A Rainy Day in April
Remembering Diane Roth Cohen
A couple of weeks ago, then (and still) in the final stretch of my pregnancy, a very dear friend passed away. One week before my guess date, I attended the funeral with a few friends who first met Diane Roth Cohen with me when we were graduate students studying international policy.
It rained that day.
The only appropriate weather for the loss of someone who was so nurturing in all of our lives. We huddled under umbrellas, standing on the soft grass, catching every second, third, or fourth word of a beautiful remembrance of her life. I could feel my baby wiggling around in my belly and raindrops on my back.
Connector
Mother
Friend
Eshet Chayil—woman of valor
Diane was one of those people who I can trace many important moments and people in my life back to. Living away from my parents and sister, and my partner for the first few years I was here, she became extended family for me in Pittsburgh.
She was one of those incredibly special people who could see the potential in others before they could see it in themselves. One of the greatest gifts someone can have. When we first sat down together shortly after I started graduate school she drew out my life story and experience, immediately connecting with parts of her own and with countless others she named in that meeting and connected me to over the following years.
Diane helped advocate and support me to work at the United Nations in Thailand for a summer. She connected me with the real estate agent who showed me our first house. When I told her I wasn’t planning to purchase a wedding dress, she sent me information about a warehouse sale where I found one I could afford that is in photos all around our house. And she forwarded me an email to join the board of the Jane Addams Peace Association—an organization I had never heard of, that spoke to me as a social worker, and has a social justice children’s book award that has become one of the most meaningful aspects of my volunteerism and creative community. She showed up at my door week after week during my chemo treatments with groceries and egg cartons for our chickens, and an orchid that is still blooming in our room. And she was one of the biggest supporters of our work at Hello Neighbor welcoming immigrants and refugees.
She has a beautiful family who I’ve been privileged to know over the years—meeting up with her and her husband to visit the national Aviary, share meals and stories. Sending resources, connections, and baked goods to her kids who each carry their own unique versions of her hospitality, humor, intelligence, and profound kindness.
And the more I got to know her, the more I learned about all of the lives she lived before the one I knew her in—as an artist; art collector and historian; coordinator for some of the biggest artistic and community events in our city; a theater-lover; and I’m sure so many others that she never shared or I never asked about.
It’s impossible for me as just one person to reflect back on the many lights she has illuminated in my own life.
It’s like the words at her memorial, even every third or fourth word illustrates what we might interpret as a rich picture, but I know it’s incomplete.
I think of each and every person, like me, whose lives she touched in millions of similar and different ways. People who live in every corner of the globe because of the nature of her work.
It is impossible to know the full impact she had on the world. But if we could…I imagine we would see millions of points of light like constellations or city lights from space. Radiant and stunning.
Nine months pregnant, I wouldn’t have missed her memorial for anything. Especially as I prepare for motherhood myself and see the wide expanse that a life, one that would have always been too short to those of us who knew her, can take. I’m sad that our baby will not have the chance to meet her in person, but he will know her in hundreds of imperceptible ways through all of the people who loved her and were loved by her.
That’s how it is when we don’t turn from our love even in our grieving.
May her memory be a blessing.