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FLP's Tribute to Sauci S. Churchill:  April 25, 1940 to June 4, 2011

Sauci S. Churchill died from ALS on June 4, 2011 in Bethesda, Maryland.  She is sorely missed by her husband, her family, and many friends and poets.  

 

Finishing Line Press published two chapbooks of Sauci’s Poems:  Running Down Division Street  in 2004, and A Red Fin in 2007.  Running Down Division Street can be ordered through Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Running-Division-Street-Sauci-Churchill/dp/1932755322 and A Red Fine can be ordered at http://www.amazon.com/Red-Fin-SAUCI-CHURCHILL/dp/1599241188/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328286973&sr=1-7

Sauci received a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin and attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley.  She taught high school English and art. She worked as law librarian at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C.

 

• A poem, "The Empty Chair", commissioned for a program on Soviet Jewry was quoted in the Washington Post.
• "Rainbow" appears as title piece in The Rainbow Diet Book published in 1980 by a division of Simon and Schuster.
• A manuscript was accepted for a reading as part of the Midday Muse program at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in April of l982.  “The poems have delicate surfaces, they are carefully composed. (There is) a toughness and irony of tone (that) gives a sense of authority and command.” Jean Nordhaus
• Poems were accepted for a l985 reading at the Tuesday Noon Poetry Series sponsored by the George Washington University.
• In February l990 a publication reading was held at the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, D.C. by SCOP, publishers of FreeState: A Harvest of Maryland Poets.
• In June, l990, seven poets read at the Writers' Center from their work published in FreeState.
• In October of l990 a reading was held by writers published in the British journal Slow Dancer.
• “The House a Cloud Passed Through” was selected to be exhibited in the Poetry Gallery, Executive Office Building, Montgomery County, Md., l999, 2003 and 2004/5
• “Cherries in a Crystal Bowl” was printed in Touching Quiet, Reflections in Solitude by Mindy Weisel, 2000.     
• Honorable mention in the 2003 Senior Poet Laureate competition
• Selected to read at Library of Congress, “Seven Maryland Poets” December 2004
• Selected to read at Joaquim Miller Poetry Series, Summer, 2008 

             

 Sauci’s poems have been published in the following journals:

               Willow Leaves Anthology, Bachaet, Poetry of the Year, Quartet, The Living Wilderness, The Poet, Poet Lore, Bitterroot, Jewish Week, The Washington Review, Little Patuxant Review, Sands, Stone #13, Primavera, CenterPieces, Another Small Magazine, Slow Dancer 88, Welcome Home, Sunrust, Slow Dancer 89, Bubbe Meisers, an anthology,  FreeState: A Harvest of Maryland Poets, Slow Dancer 93, Black Dog Press, l996, Metaphors, l996, Journey Into Love, l997, the Post Serial, l997, the Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, l998 and 2001, Poetry Bone, 2001, Avocet, 2001, Clark Street Review, 2002, Tale Spinners, 2002/3, TRQ, 2002, Poetica, 2003, Out of Line, writings on Peace and Justice 2004, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, 2004, 2005, Compass Rose, 2006, Lalitamba, 2006. Tapestries, 2007, Puckerbrush Review, 2009, the Kerf, 2009, Keeping Time, 2009,Native West Press Anthology, 2011,  Evening Street Press, 2010, Evening Street Review (Spring, 2011), and What’s Nature Got to do with Me? 2011.            

   

Scrabbling into my Poem

I was reading my kindle

when I heard strange sounds

A kind of scrabbling

 Then maybe a slide and fall

 

Something frantic

was conveyed 

 I’m not sure how

 

Quiet

 

Again some noises

that didn’t belong

And a pinging of

 softness on  metal

 

I opened the door

to the screened porch

encountered a small

 and quivering thing

 cringing against the screen, its prison

 

I opened the door to freedom

And turned quietly away

Motionless I waited 

A slight movement of air

And the touch of feathers

 

Quiet

 

The  frightened sparrow

 could have been my heart

 

Meet it on the run

I pull off weather stripping

charge through winter’s door

into the snow world

 

inflating my lungs,

like a hot air balloon

I rise and then fall

dragged past the plane tree.

