Tenderness watch

Katie van Schaijik | Jun 14, 2013

John Podhoretz has written a moving tribute to his sister, Rachel Abrams, who died last week of cancer. I think the only thing of hers I ever read was a short story he re-published right after the news was made public. It made me want more. She seems to have been an extraordinary person. I read her mother's book, An Old Wife's Tale, years ago and found it full of warmth and wisdom.

I link it partly because of the way it ends. It's that word again: tenderness.

Speaking to her nearly every day, as I did, was like having my lungs filled with the purest oxygen. Hearing her laugh. God, did she love to laugh. Telling her about my kids, every detail of whose lives she vacuumed up hungrily and thoroughly, like a Dyson. And above all, throughout it all, her ineffable tenderness, her indescribable tenderness, her incandescent tenderness.