Wendy Wasserstein

died. Who even knew she was that sick? Am I so out of the loop? Does it matter?

Well, yes, to me it does.

Years ago, when Uncommon Women and Others first came out, she was not so much an icon, but a high-beam light showing that schlubby Jewish girls did have something to say that people wanted to hear. That was when I was very much in the loop, another Jewish girl who wanted people to hear her. My closest friend then was Marlene Adler Marks. She’d be really sad that Wendy Wasserstein has died, but Marlene’s dead too. She died of lung cancer a month after I had the cerebral aneurysm. We are all so fragile.

And what remains behind, really, are our words. Today, it doesn’t seem enough.

Tagged as: death