ZELDA’S LEGACY

On March 10, 1948, at 48, Zelda Fitzgerald, widow of F. Scott, died in a fire in a locked hospital room during the last of her many confinements for chronic mental illness. Variously diagnosed as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, at least one biographer asserts that a major objective of her treatment was to restore her…

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WATCHING, WASHING, WRAPPING AND TALKING TO THE DEAD

My partner, a very smart and level-headed woman, routinely paid large sums by corporate leaders to help them strategize, recently informed me she had volunteered to spend hours minutely washing an old woman’s corpse in preparation for burial. It is a Jewish ritual called Tahara. After the cleaning, the body was dressed in a white…

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