The Song of Ruth

By Dr. Herm Valenzuela

I was a medical resident at the Albert Einstein M.C. and rotated to the Bronx-Lebanon Hospitals where I met "David" & "Lydia," retired from work, as my patients. They were old and fragile as I remember, survivors of the Holocaust as indicated by the tattoed numbers in their forearms. They may have met in The Exodus, the ship that ferried hundreds of Jews to Palestine.

Then David & Lydia got married and immigrated to New York. They told me that the Liberty Statue was the most beautiful lady they ever saw. They even knew that a poem was written there by Emma Lazarus. They lived in the Morrisiana section of the Bronx for years at Jerome Avenue where an elevated train runs.

David and Lydia had no child as they were a victim of the Nazi "experiments." David worked at a bakery and Lydia as a seamstress till their fingers were deformed by arthritis and their eye sights were failing them so they retired. They did not have any medical insurance and was relying on Medicare.

While at home they were beset by thugs and goons who would beat them up on the side streets, up the 3rd floor walk-up stairs for the little cash that they have. Their black & white T.V was even stolen and the mail-box robbed off their SS checks- constantly. How it was cashed I did not know and the Dept. of H.E.W took too long to issue a new one. Their Synagogue would helped them with food and warm clothes and coats for the Winter and the Rabii would constantly advised them to moved to a nursing home but David & Lydia refused- the spartan apartment where they lived was their home.

Finally, they gave up probably not the living but the jungle that was Bronx, New York. David shot-off the heater, layed down with his wife on their neat bed and slept. The police found their hands clasped tightly as if death shall not do them apart!

"Wither thou goest I will go;
Wher'er you stayest I will stay.
Your people shall be my people;
Your house will be my home!"

I am sure there are a few life stories like David & Lydia's among the squatters along and below the EDSA overpass. But it is not where you go in life, it's who you have beside you that matters.