My pal Laury Epstein died in her sleep on Saturday, December 26 — which was so cool of her. Typical. She had been experiencing short-term memory loss for a few years, which cost her her driver’s license and a lot of invites, but she was a fighter who didn’t go the way of the dreaded “memory unit.” She spent exactly one night at Kimball Farms, a year ago, before she called a cab and snuck back home. And she stayed home — that’s where she died, in her bed. Surrounded by books.
So let me get this one thing out of the way right up top: the woman loved salt. No matter where you sat her at dinner, it needed to be near the salt. She loved food, cooking, had a thousand cookbooks (literally — they became a major gift to Mason Library). Laury loved what food does for a culture, for a people, and loved where our food came from — our farms, farmstands, farmers, our greenhouses, our purveyors. The GB farmer’s market was incomplete without Laury. She knew everybody.
I mention this because she was a role model without realizing it: a New York Jew who came to the Berkshires 30 years ago and pitched right in. All of us in the Berkshires have our thoughts about the us-versus-them dilemma — what if you weren’t born here, then who are you, anyway? — but Laury blew right past that. She shopped local, cooked local, paid local. She wrote food columns, restaurant reviews, letters to the editor. The Save Searles School groundswell was birthed in her living room. She became a local because she had too much pizzazz to be a stranger for more than a minute. She was a classic case of Who’s That Lady?!
I still remember the very first time I heard of her. My friend Tim Lovett pointed to her house and said, “Oh that’s my neighbor, Laury, she never sleeps. I can come home at two in the morning, I’ll call her and she’ll be up and ready to dish. So wicked and funny.” My reply was instantaneous: when do I meet her?
Tim was right: the minute I met her I claimed her for my own — a spitfire with granny glasses, wielding a wooden spoon — Bella Abzug minus the hat. As we say, a pistol. My own mother had recently died of Alzheimer’s, and I had an opening, so Laury became my “estrogen replacement therapy.” She was less a “There, there” type of mom than a “Now see here” — but she was never NOT on my side (and I’ve picked a few fights in my time. Luckily — and Laury would confirm: I am always right.)
As soon as I could, I claimed her as family, our new Nana, and she treated me as well as a son.
Because my mom and Laury both ended up around five-foot-nothing, I passed on a rack of my mom’s cashmere sweaters to Laury, who knew a good thing when she saw it. (This was for the best: I had actually been wearing the sweaters myself, in mourning — which almost worked, a kind of crop-top profile. In jewel tones.) But now that Laury is gone, I do sort of want those sweaters back. Gorgeous.
Laury was very lucky in her husband Jerry and kids, Greg and Debbie, a life of abundance, grandkids, travel. The marriage was not only happy, but riotous — they cracked each other up, famously so. Because she could, Laury had a lot of things (books / art / tchotchkes) but her biggest thing was her guffaw. This lady would roar with delight. If I ever needed to cheer myself up, I’d call her up and riff. It was foolproof.
She was also badass, no lie. She had a bumper sticker that read, quite rightly, BLAME G.E. She didn’t appreciate a seatbelt and had hers permanently disabled — whenever she climbed into my car and was forced to buckle up by the ding-ding-ding, she would always howl FUCK SHIT PISS until she managed to click in. It was guaranteed: FUCK SHIT PISS. This was part of our running sitcom. When we got to our house for supper, I’d count the seconds before she sampled dessert. About five. Laury also had a very loud bullshit detector and had no interest in folks who were the least bit fake or overly nice. Who would do that? Why bother?
She took the New York Times on paper. Also, she enjoyed gluten, sugar and dairy. Go figure.
Perhaps it was her IQ. I wasn’t around for her career, but I do know she had an MA, a Ph.D., a career at NBC news, and a teaching position at Rutgers. She ordered three books a day, and would read the toughest thorniest nonfiction right along with mysteries and chick-lit. Nonstop. Once, when she was with family on Martha’s Vineyard, I let myself into her condo and browsed her shelves as a lending library. To my surprise, her books had filled up all the rooms and hallways, the stairwell and the stairs. It’s not like I was trespassing so much as visiting her brain.
