Eulogy from Deborah’s brother Peter Tannenbaum.
Deborah died in 2019. Her obituary can be found here. She is deeply missed.
Dear friends and family:
Thank you for coming together with us to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of our dear sister, Deborah Sheppard. Her life is a beautiful story that I have had the joy to witness and share from the day of my birth. There is so much to recount, most of it already know to all of you. And there are many of you who are much more familiar with great swaths of her life than I. So, I will limit my comments to what I have always felt has been the theme of Deborah’s life: the principle, lessons and practice of compassion. And I will try to provide you with some images, engraved in my memory, starting with the little girl that some of you knew, and some didn’t… my sister Debbie.
Before I was born, she knew me. In a poem especially dear to my heart, she recounts with crystal clarity when, at age two-and-a-half, our parents Ruth and Phil told her she had a little sister or brother coming. “And”, as she writes, “my world changed forever.” When I was brought home from the hospital, she so wanted to greet her new brother. She was congested and was warned not to come too close to the baby, but in her desire to welcome me, she could not hold back. And so, she gave me my first cold. My nose has been running ever since.
We had a wonderful childhood. She was the sweetest of playmates. There was never a hint of jealousy or sibling rivalry. We had so many wonderful experiences with Phil and Ruth, especially at our cottage on Little Lake Magog: fishing and gardening with our father, nature expeditions with our mother. I see Debbie in a pleated tartan skirt and matching jacket, pristine white shirt and knee socks with patent leather shoes, dressed up for a family occasion, likely a gathering of the pantheon of Echenberg aunts, uncles and cousins. I see her running ahead of me through the fields in a grey hoodie, thick braids like hempen rope bouncing off her back, sitting beside me in a tractor-drawn wagon atop bales of hay, a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose, dark chocolate eyes that over the decades would fade to hazel.
As a teenager, she was lithe and graceful as a gazelle, a grade A student with many friends. I picture her room in our home on Iona Street, an oasis of comfort for me in times of turbulence. I always turned to her when I was troubled. I always knew that she loved me and understood me.
From our earliest years, our parents imbued us with the principles of compassion, encouraging in us sympathy for the welfare of others. We learned from them and their progressive circle of friends to care for the under privileged and disenfranchised. To stand up for social justice and against tyranny, oppression and the proliferation of nuclear arms. This is how we defined ourselves as a family.
When Deborah settled into a career, her choice of sociology seemed obvious, a natural corollary of Ruth’s life-long engagement with social work. In effect, she was continuing in the family business, not solely that of our mother, but also due to Phil’s early career as a union organizer, and his commitment to the workers at Narrow Fabrics. Her research and writings on gender roles in dual career families, and in the work place, were an important contribution to feminist sociology. In the heady years of her young adult life she forged many strong and long-lasting friendships. In this context, there are two that stand out in my mind, dating back to her teenage years: Judith Marcuse and Barbara Sourkes. The bond between them and Deborah has endured a life time, and extends to their children and grandchildren. Barbara holds a special place as Diana’s godmother. And as you all know it is the link through her parents Ted and Shena that led Deborah to Tom.
There are many other friends that deserve mention as important people in Deborah’s life who she loved and cherished. I know that I will likely omit some of you, but I would like to pay homage to Melody and David Keeble, Annabel Weinstein and Skip Schwartz, Harry Castelli, Rona Abramovich and Jonathan Freedman, Kara Williams, and Myra and Richard Lewin. And there are many, many more.
There was a time in our thirties when the planets aligned, and Deborah and I found ourselves living in Montreal at the same time as Ruth. That was a special period for us, when we came together again as a family, and reinforced between us the love and world view that we have always shared and nurtured.
Now I offer you two images etched in my mind. The community centre hall in Great Falls, Virginia. Deborah and Tom are standing together under the bima, stating their wedding vows, surrounded and embraced by a celebrating throng of family and friends. I see Ruth and Helen, walking arm in arm, faces beaming with pride and joy. We all knew even then that this would be more than a marriage. It was always a profound partnership between two people who, although very different in personality, had discovered in each other the missing piece of the puzzle to complete their lives and bring them to happiness.
