July 22, 2025

Dear friends,

It has been five days since Yael Jacobson-Zieff, my Ima, died from pancreatic cancer, and I feel so completely enveloped in the love and care and support that you have shown to her, to me and to Zach. The messages, the food packages, the flowers, the help with cleaning and laundry, the photos of Yael—they are all carrying me through these sad days. 

Zach and I are taking it slow right now. My mum wanted to be cremated; she didn't want a funeral or memorial service. But she also said it was up to me to do what I wanted. I'm still not entirely sure what that will look like—I thought I did, but that's changed since she left us. Right now Zach and I are still in her apartment, and I know I want to be here for a while. If you wish to pop in let me know (and let me know if you need the address). It’s been very sweet to have what Rabbi Sara helped me coin as “mini shivas”, or what Yotam described as “shiva bursts.” I want your company and your help, even if I’m struggling to answer the phone or express what that looks like. I imagine we will have some kind of gathering in September for us to just be together—those of us that can—and share the stories and the memories. 

For now, I so appreciate the photos and videos and memories you are sharing with me, please do keep them coming. Maybe I will put them up somewhere so we can all see. All of this TBD. We go one day at a time. 

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Yael’s death came almost two years to the day after our first appointment with her oncologist Dr Cohen, who presented us with a treatment plan and shared, with all the caveats, that the median survival for people with advanced pancreatic cancer is one year.  

From that afternoon on, Yael allowed herself to live as fully as she maybe ever had, to really dream and desire and want things for herself—starting, of course, with what would become her signature purple hair. That burst of colour on her head brought a new colour and vibrancy to the rest of her life even as she went through cycles of chemo and radiation. The purple hair was like an extra battery pack for living with cancer, a bright declaration. Perhaps for the first time in her life, my mum let herself be seen and it had a magical effect. 

In the end, Yael’s last days came quickly; once she was done, she was done. And so she went from chatty and planning on how to keep working(!) during hospice at home, to agitated and restless, to increasingly quiet and peaceful, to taking her last breaths, all within the space of six days. When we left the palliative care unit for home, the PCU doctor predicted that—again with all the caveats—my mum probably had “weeks to months” left. I knew this was longer than Ima wanted and jokingly lamented that not even she could accelerate death by sheer will: I was wrong and she did. 

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My Ima was a force of nature, a fighter, a warrior, a fierce woman—as so many of you have written to me. She developed that side of her early in life, a response to a childhood in Tel Aviv replete with its trials (how else to put it) at home, and violence and wars that were everywhere else. By teenagehood she had built up the first of many defensive layers that she would continue to wrap around—what I only later understood to be her very tender, very vulnerable, very hurt heart—with each painful disappointment of her twenties and thirties. Those layers were like a deflective surface, a one-way mirror from which she could see out, give outwardly, but into which very few could ever truly see in. My mum never threw herself a birthday party. 

She did however give and give to all those around her: helping her friends' kids with their homework; providing the shoulder to cry on for girlfriends through breakups and heartaches; never missing a weekend call to her nephews; schlepping my ice skates around the world so I could skate at Rockefeller Center; remembering the birthdays of literally everyone; sending me to school with an extra lunch for my best friend who had an eating disorder; making sure she gave equal and dedicated time to her grandkids-by-choice, Autumn, Eva, and Judah, whether at the Natural History Museum, at a Broadway show, or on subway adventures; driving to see my great-great uncle Yaacov on the other side of London at least once a month after his wife died; lending money she didn’t have to those who had less; doing my friends’ taxes; indulging Abe with his latest schemes and health fads; the list goes on and on. 

She had a fierce sense of right and wrong, of what was fair and unfair, and while she never thought of herself as a community organizer, the first protest I attended was one she helped organise, to save Richmond Ice Rink from being replaced by luxury condos. (We lost the campaign, but clearly I got the message). She was the first person I knew to have recycling bins by the front door, and she was more than relieved when I declared age nine or so, that I wanted to be a vegetarian: immediately our home became meat-free and Linda McCartney veggie sausages-full. 

After a lifetime of so much giving to others and so little giving to herself, one of the gifts of the past two years was that she finally had to let others give and care for her. As her phone pinged with message after message of love and support each chemo session, as her home filled with cards and gifts and children’s drawings all wishing her strength and admiring her courage, as she had to let her friends and mine sit with her in hospital or pick up medications at the pharmacy, I witnessed the many deflective layers finally fall away and all that love penetrate and soften her heart. 

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My Ima and I—our lives, our hearts, our personalities—were intertwined in that particular way a single mother and only daughter find themselves intertwined. It was always me and her, she and I. While we had a literal secret language in Hebrew, we also spoke in our own secret shorthand of looks, eye brow raises, and inside jokes. “Two peas in a pod,” was Abe’s frequent fond refrain when another giggling fit would take hold of us at the dinner table. 

Living in England wasn’t easy for her, but she made sure I had a rich and full exposure to its history and myriad cultural offerings. Before financial considerations forced her into self-employment and twenty hour work days, weekends and half-terms were for science and history museums, art exhibitions, concerts, and libraries. Whatever I was curious about or wanted to learn, she would encourage it, find a way for me, and her, to learn more. The encyclopedia was on hand for my relentless questions about the universe, tectonic plates, the civil rights movement, Shakespeare; books were bought about the plight of the rainforest and the ills of factory farming. She was never afraid to tell me she didn’t know the answer to a question, it always just the beginning of an exploration. I wanted to be a marine biologist, a dentist, an astrophysicist, an actress; she would say: “if you want to take your violin and play in Covent Garden that would be ok, as long as you are happy.” (Tbh, I’m not sure she meant it—but she said it, and that was the part that stuck). 

