As they say in the movies, we met cute. My husband and I were flying home from a trip to San Diego, sitting across the aisle from each other the way we do. We had flown down south to take his Aunt Bette to lunch to celebrate her 80th birthday. It’s the only way I can pinpoint when I met Martha—November of 2003.
"It was bashert," she used to say, using the Yiddish word for destiny
The plane was crowded, and the middle seat to my right was taken up by a small, pleasant, gray-haired lady. During the flight I took out several pages of a manuscript I had promised to look at for a friend. The work was dreadful, and I am sure I groaned and sighed as I slashed away at it with a pen.
The lady next to me leaned over and asked, “Is that a manuscript?”
I looked up and answered, “Yes. And it’s terrible.”
She said, “Is it yours?”
I laughed and said no,
“But are you a writer?” she asked.
Well, I fancied myself to be a writer, since at that time I’d had a few things published in the San Francisco Chronicle and other places. “I’m a writer too,” she said. At the time, she was well into her 80s. As we talked, she told me she had grown up in Berkeley, graduated from Berkeley High, and then from Cal around the same time as my father-in-law, in 1941. She had written a couple of books and had a regular column in the Modesto Bee called “Our Turn.”
One of Martha’s books
We compared notes on our publications, exchanged emails and business cards and agreed to stay in touch.
And we did. We had a lively correspondence via email over the years. I wrote to her in 2007 about my daughter’s first pregnancy. “You’re much too young to be a grandmother!” she wrote. We shared many joys –both personal and professional–and shared family photos as well. She sent me links to things she thought I would be interested in and I did the same for her.
I also wrote to her about the deaths of my father-in-law and my mother within a few months of each other. I told her about weddings, graduations, births, and other life events that you share with your friends. She wrote back congratulations, condolences, mazel tovs and encouragements, and filled me in on her many travels and visits with family. She did not sit still much, except to write. And she wrote a lot. She began teaching a class to “seniors” on memoir writing, and we exchanged ideas for her students to try. I sent her something I had written, based on a poem, and she immediately borrowed the idea for her class.
She expressed her delight when I returned to grad school for my MFA. She wanted to hear all about it. Along the way, I asked her to contribute to the empty nesters anthology I was working on and she sent in a lovely piece about what it was like when her twin boys went off to college. And I realized when she sent in her bio for the book that she had started her “second career” as a writer in 1985, when she was 65 years old! She was also delighted when I gave her a copy of the book and showed her what I had written in the acknowledgments:
“My deepest thanks to Martha Loeffler, a wonderful role model–both as a writer and as a human being. I’m so glad we met over a manuscript on a crowded plane.”
We re-told that story many times. Martha even wrote about it in a piece on the unusual ways she had met three special friends. I was one of the three. She ends with, “So here’s a rare salute to crowded airplanes: Thanks for letting me meet Risa!”
In her second collection of essays from the Bee, she included some advice for a new mom I had asked her to contribute as part of a little book I put together for my daughter’s baby shower. Here’s a picture of me holding my newborn granddaughter accompanying the piece in Martha’s book.
Even though I am the same age as her two sons, Martha and I were more like girlfriends who share a love of family, a good story, and writing. Reading over our old emails, I can feel the love and support she never failed to include. “We write about the same things!” she told me once, when I sent her a piece about my dad. I felt the same way about her writing.
I drove to Modesto to see her number of times. She showed me her home office and took me to lunch. She insisted on driving and paying, every time. Would not hear of my picking up the tab or chauffeuring her around.
Over time, I noticed that our email correspondence had lapsed. I sent her a couple of short “how are you?” notes and did not hear back. I called her house and got a strange voicemail message.
I tracked down one of her sons and spoke with him. He asked me a few questions (we had never met, and I wasn’t sure he’d recognize my name as a friend of his mom’s) and then he told me that she had begun showing signs of dementia. I mentioned my latest emails, and he told me, sadly, that she was not on her computer anymore. I asked if it was OK to call. He said he thought if I identified myself a few times, she would possibly remember me.
So I did call. It took a while, but after repeating the airplane story, I could hear the old excitement in her voice. “How’s the family?” she asked. And asked again moments later. It was a short conversation, but I wanted to believe we had connected in some way. She sounded like her cheerful self on the phone, if a bit confused.
Martha and I both have November birthdays, one week apart. I always thought of her and what she meant to me at that time of year. One morning around our birthdays in 2013, I started to write again to her son. I was aghast to see that it had been almost a year since we had spoken, since I’d talked to Martha. But before I hit “send” with my gentle inquiry about his mother, I typed her name into a new search box. Martha’s father had lived past 100, after all. Still…
And that is how I learned she had died the year before, in December of 2012.