Laury also made good copy. Here in the Golden Age of Narcissism, this lady was the antidote. She didn’t give a toss how she came off or how she looked. (Don’t worry, her clothes were cool — especially her shoes.) She could be brisk with waiters, and when she needed to change a lightbulb, she called the contractor. If she felt ignored or overlooked at a party, you heard about it. I’m not sure it was pleasant to cut her hair.
She was also ruthless in the most shall-we-say refreshing ways: eight years ago she adopted a mother-son team of Havanese — the deal was done at an off-ramp near Holyoke. As sketchy as this sounds, it gets worse. Her first move was to show off her new pups to Annette Grant, her dear friend — but Annette’s poodle jumped the gun, scared the shit out of the male puppy, which ran into the brush and down the Housatonic. There was a search party and much grief — posters went up — I literally kayaked down the river howling HOOTIE, HERE HOOTIE (not sure the dog even knew his new name quite yet.) The sun sets. First thing next morning, Eric and I return to Annette’s house and are greeted at the front door by her husband who told us the dog had died.
Laury was distraught — because, in her inimitable fashion, she had already decided that she loved that little pup Hootie, but as far as the mother Sasha was concerned — meh. And now, here on day one, Hootie was dead and she was stuck with Meh. It wasn’t until her friend Amy Rudnick turned Sasha on her back and spied a penis that the sun came out:
“Laury, THIS is Hootie. See for yourself.”
At which point, Laury felt MUCH BETTER thank you. Sad about Sasha of course, but ecstatic about still having Hootie.
They were inseparable for the next decade.
Her last years were no picnic: as we know, getting old isn’t for sissies. Her vigorous community work slowed, her board posts at BNRC, Berkshire Grown, the GB Tree Committee (yes, there is one) — her generous giving to Railroad Street Youth Project, her Broadway and BSC theater-going, her VIP pass at the BIFF. These things elude you when they take away your car keys. But she did walk down to Town Hall for the George Floyd protests, that amazing 8 minutes and 36 seconds, when our whole town took a knee in the street, and God approved loudly with two claps of thunder but no rain.
Happily, Laury did have a May-September romance — purely platonic — with a great kid from Monument, my mentee Jacob Robbins. They met at a gathering at my house and never left the sofa — two hours later everybody else was gone and they were still huddled together, talking. It really was Harold and Maude: instant besties. He came over to “fix her TV” God knows how many times; she fixed his collar. Adorable. They were seen on dates, Aroma, Rubi’s, the Triplex, Barrington Stage. Noshing on bagels. They just got each other, completely, a mitzvah.
Just two months ago, I took her for early voting at GB Town Hall. When I say early, I mean 9 a.m.: we were THE FIRST people in GB to vote. At that point, Laury was actively considering a suicide mission to take out Trump if necessary. So there we stood at the doorway to Town Hall in our masks, properly distanced, when a poll worker came up and told her ‘no electioneering’ — Laury’s mask read: BIDEN / HARRIS. Laury said “no problem,” reached in her bag and put on a new mask, featuring a cartoon of Joe Biden in mirrored aviator shades.
What were they gonna say to that?
I said, “You go, girl.”
It was my privilege to feed her dinner all through COVID, once a week, carefully of course. At one point, giving her a second slice of cake, I said, ‘Hey, you only go around once,’ and she replied, ‘God I hope so.’
She had already made the most of it.
If there’s a line of people who are going to miss Laury Epstein, save me a spot at the front. She was smart, sane, generous, didn’t suffer fools, and put her money where her mouth is. She had a gift for friendship. She also knew that the two most important things in life are a sense of humor and a good appetite. And, to her great credit, she managed to die in her own bed. We should all be so lucky.
