Judith Ann Malin

Judith Ann Malin, of Oil City, Pennsylvania and later, Baltimore, Maryland, known to all as “Judy,” wife of David Hirsch Malin, parent of Michael Laban Malin, grandparent to David Kohler Malin and Abigail Molly Malin, sister to James Michael George, a longtime social worker and administrator at St. Elizabeth School, as well as an employee of the city, and a friend and caregiver to many, has died. She was 82 years old.

And so ends the formal portion of this obituary. Hallelujah!

For Judy, formal was something to wear to a wedding. Otherwise, there were no formalities at all. Paper plates and plastic cups, ice water and beer, forks but no knives, a bag of chips above the fridge, no recipe that can’t be turned into a stew. Find a seat somewhere, maybe on the steps, or the world’s quiltiest, comfiest couch, and listen to the news of the week. Judy was warm, but not like a smile, like a hearth, she was where people gathered, and glowed, she produced the kind of warmth that could literally sustain you, and sometimes did sustain you. She was just like her son in this way. And her front door was always unlocked.

Her car door too, most of the time. Imagine you’re a thief. It’s the middle of the night. You pop open her minivan, or her Honda, and there’s sports equipment everywhere. A bathing suit hanging from the rear view mirror. Dog stuff, lacrosse sticks. Flippers in the back. And what are you going to do with that snorkel?

When word of Judy’s passing went out on Christmas Eve, her son Mike’s old friend Joe Johnston sent a quick note back in reply. It said: Rest in Peace, Saint Judy. A little over the top, maybe. Maybe. But not really. Think of the way that she loved. Think of David, the first love of her life, think of Mike (I don’t have to tell you to think of Mike), her world, her heart and soul (and lots of other people’s too). Think of Cathy and Abbie, and David, all over again, all her love compounding. Think of the way that she loved. And the way that she loved us.

But if Judy was saint-like, in both her suffering and her service, in her righteous, sustaining kindness (35 years at St. Elizabeth’s!) and in her righteous, sustaining frustrations (35 years at St. Elizabeth’s!) then what an earthy, cursing saint! What a funny saint. And pretty irreverent. Married to anorthodox Jew. Always sliding into venues, asking forgiveness instead of permission. Sneaking from the bleachers to the box seats. All these disqualifiers. And yet.

Earthy as she was, she was seafaring as well. Patti Mannion, her oldest friend, says she introduced Judy to smoking and to the ocean, only one of which you can do in Ohio, which is maybe why they both ended up in Baltimore, a little closer to the sea, (though David probably had something to do with it too) working for what was then the Department of Public Welfare, in the Foster Care division. Patti remembers driving past the federal troops with Judy in April, 1968, to find one of their foster kids looting a dry cleaner, and watching as Judy set about setting him straight. Or, straight enough.

The straight path, the path of the righteous: not required for Judy to take you in! As who among us, etc, etc. We all need someone to talk to sometimes, to feed us and listen to us without judgment, and without, you know, in certain cases, reporting us to the authorities. And for so many of us, so many of us, that person was Judy. For Mike that was Judy—always. (And for many of us, yes, that was Mike.)

At times her home was in a benevolent kind of flux: Who’s staying up in Judy’s attic this week? Which one of Mike’s friends is sleeping over three school nights in a row? Which friend of a friend of a friend is coming to dinner? Judy was stoic in the face of a wild story, or confession, whether from her SES world, or the infinitude of Mike’s friends, so many of whom thought of her as a caregiver or second mother, though occasionally her eyebrows would rise at the climax of whatever tale.

But we watched her from afar, necessarily, and increasingly with her losses, though she was never lost to us; we were estranged only from her interior point of view, which we could never understand; we saw her from the outside, and were inspired by her strength and determination, her fierceness, and her power, call it her purpose or compulsion—to be of service—but we didn’t understand it. And yet we marvel at what baffles us. The phenomenon of nature, the grace of an athlete in her prime, the highest note of an aria; Judy’s life was like that: anomalous, strange, heavy—too heavy—with tribulations, and yet also abounding with joys, and with laughter, and with anger, and with wonder, and with pain—full, all around. She lived an extraordinary life. Fitting that we come together to remember her now, in this time of warm fires and gathered families, this Sunday Dinner of a person.

An old friend recalls Mike and Cathy’s wedding ceremony, near the end, when the Deacon turned and pointed, and shouted, recognizing Judy for the life she’d lived thus far, shouting, Bravo, Judy! Bravo! And so we all turn to her at this time now as well.