“So pleased to be able to do as I please”
So reads the tag line of Helene Golden
(10/31/1933 – 1/22/2024)
G_d only knows why G_d took her back. She was the youngest 90 year old you could imagine, still working / enjoying / engaging in travel til she could no longer endure an office chair. Still a charmer though. Right up to her untimely departure date. The tag line is the thing though. It took her little time to come up with it. It seemed maybe too simple when I made the graphic for her. Turns out it was spot on who she was and how it would be the only way she would live her life.
It’s hard to explain really. Even though we met when she was 60 and parted 30 years later. Seems like I should have a good handle on it by now. She just never would find confinement of any kind acceptable. For all those years we spent together in our home, she made her own money and owned her own car and could have walked out and driven away any time she pleased. Instead, she chose to stay with me and do whatever she pleased. And I had the pleasure of helping her do it.
I never told my Helene what to do. Whenever someone said “why don’t you tell her to…” I’d just say I don’t tell her what to do. Why would I? The life she showed me / shared with me in those passing years, the new perspectives I gleaned from her, the appreciation for life and art and music and family and friends and on and on and on were so precious that I just thanked G_d for her every day. And every day I enjoyed our journey together. And she never walked out. She was taken away.
So here we are, at journeys end. We have memories and pictures. Reminders of what we had. And that’s a comfort. But what about the freedom thing? People were always telling my Helene what she should or should not be doing, as if they knew better than she how best to live a life. They didn’t realize that hers was an extraordinary life. Her destination was a life well spent, a life enjoyed, a life of love and creativity and sharing and experiences. And conventions were just speed bumps to endure as she traveled her own route, enjoying every milestone of the way. I was so pleased that she was sharing it with me that I never wanted to get in her way.
It would have been awful to confine Helene in any way. Nobody owned her! Not physically, not legally, not financially, and not intellectually. She was a muse. And she was my muse. Yep, mine! Not by ownership but by a mutual understanding that it was our destiny to journey together to the end. We spoke of it often. She wrote of it. We were cognizant of it.
It was my good fortune to be one of the things that pleased my Helene.
There are no words capable of expressing my gratitude.
-Bob Vollmer-
Eulogies
<Bob Vollmer> <Jay Cohen>
Gallery
Gallery 2
Notes
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