The eulogy for my mother that I delivered at her funeral on Sept. 1, 2023.
I’ve always felt that my mother was ahead of her time. She came of age when before the feminist age, when women were not yet fully in the work force. She didn’t graduate college and she didn’t work a paid job until Jon and I were teenagers. But if she had been born 20 years later she would have been an exec or an office manager or something. She had amazing organizational skills, a great memory, and attention to detail.
Maxine was born in the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, in the last period of the huge Jewish community in that part of New York. Her mother had 5 siblings and her father had 2, and if I remember it correctly (and of course I can no longer ask) 2 of her aunts lived in the same building with her parents and her. There’s a picture with my mother as a child with something like 50 cousins at a simcha, I’ll show it tomorrow night. Within the next generation the children in that picture moved all over the country and my mother was undoubtedly the last person who could even name them all. That’s only one of the ways she passing is a loss.
Her father, Harry, owned a service station, and to my mother he walked on water. Her mother, Sherry, smelled of Tabu and cigarettes. They lived in a one bedroom apartment, with the daughter in the bedroom and the parents in the living room. She worked at Decca records before marrying David, which when I was young and hip that was by far the most interesting part of her story to me.
After Jonathan was born we moved to New Jersey, first to Maywood and then to Sayreville, where we both grew up. Both of my parents grew up in secular families but my mother was a builder. They – by which I mostly mean Maxine, with David in tow – helped to found a Conservative congregation in Sayreville, the Sayreville Jewish Center, which became the focus of her life for about the next 15 years. She was president twice and also ran the weekly bingo game for many years. The Temple was the center of our family life for many years.
Mention of the bingo game allows me to go into a digression about my mother’s culinary abilities, or lack thereof. Regular Wednesday night bingo games meant that Jon and I had to fend for ourselves for dinner. Our regular self-prepared meal was a box of lipton noodle soup and a can of spaghetti’os. My mother was not, as they say, from the cooks. Her two specialties were a beef cheese and noodle casserole which we called “noodle gook,” and which I still make using veggie ground, and shrimp scampi. We always speculated that my parents adopted kashrut in large part so my mom didn’t have to cook at all anymore.
She spent many evenings, for years and years, sitting in our family room or den, with a huge pile of papers in front of her, moving the papers from one pile to another – Temple papers, home papers, later Little Elegance papers, I’m sure still later Valencia Isles and Hadassah papers. One of my lasting sense memories is of my mother, in her robe and slippers, with a detective show on television, moving papers slowly from one pile to the other.
Maxine could be a loyal and steadfast friend. I emphasize “could.” She remained connected to the Debs, her clique in high school, her entire life. Carol Feitelman has been friends with my mother for 70 years. They went on trips when they were older, to Ireland and Iceland all kinds of different places.
And on the other hand Maxine was stubborn, demanding, and definitely got into beefs with people, as several people on my father’s side of the family could attest. She had two sayings that I recall: “don’t get mad, get even,” was one, and the other one was, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” I definitely tested that one when I was younger. One time I “borrowed” one of their cars to drive to Vermont to see a girlfriend. When she confronted me after I said, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” She didn’t like that too much. I also discovered as I got older that “don’t get mad, get even” is not really very good advice. It’s taken me a long time to work through that. But when Maxine was done with you, she was done, and that’s definitely something I’ve inherited from her.
And that was what she was like her whole life. My mother had a big personality, and leadership qualities that made themselves apparent in any situation she was in. When Jon and I were teenagers she started working at a collectibles store in the Woodbridge Mall, Little Elegance. It was a family owned business but her natural leadership qualities and organizational skills were again apparent and she ended up as the assistant manager, making the schedules and placing the inventory orders and the like. She also used her employee discount to amass a truly impressive collection of collectibles. When she moved to Valencia Isles she went on committees and the board, which when Rabbi Klein heard that yesterday said, Now that’s a thankless job, and it was.
But there was part of my mother that wanted to be thanked for her thankless jobs, and didn’t like it when she wasn’t. And I can relate to that too. When there was inevitably board politics and interpersonal tension – as there always was and always is- she ended up leaving Valencia Isles. In later years I tried to tease her by asking her who she was in a blood feud with this month, but she didn’t find it funny and I had to stop. But as the attendance here today attests, she had many friends and admirers. Like many strong people, she elicited strong reactions, on all sides.
Just the year before last, before her health started failing, she ran a Hanukkah party for the local Hadassah chapter. She was an organizer to the last. I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but perhaps it’s not surprising that both Jon and I married women with definite Maxine tendencies.
One must acknowledge the love of my mother’s life, my dad David. My parents were together for over 60 years, which is just amazing. They took turns caretaking each other – my mother caring for my father when he faltered after his retirement, my father caring for my mother when she was in Cleveland Clinic for nearly a year in 2012 and then over the last year or so as my mother’s health failed. They bickered with each other terribly but when they walked from the car to the restaurant, they held hands. When I was going through pictures the other day, nearly every picture I have of my mom has my dad in it too. They were as solidly married a couple as it’s possible to be.
As her world got smaller Maxine’s relationship with my wife Suzy deepened, which we appreciated. She loved her grandchildren, and went to every graduation they could. The last time I saw my mother was when Jon and I visited together in May. They had been given bad news about her prognosis, but while Jon and I were here she rallied significantly, whether to put on a brave front for us, or because we were here, or both. We were able to go out to dinner, and to sit by the pool, and to play rummy, as she and I always loved to do and as we both had done with her father olev ha shalom.
She collected owls and was an avid mahjong player and like rainbow cookies - these are the things one remembers. As I wrote the obituary I noted that she was an activist, a community organizer, it was a role that was natural to her, as it is to me. The people she loved, love her, and the people that don’t, lick their wounds. That’s the way she wanted it.
Maxine Persons nee Miller, Malkah bat Tzvi Hersh Ha’Levi ve’Sarah, May you be bound up in the bonds of life, and may your memory be a blessing to us all.
