As many Israelis were picking over the detritus discarded on the latest national election battlefield, a group of us paid homage to a personality who produced the best in everyone. If we all thought like Debbie Richman, I suggested, there would be no tension.
US-born, Debbie had been an accomplished midwife and her social media image showed her in medical scrubs tending a patient. So those of us gathered to honour her memory at her close friend, Helen Chang’s home in Amirim, Galilee, found it especially hard to reconcile her work as an aide to birth with the manner in which she died.
Debbie was a restless spirit; an eternal sole traveller to distant, perhaps strange locales like Mongolia, Ethiopia, Goa and Alaska along with frequent visits elsewhere in the US. I was surprised - shocked, even - to meet her once resting on a bench in my suburban street. The reason? She had walked about three hours from home to arrive there!
To be a guest at Debbie’s parties - the last being in early May - was always great fun; not only for the refreshments and occasional musical entertainment but due really to the wonderfully wide range of people she somehow gathered under her roof.
We all wish we could tell her how much she is being missed.
© Natalie Wood (19 September 2019)