Straight as an arrow

I lay down

in the whitest of snow

 

later that evening

a small red fox

sniffs my face

and moves on

 

Sauci S. Churchill:  April 25, 1940 to June 4, 2011  Eulogy

Thank you for coming today to remember Sauci -- my wife, Devi’s Mother, Dot’s Daughter, Poet, friend and confidant to so many.  I miss - and will always miss her – terribly.   I had not imagined loss could be so great, so physically painful.  So I hope I can make it through this and, if not, my friend of many years -- Curt Tarnoff -- has agreed to read my words.

                I’m pretty sure that Sauci, always modest, would be embarrassed that so many people were here.  In fact, when we sat down in the early stages of her illness to review her will, and came across the section on memorials, she said “I don’t want one”.  I replied:   “There’s no force powerful enough on earth to stop one from happening, so you’d better say what you want”.  And she did.  She asked for it to be here, in an inclusive place, close to nature, and she wanted it casual.  And so it shall be.

                I would not presume to know, better than others, who she was.  No one has a monopoly on that knowledge.  She was, after all, a deeply committed and loving mother, a much beloved daughter, a wife and best friend to me, a poet, a thinker, a lover of nature and animals, and a friend and helper to so many people. She was -- I’ve always said -- a better psychiatrist to many of her friends than they probably paid for, and she did it for free.  Each of these aspects was an important part of the whole person we all liked, and whom many loved so deeply. 

                I just want to tell you about the woman I met, loved, married and lived with for more than a quarter of a century.   I hope to make this light and even humorous at times, and at others, touching upon the core of what she was to me.  We were very much in love with each other, and I always will be in love with her.  Ours was no perfect relationship and no perfect marriage – none are.  But I was lucky enough to marry my best friend and my best lover, a truly unique combination. 

                I am going to leave to Devi, who will speak later, the important job of thanking the dozens of people who showed their consideration and kindness and love during her illness, except to mention the strong, capable and loving hands of Susan Kroloff who, like me, saw Sauci through to the end.

                The first thing that struck you about Sauci was her name; which was not that of a French poodle.  But was, as I would proudly tell every airline ticket agent I had to explain it to, the derivative of a Hebrew name with a Rumanian ending, and the name of her grandmother.  But if you had asked me in my early thirties whether I would marry someone named Sauci, I would have laughed.  So much for the wisdom of 30 year olds.

                In fact, to lighten this up a bit, I am going to show Sauci’s quirky, self-deprecating humor, and her power of writing.  Sauci had read a “Dear Amy” column in which the writer was complaining that a nephew had named a dog after her daughter.  She wrote these words:

“Dear Amy:  Responding to the letter from the woman who was so upset because her young nephew named the dog for her daughter, my dear friends gave their beloved dog my name.  I was not insulted, though over the years it was not pleasant to suddenly be told in a loud, punishing voice to get down off the furniture or stop peeing on the rug.  I did not grieve too much when their little mutt went to chase bones in the great doggie beyond. “                 “Amy” Wrote back:  You have a pretty cool name.  I can understand why your friends appropriated it.”

She did have a cool name.

                The second thing that struck me about my wife – literally from the moment I saw her across the street from the Washington Ethnical Society where we met – was her grace of movement and beauty, which was soon joined by the compelling depth of what she was on the inside.   I would sometimes watch her move from afar, and it would take my breath away.  She was really a kind of dancer in slow motion, something that made the cruel disease that took her out of this world so much more hideous. And I Ioved the sound of her voice, even in the last weeks when she could hardly speak.

