Treasured Friendships — Part II
Last week, in Treasured Friendships—Part One, I introduced my friend—the poet, Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts—who I met through his late wife, Tey. Elliot and I grew close during the final months of Tey’s life in early 2010, and our friendship has continued to grow ever since.
Healing from the loss of his beloved wife of half a century was a slow and sorrowful process for Elliot, but eventually, after almost five years, he knew the time had come to move forward with his life. Soon after, Elliot connected with Deborah Sharp, a woman he’d known through their work as docents and board members at Tor House—the home of the late American poet, Robinson Jeffers.
Elliot told me about his new, quickly blossoming relationship with Deborah on a bright, clear day on one of our ocean-side walks. The instant I saw him, I knew something dramatic had changed, and I was eager to meet the woman who had brought so much delight into Elliot’s life. He promised to invite her on our next walk.
Elliot and Deborah in 2015. Photo by Wendy Moorty
I liked Deborah right away. She was energetic yet calm—a kind, grounded no-nonsense woman with a keenly perceptive, intelligent and curious mind. After a few polite words of introduction, Deborah told me that she was especially happy to meet me because she had known my parents. Decades ago, in December 1995, when she’d been a writing instructor at Monterey Peninsula College and a free-lance reporter, she’d written a story about them for a popular local paper, The Carmel Pine Cone. Her article came out in conjunction with the release of my father’s self-published book, I’m small, I’M BIG—How We Choose to Live. My father had liked Deborah so much that after the interview he asked if he could hire her to edit his writings for another book he was working on, In Quest of the Eternal Sunshine.
I was stunned and thrilled by this coincidence. Since moving to California in 1983, my parents had mostly kept to themselves and had never developed a circle of friends. It was extremely rare for me to meet people who could share recollections of them, and absolutely astonishing to meet someone who had collaborated with my father on his manuscript!
Deborah met my parents at their home to conduct the interview. She told me that it was their faces that captured and held her attention. “The depth of what they had experienced was all right there. I had been born and raised in Carmel, and had never before come face-to-face with survivors of the Holocaust, which to me was the apex of horror. I felt privileged to meet them. It was a remarkable experience.”
Deborah observed that the suffering of the Holocaust was truly behind my father. He spoke with detachment about the war, telling her that it wasn’t death that people feared most in the camps; it was the cruelty they experienced. “But even that he said without anger or horror,” Deborah recalled, “It was just a stated fact. He even laughed about his difficult childhood, chuckling about how much he had daydreamed to block out the harshness.”
Soon after our walk, Deborah emailed me a scan of the Pine Cone article. Reading it now—after spending so many years putting my father’s life story and philosophy into words—I am amazed at the richness and depth of the article’s content.
Deborah’s conversation with my father dove into personal, philosophical, and mystical realms. “I always repressed my emotions,” Deborah quoted him as saying. “I was mechanical. I worked like an automation.” But it was clear to her that he had journeyed beyond that to accept himself, his emotions, and the richness of life.
My father told Deborah that he believed all humans are on an evolutionary journey. “We are all one thought, one mind. The greatest contribution a person can make to humanity is to change himself and to recognize his place in the oneness of the universe.” My father said that forgiveness is not always easy, but when we see ourselves as one with the universe, forgiveness comes naturally, because “if you hurt me, you hurt yourself as well.”
When Deborah began working with my father, he mentioned that he was a little startled by the way he wrote about his philosophy, using words that didn’t sound like himself. “I think he felt he had to give his writing a kind of weight in order for people to pay attention to his ideas.” Deborah said, “But I always thought his personal essays—his reminiscences of his childhood and the war—were his best writing. I pushed him to include them in his manuscript, which surprised him. I think he thought I was crazy. He didn’t recognize the power of the writing he did about his own life.”
Deborah told me how eager my father had been to share his life-changing revelations with the world, but that nothing ever came of his numerous attempts to find a publisher.
The timing of my conversation with Deborah couldn’t have been more auspicious. Earthbound Farm—the business my husband and I had started in 1984—had been sold earlier that year, so for the first time in three decades, I didn’t have a big business or kids at home that needed my time and attention. I had found my father’s unpublished manuscript after his death two years earlier, and I was contemplating what I wanted to do with it: Did I want to pick up where my beloved father had left off? Should I dedicate myself to helping him fulfill his dream, albeit posthumously? Was I up for the huge challenge of trying to publish a book?
During the four years I was immersed in researching and writing Quest for Eternal Sunshine, Elliot and Deborah generously read version after version, giving me honest, insightful feedback. Elliot was descended from grandparents that fled persecution in Eastern Europe, and he grew up with Yiddish spoken in his home and many of the vestiges of “old-world” culture that I experienced as well. He felt a kinship with my father. Both had been highly observant and sensitive young boys who endured much suffering in their youth.
Thinking back to the first time Elliot told me about Deborah, I remember his quiet certainty that they would build a life together, even though they’d only been with one another for a few short weeks. Now, almost six years later, their mutual respect and love continue to grow, and that love continues to brighten my world, filling me with hope and optimism. What Elliot told me back then is still true today: He is happy and content, because his life is filled with love—both loving and being loved. Elliot, like my father, consciously chose life and love over suffering.
When I sign my name to Quest for Eternal Sunshine, I write “To Life!” in my father’s honor. Despite the tremendous hardships he experienced, my father chose this difficult but beautiful world over and over again. Both my father and Elliot are inspiring examples of people who ride the waves of life bravely and appreciatively. With open hearts, they share their unique gifts with the world.
I will close with a poem of Elliot’s that is filled with much beauty and truth. He wrote it after he and Deborah had been together for seven months.
Elliot’s most recent book of poems, White Fire, published by Ping-Pong Free Press, is available from the Henry Miller Memorial Library.
