In Loving Memory Of Mary Schapiro
(Mary when she was a teenager)
MARY SCHAPIRO - 1954/2011
We got together when she was 27 and I was 31 years old, 29 years ago.
My wife had an incredible capacity to love people that was beyond reasoning.
She loved her mother and her father, she loved her brothers and sisters, she loved her
nephews and nieces, she loved her extended family, she loved her friends, and she
loved me, with unconditional love… expecting nothing in return.
She remembered everybody’s birthday in her family (over 60 people) and always made sure
they got a gift or a card and a phone call.
She always took time to ask her nieces if they called their mother today.
When her mother was alive they will talk 2 or 3 times per day on the phone, and we will visit
every week. When her mother and father got sick, she took time to take care of them, all the
way until their passing.
After her mother passed, she talked with her sisters and brother every day, and visited very often.
She helped me take care of my mother when my mother got sick and until my mother’s passing,
like if she was her daughter.
When I felt I had to become more observant in my religion as a Jew, she not only encouraged
it but participated in many activities and festivities in the Synagogue, even she was Catholic.
When a couple has a long marriage, I like to tell the husband that it only means one thing: that your wife is
a saint, as she must have an immense capacity to put up with your shit.
My wife was certainly a super saint with me as not only she put out with a lot of my shit over the years,
as it was a wild ride together, but managed at the same time to be my wife, my lover and my friend.
When she learned she had cancer and she felt she was going to die, as a true believer,
she put her destiny in the hands of God, without any type of questioning about why this was happening to her.
During her ordeal and while the cancer was eating her alive and until the last moments in this world,
she was more concerned about what she considered the undue hardship she was putting on me physically
and emotionally in my efforts to take care of her and save her.
There was no opportunity to tell her then, but now she knows that I would not have had it any other way.
Even nobody can tell for sure what is going on in the other side, odds indicate that she is with her beloved mother
in heaven and that they are both very happy about being together again.
We got together when she was 27 and I was 31 years old, 29 years ago.
My wife had an incredible capacity to love people that was beyond reasoning.
She loved her mother and her father, she loved her brothers and sisters, she loved her
nephews and nieces, she loved her extended family, she loved her friends, and she
loved me, with unconditional love… expecting nothing in return.
She remembered everybody’s birthday in her family (over 60 people) and always made sure
they got a gift or a card and a phone call.
She always took time to ask her nieces if they called their mother today.
When her mother was alive they will talk 2 or 3 times per day on the phone, and we will visit
every week. When her mother and father got sick, she took time to take care of them, all the
way until their passing.
After her mother passed, she talked with her sisters and brother every day, and visited very often.
She helped me take care of my mother when my mother got sick and until my mother’s passing,
like if she was her daughter.
When I felt I had to become more observant in my religion as a Jew, she not only encouraged
it but participated in many activities and festivities in the Synagogue, even she was Catholic.
When a couple has a long marriage, I like to tell the husband that it only means one thing: that your wife is
a saint, as she must have an immense capacity to put up with your shit.
My wife was certainly a super saint with me as not only she put out with a lot of my shit over the years,
as it was a wild ride together, but managed at the same time to be my wife, my lover and my friend.
When she learned she had cancer and she felt she was going to die, as a true believer,
she put her destiny in the hands of God, without any type of questioning about why this was happening to her.
During her ordeal and while the cancer was eating her alive and until the last moments in this world,
she was more concerned about what she considered the undue hardship she was putting on me physically
and emotionally in my efforts to take care of her and save her.
There was no opportunity to tell her then, but now she knows that I would not have had it any other way.
Even nobody can tell for sure what is going on in the other side, odds indicate that she is with her beloved mother
in heaven and that they are both very happy about being together again.