Beyond the UK, my mum gave me her travel bug and made sure I saw so much of the world. As a kid, we traveled to Australia and New Zealand, The Gambia, and we both learned how to ski in Switzerland and France and later California; later, we began taking our epic once-a-decade holidays, teaching me of the ways of points and air miles to travel to Tibet, China, and Tokyo, Costa Rica and the Galapagos spending barely a penny. (One of her last exhortations to me was to not waste her copious remaining air miles, a charge I take as seriously as she spoke it!) We took many a road trip, especially during her time in Phoenix, driving to Sedona to go to the fudge shoppe, to the beaches of Sonora, and taking weekend trips to Las Vegas or the Grand Canyon. 

We were our very own Gilmore Girls, growing up together for better and worse. She took me to my my first opera (Carmen, Earls Court, 1989) and my first rock concert (Tina Turner, Woburn Abbey 1990). We saw Kandinsky and Chagall at the Barbican. Les Mis, Cats, and Phantom on the West End. The car’s cassette deck and CD player blasted Queen and Rigoletto, Bowie and Nirvana, the Cranberries and Barbra Streisand. Like Lorelai Gilmore, she graduated with her first BA degree as an adult (our college graduations were two years apart); and like the Gilmore Girls sometimes our closeness was too close, became too much, too explosive. We could say things we didn’t mean, speak harsh words, slam doors. But we always found our way back to each other, again and again, including after I left her home at fifteen to go back to England, a huge, painful rupture that we managed to heal over the months and years that followed and which ultimately strengthened our relationship.  

No matter what happened, though, no matter where she was geographically relative to me, she was always in my corner. She was my champion, my cheerleader, my backer for the big things and the small. She was my gut check for big decisions. She volunteered (and bought the merch!) for every organization I worked at. She came to every conference she could. She donated money she didn’t have. She liked every Facebook post I made within seconds of my posting it, to the point where I had to ask her to stop! Once when I was driving back from a work trip in Albany and found myself in the thick of a snowstorm she stayed on the line with me for nearly three hours until I was on the safer, slushy roads of the West Side Highway. When my dad was diagnosed with ALS/Motor Neuron Disease, she flew to London and went through his papers and his belongings and consolidated everything into a storage unit while I fought to get him into a nursing home, despite my dad being an arse and attempting to undermine her mothering for much of my life. Before every flight, in any time zone, at any time, I would call her. 

I am so angry that she died so close to retirement, to the possibility of quiet in Costa Rica, an ocean view, a life without militarized presence on city streets, in the air, and on subway platforms. I'm mad that she never got to realize that dream of peace and a nervous system more at rest. But she wasn’t bitter or resentful. “It’s not exactly a happy thing, this cancer” she would say, “but it is what it is. What can I do.”

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In the two years since her diagnosis, some of the most important people in her life were the team at Mt Sinai: Dr Cohen, Dr Goodman, Dr Kelly, Lauren, her social worker, the miraculous chemo nurses, the cleaners who stopped in to chat with her during long treatments. Ali, who worked in the PCU and smelled so good (her words) who wrote her a poem to take home with her. The gastroenterologists, each of them so handsome (her words again). My mother-in-law, Cathy, a dear friend of my mum’s, who called her every day to check-in, who was at the hospital whenever I couldn’t be. Her colleagues who made going to the office a social occasion. 

In her final week, we were graced with a beautiful team of care and support in the home. My partner Zach, of course, who for the past two years with my mum—and previously with my dad and others—has always made it possible for me to be present and available to family, whether biological or chosen, and in that final week made my mum’s apartment as comfortable as possible for her and those around her. My mum loved Zach so very, very much. We were visited, too, by fantastic hospice workers, and Selma, a home health aide. And my cousins, Yonatan and Gal, were here thank goodness, bringing sunshine and the warmest of hugs into my mum’s room. (Yael’s brother and sister-in-law, Ilan and Madi, and her sister, Shelly, had all visited recently, which was a comfort to her as well). One of the last two times my mum smiled was when Yonatan walked in and said “Hi auntie.” 

All of us were fed and caffeinated and had everything we needed thanks to my mum’s neighbour-friends, Angela and Dave. And by a miracle, we were accompanied by Jeanie, an angel of a retired nurse, Angela's mother, who was by my mum’s and my side for her last five days. I could not have made it through that week without Jeanie, who helped make Yael comfortable, who knew exactly when to give me quiet time with Ima and when I needed to take a nap and she needed to step in. May we all know and be blessed by the sheer goodness of people the way my mum and I were blessed in her final days and hours and minutes. 

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I have heard from so many asking how you can honour Yael, especially in the absence of a funeral. I shan't say “in lieu of flowers” because honestly I really like flowers and they brighten my heart and spirit, so feel free to send them! But if you do wish to do something more concrete, please consider a donation to causes and organizations that align with her passions and principles, including:

• Jews for Racial and Economic Justice

• Child Center NY - for their early childhood education programs

• Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network - to ensure that everyone can have the care they need and be paid for the care work they provide

But also, just be good. Fill the community fridge near you. Join or support mutual aid efforts. And, if the spirit moves you, consider dyeing your hair or a strand of your hair purple (an idea that has organically sprung up amongst friends, neighbours, and their kiddos). 

I don't know how one lives without one's mother, how I will live without my Ima—me worrying about her, she worrying about me, both of us planning our next adventure—but I know people do it and that means I will too. 

With love,
Carinne

PS. If there are people you think would want to read this, please feel free to forward to them.