Death

As I feared.  Cousin Ruth's husband Artie died today (or maybe yesterday).  I have to say I always loved Cousin Ellen best.  She was closest to me in age, only 10 years older than I was, always tasked with taking care of me when I was sent to Scranton, or to the farm in the summer, always singing and laughing..  But I always admired Ruth most.  She was the  oldest of the cousins, and the only one of the cousins who escaped Scranton - as soon as she could, she told me, after one too many cosmopolitans at her grandson's bar mitzvah.  And she and Artie were the intellectuals of the family.  Ruth must be 93 now, Artie several years older.  (The two "boys", Kurt and Eric, died a number of years ago.) .....