I called my husband at work in tears. I could barely get out the words to tell him Martha died and I hadn’t known. I felt waves of grief as I remembered that fateful day we met on the plane. It was bashert, she used to say, using the Yiddish word for destiny, that she and I would meet and become friends thanks to a terrible manuscript.
I consider myself lucky to have had dear Martha in my life for as long as I did. I treasure the memory of the years our lives were intertwined through our shared love of family and of writing.
Like Martha, I am a true believer in beshert. So, your friendship was destined to be on some level, and you were truly blessed that this chance meeting bloomed into something so meaningful. It is hard to search for someone you haven’t heard from or about in a while, only to discover an obituary rather than a connection. It has happened to me c couple of times. So sorry that you discovered Martha’s death this way. My condolences.
Thanks so much, Laurie. Martha filled a real void in my life and I was grateful for her unconditional support through the years. And I loved reading her writing!
Risa, what a sweet and touching story! I love the title too, the song was playing in my head as I was reading. Such a wonderful friendship, I have to agree that it was bashert. And how lovely that she wrote about you, and that you have shared little snippets of her writing with us. The Words of Wisdom for a New Mother made me a little teary-eyed. I’m glad you went to Modesto several times to see her, and that you had that final phone call with her. How sad to learn of her death via a computer search. Her memory truly is a blessing!
Thanks, Suzy. Finding her obit was a real gut punch. But I am glad that my last memory of her was a sweet one.
What a sweet tribute to a special friendship, Risa, and a great chance encounter. I am glad that you had Martha as a friend for as long as you did and that, even with a degree of dementia, she recognized you for a time.
Thanks, Marian. She was indeed a special friend.
After the words “we met cute,” I was naturally expecting a romantic story. What a lovely treat that it turned out to be a story about such a special friendship. I’m so sorry for your heartbreaking loss, Risa, but equally happy for your good fortune in having had Martha in your life for so long and in such a meaningful way. What a treasure!
Thank you, Barbara. Much appreciated. She was indeed a treasure.
Ah Risa, this a lovely, touching story. I teared up as you wrote that you hadn’t heard from Martha in some time. I dreaded what the outcome would be for your friend. And what a marvelous, supportive friend she was. How extraordinary that you met on a plane and had this person in your life as long as you did. She truly was a blessing.
Thank you Betsy. I was lucky to have met her and thankful to have known her.
Ah Risa, what a lovely tale of friendship.
I too have googled aged friends and acquaintances with whom I’d been out of touch, fearing I would find their obits.
Thanx for a bittersweet story.
Oh, Dana…it was such a gut punch to find out about her death that way. I appreciate your kind words.
Loved the arc of your friendship as described. It at once took the arc of a good story and of a good friendship. Ain’t life beautiful? Ain’t life sad? Thanks, Risa!
Indeed, it is–both beautiful and sad. She was a remarkable person. And a great storyteller. Thanks for reading.
I teared up again, reading the story for a second time, Risa. A good friendship story is worth re-reading.
Thanks, Betsy. I was happy to repost this one, since it did fit the prompt this time. I promise to submit new stuff in the future–but having a chance to revisit my friendship with Martha was really a gift.
Risa, so glad you republished this sweet story of a very special friendship.
I’m reminded of my friend Joy who I met when she and her late husband were our neighbors when we lived briefly in London. Now I was in New York and she in Malibu but we kept in touch and visited back and forth over years.
But recently she stopped answering my email and phone messages. I called her stepson who told me Joy was now blind and homebound and very depressed. He promised to put us on the phone together when next he visited her.
When he did we spoke briefly, but she was no longer the Joy I knew, and all during that call I fought to muffle my sobs.
Thanks, Dana. And thanks for your assistance. I’m so sorry about your friend Joy. Hugs to you.
I’m glad this was re-posted–it is a touching and sweet paean to a special friend, whom you met through happenstance. She ended up being an important person in your life–and you in hers. I’m sure she knew that even if you didn’t get a chance for a final good-bye, because you shared so much love while you could.
Thanks for your kind words!
As they say, friends are the family that we choose for ourselves. For some reason “society” relegates friends to second-class status; who gets paid time off for a friend’s funeral? I am closer to my closest friends than I ever was to any blood relations.
This was a very inspirational and well-told tale. Thanks!
Thank you so much!