Remembering Agi
1931-2000
Friends, family, loved ones of Agi's, thank you for coming.
I went to several funerals where they had a Rabbi who didn't know the deceased do the oration. I thought it rather peculiar that the one person in the room who didn't know my relative was summing up their life. But now I see the opposite problem in being too close. What if while you were giving the oration you got swept up in a flood of emotion and broke down and started sobbing? I remember at my grandmother Boske's memorial I was saying a few words about her and my voice caught in my throat for a tearful moment before I got a hold of my composure. I remember afterwards my step-mother coming up to me and saying she was afraid we all might start crying while I was talking. I thought how odd it was that we hold ourselves back from crying for the dead. If somehow they knew, wouldn't it please them that we cried for them?
I hope among friends & loved ones, we can feel safe to cry or laugh because one way to honor the dead is to embrace life with renewed vigor. I know Agi lived a full & rich life. I'm sure, in her passing, her greatest wish is that those she loved & left behind live full rich lives as well.
I need not recount her life history which she so eloquently relates in her memoirs. George has offered to run a print run of her memoirs and if you'd like a bound copy please leave your address. She also did 4 excellent video tape interviews which are available on request. My sister-in-law kids me that it looks like I'm trying to raise money to cover expenses. It's just that Agi left a piece of herself in her book & interviews and for those of us who will miss her it is a way to still be with her. Also, these are really rather incredible family historical documents. Agi & her generation brought our family to America for a better life. In another generation or two we will be more Amercian than anyone. It's very important that the war generation tell their story of where we came from: so please Eva, Jerry, Marika, Tony, Frank & George leave us your stories.
I now begin to have a new understanding of my mother. Born between the two great wars, Agi had a happy childhood...but then the world went mad. A crazy paper hanger sent half of Europe on a quest to exterminate the Jews. Agi lost her adoring father, her grandparents and half her family. She became tough & street smart. I always found the story where she went to the Spanish Embassy to get protection papers and risked being shot after curfew amazing. She was 13! The same age as Anne Frank, and yet she was the protector of her fatherless family. Doesn't this say a lot about who she was? Then. as a young wife, she & Tony & Peter & George left behind everything they owned in 1956 to start a new life from scratch in America. Of course, many people did this, but still it shows an adventurous, optimistic and determined personality.
And, of course, she was a success in her new life - we are sitting in the fruits of her labor, in this beautiful house that so reflects her personality and style. And, of course, she went back to school for a masters degree. She was only the second person in her family to get a university degree & she actually hated school as a child. And yet, she taught Peter & I and I think Alex & Katie to value the importance of an education. I think it has served us well.
Of those dark years when she was drinking, I realize now that tough, strong-willed Agi had been terribly traumatized by the Holocaust and that alcohol had a terrible effect on her. Yet, miraculously, she began to go to AA meetings & she turned her life around. I used to think that people don't change - and I think they usually don't - yet what a powerful example she showed us that it IS possible. Twenty to twenty-five years ago we used to have the most horrible fights and yet, patiently, brick by brick, Mom and I rebuilt our relationship --- another powerful example.
Not only did she turn around her own life, but I learned later that she took her hard-earned lessons back to AA to help inspire others struggling with the similar problems.
On her deathbed, still in her thoughts, mom asked forgiveness for those drinking years. I wish she still didn't feel guilty because it didn't matter any more to Peter & I. What was important to us was that mom had rebuilt her life and was filling it with family, travel, interests, friendships - those things which make life worthwhile. Perhaps this is another lesson Agi left us: we must forgive ourselves and each other.
In those last few weeks I spent with her, I began to learn about her many friends and how she touched the lives of so many people around her. I think in this way she was unique in that her connections with others were strong and vibrant.
On her deathbed too, she smiled & told me not to worry, that she wouldn't go away, that she would live on in me. I realize that the people in this room, we who loved her, who remember her stories, learned her lessons, we are what is left of Agi Linhardt, and that's a lot. My own sweet Yun Shik, who grew very attached to Agi in a short time, was crying in my arms last week at our loss and looked up at me and said, "at least, if we had to lose Agi i have the next best thing" because she had me and there was a lot of Agi in me. And I think there is a lot of Agi in everyone in this room. So let us share our memories and our thoughts and our Agi-isms and keep Agi alive today, in this room, and for many years to come until a long, long, time from now when only a faint whisper remains of all of us.
Agi also told me on her deathbed that she loved and felt loved in her life. That she felt she lived a full life with everything she wanted in it. So if we weep for her today...it's not because she didn't live a good life, but rather because we will miss her.
I want to say that through all this you've all been wonderful. Through the hard times of her illness so many of you have been there to help...and now I find that every kind word, every offer of help is a comfort to me in this loss which is so profound that I barely understand it.
I realize in talking with you all that you all miss Agi, but that you all feel your own deep losses right now too. One day when Yun Shik & I were cryng in each others arms, crying over Agi, I knew without a word that Yun Shik had shifted and started crying for her own parents who she lost at such a young age. And I hear it in my dear Aunt Eva's voice, how she misses her husbands. And I see it in your eyes, how you miss the ones you loved. There are many ghosts here today with us - not the least of whom are those lost in the tragedy of the Holocaust - Agi's father Miklos and her beloved grandparents Ferenc & Mali. Let us cry together today and wash our souls with tears.
And when we are done crying for now, let us embrace life with renewed vigor. Let us love and be loved. Let us laugh & play again. Let us delight in the simple joys of life. Isn't this how Agi lived? Isn't this the lesson she taught us and is still teaching us today.
Paul Linhardt
Kinnard House
6 Feb 2000
9 September 2002; pml