A Prayer for Elsa

Elsa (not her real name) is 96 and a Holocaust survivor. She lives alone in a Section 8 subsidized studio apartment in Hollywood, which she rents for $218 a month. Her carpet has not been replaced since the 1970s. It is dirty and makes her slippers dingy and dark.

She cannot see very well and the lighting in the apartment is inadequate. She struggles with shame and self-recrimination about living “abnormally” in a pigsty. She works from morning to night, seven days a week, she says, to keep things orderly. It is hard for a 96-year-old but she does it. The apartment smells fresh. The kitchen and bathroom are always clean. Spotless, really. I am always amazed. She receives help from a variety of agencies but it is, through no one’s fault, uneven and patchy. Life is complicated and there are holes in the system. There’s family, but even then.

Writing this, I am asking myself why I have not done more. I keep meaning to call the landlord to see if adequate lighting is possible but I am stopped by Elsa’s voice in my head: Don’t challenge the authorities because they will make life difficult for her. What if they find a way to throw her out on the street? What if she were to become homeless? What then? I used to tell her that wouldn’t happen. I told her she could come and live with me. She laughed. I was at first hurt until I finally understood that she trusts no one. Her life experience and traumas have shaped her worldview. She walks in the world with honesty and direct candor. The world is not always prepared for such filter-free communication. It has gotten her in trouble more than once. Her faithful friends see a miracle in her: gritty, scrappy, elegant, erudite, earthy, charming, funny and (did I say) brilliant. Shakespeare, Albee, Arthur Miller: she quotes great minds and, in darker moments, Hitler. 

Last week, while I was at the IKAR Shabbaton in Ojai, she called me. She was in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital with congestive heart failure. She asked to be taken to Cedars Sinai, a hospital she trusts, but the ambulance drivers, as required, took her to the closest hospital, Hollywood Pres.

Her cardiologist of 40 years recently retired. She said its sad when you out-stay your doctors and caregiver’s career. It is hard to start over and become unknown after 50 years of being known. She loved her South African doctor. She said he never entered the room alone. Hashem always accompanied him. She felt safe in his care. The new doctors seem young and lovely but they do not know her and the practice of medicine has changed in her lifetime. There were no concierge doctors at one time.

Elsa never had children and the family she does have is not in Los Angeles. Her social worker from Jewish Family Services was on vacation when this all went down. The social worker at the hospital was incommunicado for days. No judgement. The caseloads are to blame, not the people.

Through calls and calls and calls to community leaders and professionals, Elsa was given a bed at Grancell Village, the rehab arm of the Jewish Home. Dr. Noah Marco, Jewish Health’s extraordinary medical director, shepherded her path. 

Tonight, Elsa sleeps in a clean room, safe and secure. But her future is filled with worry. It is hard to be old in America, she says. I see she is right. Even with resources the journey is arduous. But without? Without resources, the journey is treacherous and terrifying.

We must do better. In corners all over this city, elders suffer alone. We must seek them out and see them. We must slow down to help them. We must hold them patiently as they struggle to express themselves or ask the same question twice. We must show them love, respect and care.

We must do better. In corners all over this city, elders suffer alone. We must seek them out and see them. We must slow down to help them. We must hold them patiently as they struggle to express themselves or ask the same question twice. We must show them love, respect and care. 

The inscription over the door at the Jewish Home reads, in Hebrew and English: 

 “Do not cast us off in old age
When our strength fails,
Do not forsake us “

May we watch over these women and men at this defining chapter of their lives, with the love and dignity all children of God warrant and merit. May we, may we show them love before they breath their final breath.

Amen.

Samara Hutman, co-founder/director of The Righteous Conversations Project, is grateful to know, and have known, many women and men of the last generation of Holocaust Survivors in Los Angeles, New York and Israel.