teaching.

Especially Barbara. American and European history, literature, philosophy, and art history consumed her. Even during her last moments of clarity this week, she spoke luminously to Rona and me about her favorite, Jane Austen—rereading Pride and Prejudice was Barbara’s final autonomous act. The very last was having her dear friend Mary read her all of A Thousand Splendid Suns. She found it even better, she told us, these were almost her last words, than The Kite Runner. More nuanced she said and even more meaningfully disturbing.

So like Barbara, with her last breath, to want to deal with something that intense.

And how she dealt with, this is an inadequate way to put her final acts and understandings, how she dealt with her certain end was in character. She told us not to weep for her, and we will try not to, because wasn’t what was coming, after all she asked, just a part of the larger cycle?

We tried to understand and assimilate that in all its complexity, but do not as yet have her wisdom. So in the end, how often have you heard this—though here more true than cliché, that as she struggled and pushed herself at times as my student to understand more and then even more, in the end I became her student. 

And like her I am now doing the struggling. She would be very disappointed in me if I did not make that commitment. Which I will, because her lessons are the most profound and I need to learn them.