Ruth Schimelpfenig

Most of my memories are of them together.
It’s always been Uncle Les and Aunt Ruthie.
They seemed bigger than life to me when I was young.
Delightfully different from my parents even though my Dad was Les little brother.
Ruth and my Mom both married into the Schimmazzle.
The madness served best to reinforce an inevitable bond between them.

What I remember most is the banter. Uncle Les would say something dry, sharp and correct on the surface.
Aunt Ruthie would be quietly waiting with the perfect comeback before he'd finished the sentence.
She never let him win a round.
You would have thought he would have seen it coming.
It was like being at a closed performance watching two actors who’d been perfecting a repartee in a scene that needed no director in a play without a final curtain.
I really want to go see that play again.

Other memories that keep her closer than I deserve.
Touring the terraced gardens cut into the hillside at their last house in Minnesota, sometime around 2014, with Ruth, Les, and Lolly.
Whose idea were those gardens? Les or Ruths?
I do remember how proud she was walking us through them, tier by tier.

And supper with Les & Ruth, Paul in San Diego, October 2023.
The last time Dawn Elizabeth and I were with her.
Ruth was as sharp as a tack and we could have talked about anything and everything for hours.
It’s only after the minutes have slipped that we miss those moments that we want again.
I’d give a lot to see Aunt Ruth’s smile again, and that glint she'd get in her eye right before she dropped the perfect line right on the mark.

Our youngest cousin reminded all of us of what our earliest conversations with Aunt Ruth were like. She didn’t talk down to anyone.
She raised you up and made you feel as big as you could be.
I wish I'd understood, when I was young, how rare it was that someone who'd lived the life she had would sit down and talk to the little versions of us like she could already see who we were going to become, before we had any idea ourselves.
And I wish that as an adult I'd found the words to tell her what that meant.

We're all hurting for our family right now.

Holding you all close, hoping for peace for each of you and especially for our Uncle Les.
MIZPAH Aunt Ruthie.