Elfin in stature, Johanna Manfreda Fishbein was nonetheless a giant in our Connecticut town. She and husband Uria, who we all called Fish, seemed to be omnipresent. Consummate volunteers, it was the rare person who had yet to meet one of them. It could have been through board work for the public library, or maybe the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra, or possibly in organizing one of the many local celebrations, or the town’s community race, but I had the pleasure of meeting them both.
Johanna wore her hair in the beehive style she’d adopted in the 1960s and was never seen without her signature high heels. But of all the things I learned about Johanna during the years I knew her, it was her continued role as the high school musical choreographer that impressed me most. She was 80 years old, but that woman could kick ball change with the best of them.
By all accounts, apocryphal though they may have been, she and Fish had a well known morning routine. He would get up first and put the coffee on, and she would lie in bed for a few more minutes until he announced that the pot was ready and he’d be starting breakfast. She would then rise, put on her robe and slippers, arrange her hair into something satisfactory, and pad into the kitchen for a meal of eggs, toast, and coffee.
Just shy of her 82nd birthday, the morning routine had just begun. Except when Fish went to announce that the coffee was ready, Johanna uncharacteristically stated, “Just give me a few more minutes.”
Fish shrugged and began to go back to the kitchen but turned with concern to ask, “Johanna, are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I just need a few more minutes,” she answered with no rancor.
“OK, you got it!” he said with his usual affability.
But when Fish went back after a few minutes he found his wife of 60 years had peacefully gone back to sleep never to awaken.
It was a good death. We all said that. It was the kind of death we all hope for. A death when we ask for “just a few more minutes,” and get exactly that.
Copyright DJ Anderson 2016
