My dear friends, I’ve just found out that my beloved friend and colleague Sarah Torchinsky died yesterday. She was in her eighties and battling multiple myeloma with the tenacity with which she tackled everything else. Sarah translated everything from Yiddish to English for our book, which would not exist without her. The last time I talked to her, a few weeks ago, she was in hospital in the Cayman Islands, where she and her husband Ben have a home. They were waiting for her to get strong enough to come back to Canada. I prayed after our last talk that I’d have the chance to see her safely settled in her Toronto home, to bring her a souvenir and tell her tales of my travels. She was just too thin, Ben said, just too frail.
I mourn one of the most intelligent, brave, fierce women I’ve ever known. I send all my love and deepest condolences to her husband Ben, to whom she had been married for more than 60 years, and to her sons and their families. The loss of Sarah leaves such a huge hole in my life, I can only imagine what it does to theirs.
