My friend is gone.

Miriam Rotstein Goldapple passed away yesterday, May 6, 2020.

The photos above show a bunch of us pals getting together for brunch, a couple of years ago. Miriam is the redhead here, the Lady in Pink.

We met in elementary school. Sharing the same sense of humour and love of reading, we walked to school together, and were in the same classes. We were both conscientious students. We both had our little quirks – she could be absent-minded; I had a morbid fear of being late.

We had curly hair in common.

She spent a few days at our country cabin that my family rented one summer in Joliette. I remember she and my mom both loved tea (I didn’t). They’d drink it sitting on the deck chairs amid the crabgrass, dubbing the rite: Tea on the Lawn. I swear they stuck their pinkies out as they raised the teacups to their mouths. We also played quite a bit of badminton… and laughed a lot.

After high school Miriam and I went separate ways. But we always kept in touch. I visited her when her first of three kids was a toddler. Her mom, a brilliant dressmaker, made me a jumper (emerald green!) when I was pregnant with my first child.

At some point I introduced her to my sister-in-law Lois, as both families moved to the same neighbourhood… and they became friends too.

In recent years we often met at our pal Gayle’s film presentations, at the library.

Sadly, Miriam’s husband died of heart failure a couple of years ago. When I went to her house for the shiva (mourning period) we caught up on events, and I also had the chance to talk with her charming adult children. What a tribute to their parents they are!

Losing Miriam – to a long illness – is especially distressing: she is the first of my cohort to leave us. Only in her mid-seventies, her life unfairly ended way too soon. She may be gone but will never be forgotten.

Rest in peace, my friend.