Why Annette Shapiro Transcends Obituaries

There are some people who will just never die. They can’t. It’s unimaginable to consider the world without them. They are such a constant; always at the meeting, showing up to the shiva, shushing the other ladies in the cardroom or ruling the boardroom. They are always there.

That is Annette Shapiro.

I say “is” as I can’t let her go…and shouldn’t. Here organizing skills could run a Fortune-500 company; instead, she used them for the betterment of the Los Angeles Jewish community, for furthering medical research, for ensuring that those who were marginalized through “missing the mark” were not shamed, but redeemed. We can all read about her accomplishments, her, no doubt, $1 Billion in fundraising (sum total adjusted to today’s figures) and more. But what we can’t capture through the obits is what we are all missing. Her essence: the astonishing humanity cloaked in a light of doing what is right.

As her daughter-in-law, I thanked her weekly for “the gift of birthing her granddaughters and raising them with her values.” And even though they arrived when she was 83 and 85, she was “Grandma” – remembering every birthday, holiday and event with “a card and a present” and showing up at every “Grandparents event” at their school, every show they were in, every graduation…she was there.

The night before her stroke, I was studying Sefer Yetzirah at Kripalu in Lennox, Mass (what a sentence!). I returned to our Airstream (yes, we are the rogue, bohemian rebels of the Shapiro clan!) to Joel with excitement about what I was studying, and engaged him in “Chazarah” – the evening review of text study. Animated, I shared with Joel the concepts and relationships of Jewish storytelling; of symbols connecting story and season, writing and numbers. It was as if a holographic Torah was arising, and through it, the membrane between life and eternity was stretched thin. We went to bed, and I had a dream.

In the dream, Annette was in her breakfast room, but its walls were filled with her awards from her study. She was with three women that I did not recognize, and they were discussing “someone dying.” I immediately called out to Joel “Call Hatzolah! Call Hatzolah” (the Jewish paramedics). I awoke, and shared the dream with Joel, recognizing that the three women were his cousin’s widow and their two daughters. Picking up my phone to write the dream down, I discovered a dozen texts “where is Joel?”; “Please have Joel call.” “Emergency, it’s Grandma.” That was five am August 5^th, a few hours after her stroke.

Currently, we all sit in Aninut. It’s the in-between phase from the moment of death until the burial, in this case nine days. I don’t know about you, reader, who is reading this, but if you are a friend of Annette’s (and at 96, she actively had hundreds, if not, thousands), I am wondering if you are also sitting and feeling wounded; as if a piece of yourself is missing. Personally, I realize in this silence and stillness that “Annette was my mother-in-law for the same amount of time I spent in my parent’s house as a child” (even more, as I spent a year away at summer camp). In my in-between, I keep thinking about “how can I preserve her memory? How can I teach my children posthumously of what was more than a value but a quality of being and a road map for living? A quality of efficiency, precision, action and strategy. A divine balance of humility and vanity. A golden heart of goodness that balanced her own personal struggles with the fact that the world is filled with radical amazement – so get over yourself! Annette was a Beverly Hills contradiction – a regal queen bee of the LA Jewish Community who could cry in front of others and model that vulnerability and plastic surgery are not mutually exclusive.

Now there are tears. Joel and my daughters’ “memories of their grandmother” won’t increase more than their 10 or 13 years. But, I can keep her alive. You can keep her alive. We all can keep her alive. Through learning about her and other amazing people like Annette. Through ensuring that Jewish LA continues to model for our city the best of humanity, including the stranger and margainalized in our midst. We can remember that it is through all of us working together that impact happens. And that’s what this master weaver did – she made sure that we knew one another, met one another and then donated plenty to effect the change for a better world with one another bringing everyone with us.

So break down the silo, and connect. That is what each of us can do “when giants fall.” As we sit in Elul, it’s the perfect time to reflect upon our lives and release what no longer serves us as we “Face our Concept of God to grow towards our own inner Godliness.” Annette lived 96 years eternally young, eternally sitting at her breakfast table, and banging her hand so hard that the plates and glasses shook, a clarion call like a shofar: “Just let it go! Move on! That’s right, Let it go!”

Let it go. Move on. Forgive. Love. Admit that even if we get to live 96 years, it will never be enough; and yet, if we live life through love it will, indeed, never end.