She had deep empathy – and an ability to feel other’s pain, sometimes almost too much.   And while she didn’t turn these feelings into actions as much as she wanted to, I always thought she sold herself short.  She did see hunger and try and end it; she did see war and try to stop it.  She was deeply ethical.  And that empathy went to animals as well, not just our beloved dogs, but any creature on this earth.   I never met anyone with such a deep reservoir of empathy that was grounded in reality, not in fantasy.  In fact, she had a somewhat pessimistic view of the world – of its wars, and its environmental damage.  But she had a faith in human beings, or at least knew it was important to do what you can.  And she also had wisdom.  She was not a pacifist, for example, and knew that hard choices had to be made in the fight against certain kinds of evil. 

But one thing is certain for me.  It was only when I, raised as a fundamentalist protestant, met and married an agnostic Jew did I finally meet a true Christian.  That says mouthfuls.  My wife remained true to herself all the way to the end.  She remained concerned for others, voluntarily not going to her poetry group because of the effect her silence might have on them.  She remained concerned, most of all, about how Devi would do without her.  But her non-belief in an afterlife never changed. Close to the end, I asked her if she had experienced some second thoughts.  She said no, on the contrary, she was even more convinced, as am I, that what you do on this earth for its people, and for the earth, is the only thing that counts, although I must admit, I still hope I can meet her in some spiritual world.

Sauci had a wickedly funny and intelligent sense of humor.  We both loved the absurdity of life and of people and recounted many scenes and jokes that displayed it.   And, my wife was no prude.  In fact, if I were to tell you her favorite jokes, I think half the audience would blush.  I really loved her for that.

 She appreciated music, and particularly loved the short little 17^th century song by Giovani Fasolo that you will hear at the end of the service, performed in a decades-old recording by that great Italian tenor, Beniamino Gigli.  It has Sauci written all over it.

She had a real curiosity about the world.  One of the things that I was so glad to give her was the gift of travel to so many countries and states, to see different people, lands, seas, and skies. When you see the travel book I put together for her I hope you will sense the sheer joy we had in traveling.  These are my special treasures I will hold close

I was in awe of her poetry, though I’m sure she would not want me to make too much of it.  And it was a unique privilege to remember scenes that gave her the artistic material she used, although our memories often differed. As you have heard from Grace Solari, her words were unflinchingly true and simple. They spoke – and speak -- to many.

She was also tough, tougher than you would think.  She withstood pain and illness – her ulcerated colitis with long hospital stays and surgery, her breast cancer, and at the end, the disease that took her down.  She withstood it all in a way that made me immensely proud.   Even in the end, struggling to speak, she could take command of any room with humor, clear thought, and even defiance.  I told her just a week before she died that I was never so proud of her as I was then. 

I cannot emphasize enough how devoted she was a mother, who cared about Devi all the time.  She had and has my undying respect for doing so.  And my heart goes out to Devi, for whom this loss must be just as great, if not greater, than it is for me.  And to her mother, who I am confident would have gladly given her own life to save her daughter’s.

Finally, it’s important not to forget what she went through.  She suffered a lot, but she did it with more grace, courage and just plain class than I could ever muster when she faced this terrible illness that robs you of your energy, your mobility, your speech, your eating, and your hope.   It was and is an insidious, mysterious illness that one day I pray we will find a cure for. But in the end, she was still always thinking of others, and not of herself. 

I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.  I feel utterly lost, utterly alone.  I seek no false comfort or pat phrases.  The truth is that it hurts like hell, and will do so for some time. For now, I just put one damn foot in front of the other and keep going, or try to anyway. 

But I count myself lucky to have known this wonderful, this marvelous woman – who changed me permanently for the better.  She was the best thing that ever happened to me, as Curt can attest.  Sometimes I think she felt she was the lucky one to have me.  She had it wrong. I was the one lucky to have her, this beautiful, caring woman we all have come together today to mourn, to honor, and to remember.

I know with absolute certainty that I will never forget her, my best friend, my wife, the love of my life. 

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