How United Airlines and Fantastiks Finished off My Mother.
Marjorie Rosenblatt Gray passed away last month after a long illness. She surprised the experts by actively surviving for half-a-year beyond her doctor’s estimated expiration date. Pancreatic cancer is no picnic, but my mother never liked picnics anyway. How can you eat on the ground?
Other than progressive tiredness and weakness, she did not suffer much pain until the last couple of weeks. And then Mom surprised us with a request for medical marijuana. Overnight FedEx delivered through the courtesy of a Seattle friend. Mom was impressed but, in the end, stuck with her morphine.
Last Yom Kippur (Oct ’18) when the diagnosis came in, my mother organized with a vengeance. Her desire to leave her affairs in order drove her to complete tasks that had eluded her for decades: to clear out her desk, office, and closets. Admirable, but Jeez, the stuff she saved! Mom returned every summer camp postcard I ever sent.
Her planning included flowers, food, coffin selection, funeral director interviews, and a “no tattoos”policy for pallbearers. The choice of a rabbi took a while due to her serial temple memberships. An apple-cheeked, cherub at the Reform Jewish Congregation of Merrick won the day. Rabbi “Mickey”ran the temple that my parents founded (in a firehouse) seventy years ago. My mother was under 21 at the time and could not sign the legal documents.
At the funeral service, the rabbi confessed the eulogy he gave was written by my mother herself.
The first “sign the end was near”came in the mail.
Out of character, in 1960, my parents invested $300 for 1% of an off-Broadway musical. The Fantastiks became the little show that could. Something like 21,000% later, the story is theatre history. Don Farber, a Merrick neighbor, brought them to this investment opportunity. Just starting out in his legendary entertainment legal career, Don messed up the paperwork. My folks should have received royalty checks for 29 years as is customary for early investors. He doubled the length of the agreement. My parents received checks from The Fantastiksfor 58 years; the final check and K-1 arrived in January 2019. I think it was eighteen bucks.
The Last (s)Mile(s)
Last fall, after a few shuffles in her will, Mom turned her attention to more serious, final asset distributions. She obsessed about her remaining eighteen hundred United MileagePlus points. When she tried to transfer the miles to my sister, she encountered the new United policy that added a $60 fee to the gift. Well, that just wasn’t going to do. Eighteen hundred United MileagePlus points don’t buy or fly anything. My mother dwelt on this gordian problem for months as her illness progressed. It never left her mind. It may have kept her going.
The day before she died, my mother, her skin now fluorescent yellow, suddenly sat up and asked, “What about the United Miles?” We reminded her that her only granddaughter had somehow managed to use them for her visit last Mother’s Day. Mom relaxed back into her pillow pile. Ah, yes. Problem solved. She passed away the next day.
My mom would have been 90 on Oct 9, 2019.
