My cousin, the Jewish singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman, came from a family of Women Who Don’t Die. We are strong, stubborn, prickly, gifted at taking care of each other, even as we sometimes make each other miserable and crazy. Or, to put it simply, we adore each other.
As devastating as Debbie’s death on Jan. 9 at age 59 is to the people who loved her music and sang it in synagogues, camps, and concert halls, it is as if a nuclear bomb has gone off in my family.
Until Debbie, the only woman on our mother’s side to die in our lifetime was Bubby (my grandmother, Eva Chernoff Buchenbaum). She was 92. A week after her stroke in 1992, lying in hospice with no food or water, she was still alive.
The hospice staff didn’t understand it. Debbie did. She called the cousins and asked us to tell Bubby that it was okay for her to go and we would be all right without her. Only then did she die, with Debbie at her side singing her into the olam ha’ba (world to come).
Debbie’s mother and aunts — Bubby’s daughters — are 95, 93, 88 and 82. My cousins and I easily imagined we would get that old, too. My sister Debby and I were confident that Debbie and her sisters would comfort us — and we them — when it came time to bury our mothers.
We never imagined having to comfort our mothers and Debbie’s sisters when we buried her. Our conversations about that time had always focused on how we would look out for our cousins Barbara (Egli), Cheryl, and Debbie after the moms were gone.
Not just ours
But Debbie wasn’t just ours. Thousands of people loved and cared about her — people she’d touched through her music, the living manifestation of her commitment to helping them get in touch with their own spirituality. For many, she was a beloved teacher and friend.
So it wasn’t entirely surprising that I learned Debbie was in the hospital from my friend Marge Eiseman, before opening my sister’s e-mail.
“The Internet is burning up,” Marge said. People wanted to know what was wrong, what they could do, how they could give back a piece of what she had given them. It was an enormous outpouring of genuine concern.
I called Aunt Freda, then began posting brief Facebook updates on Debbie’s condition that were accurate but also respected her — and her immediate family’s — privacy. I wanted to take care of what I could.
Besides, we’d been through enough past medical scares with Debbie that I wasn’t too alarmed. She’d always pulled through, and after all, the women in my family lived forever.
I checked the Internet and read my Facebook feed. Friends, real and virtual, sent messages of concern and comfort. Some knew who Debbie was. Many, even those who were Jewish, didn’t know we were related.
Because my sister and I were the only cousins who came of age playing guitar and attending Reform movement camps as Debbie’s music was catching fire in the mid-1970s, we’d learned it was a double-edged sword to out ourselves as her cousin.
It was sweet to have a little social cachet, as we were both social misfits used to getting attention for being related to someone important. Our father, the Reform rabbi in Debbie’s native Utica, had died shortly before we began attending Kutz Camp in Warwick, N.Y.
Ultimately, we both realized we were more comfortable being anonymous misfits. During our joint 1976 camp summer, shortly after being dropped off, a fellow teen came rushing at us.
“Debbie Friedman’s cousins!” she screamed, prostrating herself and kissing our feet. We were horrified. Beyond confirming the truth if asked directly, I never again spoke of the relationship at camp.
Finding balance
As the years went by and Debbie became an increasing presence in the world of Jewish music, we found our own balance. We balanced the public Debbie and the private one — the one we never had enough time to see, but who loved and nurtured us as best she could while struggling with her own health and busy work schedule.
When I went through an ugly divorce and needed to get a job, Debbie provided me a work wardrobe, giving me power suits and other beautiful clothing she no longer wore. When my oldest daughter wanted to go to Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute, the Reform camp in Oconomowoc, Debbie helped make it happen.
But sometimes I resented Debbie’s pull on the family. As a broke single mom, I couldn’t compete with what Debbie had to offer my mother.
Mom had loved being Rabbi Waldman’s wife as much as Debby and I had loved being his daughters. Being Debbie Friedman’s aunt was almost as good. She and her sisters got attention at concerts when Debbie acknowledged them from the stage. When Mom attended Reform Movement functions, she got introduced as Debbie’s aunt.
Realizing that didn’t make Mom’s decisions to choose Debbie concerts over visits with my children and me hurt less, but understanding where it came from made it a little easier to deal with my feelings.
As we grew older, circumstances improved for Debbie, and for me. We had finally arrived at a time where we could relax and enjoy each other.
I was settled in Milwaukee with a good job, lovely husband, and grown children, working and going to school for a master’s degree. Debbie and my cousin Gribbenes (her dog) had relocated to California from New York to be near her mom, Aunt Ann, and Cheryl. She loved her teaching job at Hebrew Union College.
My sister and family visited her in July and had a great time. Gene Haack, my husband, and I were looking forward to seeing her at a wedding in October, but she ended up having to work, so didn’t come at the last minute. We were disappointed, but knew we’d catch up in person at some point.
Saturday night, Jan. 8, was the moment I knew it might not happen. I went to bed numb. My fear that the worst had happened was confirmed Sunday morning. By the time I heard what I already knew, the only thing was to wait for information on when to fly out for the funeral, and then begin to learn how to be a family without Debbie.
That night, I called to let the family know when I’d be arriving. Mom answered.
“I’m so glad you’re coming,” she said. “You and Debby are on the list to carry her casket.”
My mother’s matter-of-fact words were the knife through my heart. Debbie was dead. I was going to carry her casket.
I didn’t want to upset Mom. Somehow, I managed to keep it together long enough to say goodbye. Then, I cried and cried.
Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer, a member of the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
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