from Johanna Hurwitz

Remembering Joyce Simon

Johanna Hurwitz

In the 30+ years that Joyce was my friend, we made up for not knowing each other when we were teenagers. Like teens, we spoke frequently on the telephone, giggled, met for coffee (albeit not the teenage drink of choice), gossiped and shared stories. And as we talked, it was always Joyce’s enthusiasm and passions that made me love her company so much.

Uri and I had cats back before Joyce discovered the mystic of cat ownership. But once Joyce learned about cats, she loved them beyond anyone else. Not only did she have Newty and Mittens inside the house, she fed a whole colony of strays in her back yard. And then when winter approached, she worked out with Seymour a way to protect these poor homeless creatures. What other home in Great Neck had a [dog] house in the back yard, heated by light bulbs to keep the cats warm when the temperature dropped.

“You do love cats, don’t you?” Joyce asked me many times. She was always checking that we were really on the same wave length. And she checked that I didn’t change my mind.

“You don’t own a fur coat, do you? You’d never wear a fur coat, would you?” she wanted to know. And that was not enough. Just to be sure, she asked, “Would your daughter wear a fur coat?” Happily I could honestly give her the answers she wanted to hear. Neither my daughter or I own or hope to someday own a fur coat.

Sometimes Joyce and Seymour and Uri and I went to concerts together. We attended Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center and a few concerts at the Tiles Center on Long Island. “Do you like Mahler?” Joyce quizzed my husband and me. “Yes,” we both liked Mahler. “Do you really like him?” she asked again. “Yes,” we did.

Uri and I went to Prague and honestly adored the city. That gave us points in Joyce’s estimation. When I went to India a few years back, Joyce asked, “Will you send me a postcard. I’ve never received a postcard from India.” It tickled me that this sophisticated world traveler (and travel agent) still had the capacity to find joy in something so simple as a card send from a country where she had never gone. I mailed many cards from India and only half of them were ever received by the people they were addressed to. I was very, very happy when I heard that at least Joyce received the card I sent to her.

We all enjoyed eating in the same Greek and Turkish restaurants and so at least once a month the four of us dined together. We talked, laughed, moaned over the political situation and ate a meal that neither Joyce or I had to cook or clean up afterwards. Our last meal together was just ten days before Joyce was diagnosed with cancer.

I confess, I’m not a basketball or tennis fan. Joyce forgave me these faults as I forgave her for not sharing my interest in baseball. And that was because there was one thing that we both cared for equally: books. When she went to London she always brought home a new book for me. She searched for a new title by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner before they were available here in the USA. “You could lend me your copy,” I’d suggest. But Joyce would insist that I must have a copy of my own.

If Joyce was away visiting family in California, or Washington, or accompanying Seymour at a library conference, she always phoned when she returned home. She had to know what had I read while she was away. Had I discovered a new author? Was there something good that she should be reading? On several different occasions over the years we went shopping in second hand bookstores together. Poor Seymour and Uri needed patience when their crazy wives had shelves of books to examine. “What did you find?” Joyce called anxiously from an adjacent stack. “You can have it after me,” I promised. “Good.”

As a book lover and a friend, I took pleasure in lending Joyce a book that made her convalescence from back surgery easier. “I slept with it under my pillow,” she confessed referring to a long out-of-print book from 1953, PENELOPE by Ann Bullingham. After that, how could I ask Joyce to return the book to me. Luckily the Internet solved my problem and I found another copy in England so that once again, Joyce and I could each have our own copy.

And in the summer of 2007, as she grew more and more ill, I made the wonderful discovery of a sequel to this prized book and had it shipped from England. I hope she was well enough to read and enjoy it. I lost a little bit of Joyce each week when I phoned her. But there was one thing she always said when we spoke, “You’ll still be friends with Seymour, won’t you? You’ll call him up, won’t you.” I reassured her over and over again because much as she loved cats and Knicks and Prague and books, she loved and worried about her husband to the very end. She didn’t want Seymour to be sitting home all alone without her.

And now she is gone. Dozens of times in the past year I’ve reached for the phone to tell her about a new book. Then I remember that I can’t call and my pleasure in a new book is diminished because I can’t share it with Joyce. I wonder if they have libraries in Heaven. I wonder if there is a Heaven. It helps to believe that there is and that one can curl up there with a good book. And just as important, I hope Joyce has someone to discuss those books with while she waits there for me.