The second image is a bright December day, as I stand outside their home in Bethesda. The door opens and Deborah appears, holding a tiny bundle. “Here,” she says, placing it in my arms, “I’m going to get some sleep”. I looked down at that face, and it was love at first sight. As an uncle, I had it easy. It was Deborah and Tom who did all the heavy lifting. And what a magnificent job they did, as you all know. Diana is a beautiful, smart, accomplished individual, and a joy to Deborah, Tom and all who know her.
I am forever grateful to Tom for being such a wonderful, loving companion to my sister, and for living such a glorious, spectacular life with Deborah and Diana, travelling around the globe, and sharing many wonderful experiences. Hermine and I cherish the memories of a vacation spent with them in Rome when Diana was in her early twenties.
I now want to delve into Deborah’s creativity and involvement in the arts. I have vivid memories of her dancing. Her movements were powerful, expressive, idiosyncratic. She had a deep appreciation of the art and showed it in her support and involvement in Moonhorse Dance Theatre as chair of the board. Her poetry is evocative and insightful, taking visions from the past, pulled from the depths of her astounding memory, and imparting to them a greater appreciation and awareness. It was this creativity that brought her to a profound collaboration with Vinnie Sestito. He saw the stories strung together between the poems, and the plays that they produced together deeply moved us, especially – for me – the testimony to Phil’s life.
All of us assembled here know now ardently Deborah cultivated connections with friends and family. We are Deborah’s Army, fiercely loyal, appreciative of her, who she is and what she stands for. The annual newsletter was more, certainly to me, than the year’s list of events. It was a window into her family’s life.
In the seven years that she has battled cancer, we followed every step of the way, and watched in awed amazement as she faced each challenge with incredible courage and clear-headedness. We were gratified that she could sustain her life in much the way she wanted, and continue to share it with us, providing reports of Diana’s accomplishments, and her trips with Tom.
Your open-hearted and loving responses meant all the world to her. They have provided a constant flow of love, sustaining her, and lifting her spirits in difficult times. For this, Tom, Diana, Hermine and I are forever grateful to all of you. And we wish to thank Sunnybrook Hospital, and in particular Dr. Richard Wells and the team at the Odette Cancer Centre and the CMH ward for their exemplary care and compassion for Deborah. It was indeed a special relationship, much more than that between patient and care givers.
There are a few individuals that I will mention as having been significant to Deborah in these recent years: cousins Didi Silverman and Paula Mintzberg, their husbands, children and grandchildren. And our cousins Ed and Lorraine Levinson, with whom Deborah and Tom found a deep and abiding love, especially following their move from Montreal to Toronto. Deborah has told me often how much she appreciated her connection to you, and how meaningful it has been for her.
It has been a long and difficult struggle, with many ups and downs. We all hoped for and believed that there would be a different outcome. I was overjoyed to learn that I was a perfect match for a stem cell transplant. “Surely,” we thought, “this was meant to be.” The reality of what has come to pass is devastating. We may have anticipated it at some level, but we held on to our hope. When Hermine and I were here just last weekend, it seemed that Deborah was turning the corner. But when we learned that the Edipha treatment had failed, Deborah typically faced this news with clarity of mind and a profound gratitude for her life, which she expressed to me.
This was not how it was supposed to turn out. And now we have faced with this enormous gap in our lives. Deborah’s love has been a powerful force binding us together. Let’s do what we can to keep that force of active love alive and flourishing.
Every time I spoke with Deborah, she always ended the call with the words, “I love you”. How many times has she spoken them to each of you? They underscore the theme of her life. She faced the end of it with courage, dignify and wisdom, gleaned from years of mindful inner exploration. She was a self-realized woman. When we talked last week of this very moment, she asked me to read one of her poems to you. It speaks to her state of mind, which I described to her as “eyes wide open”. It is her last message, a message of love, to all of us.