A ROLE-MODEL OF MENTAL HEALTH

Victor Bloom MD

Charity Suczek died peacefully in her home at age 98 and several hundred people attended a memorial wake held Sunday afternoon at the Fries ballroom of the War Memorial. It was a time for family and friends to gather and remember this marvellous lady who made Grosse Pointe proud. She was known as the ultimate Cordon-Bleu French chef whose cooking lessons were memorable events to hundreds of Grosse Pointe ladies for generations. Each lesson was a blend of haute cuisine and philosophy as our own Grand Dame held forth. It was the closest many of us would come to real royalty. She was a blue-blood, she had what it took. She lived life valiantly and fully. All those whose lives she touched were enriched.

There were stories upon stories. Immediate family got up to review the history of her long and momentous life, and then extended family, close friends and good friends came up to the microphone to recount their own favorite vignettes. I am proud to be counted among her friends. In her nineties she took the opportunity to pick my brain about Freud and psychoanalysis, marriage and morals and the sexual revolution. She was not only interested in the arts, but in science and popular culture. Most of her contemporaries died before her, but she was always making new friends and she especially enjoyed young people. She knew she had lots to say and had no inhibitions about sharing her experiences and knowledge. Her name, "Charity" was most apt.

My wife attended her cooking lessons and I took some videotape footage. She would interrupt her cooking lessons to sit down, sip some wine and talk, talk about love and life and philosophy, about art and music and culture, about travel and history and beauty. Her presence was spellbinding. We returned the favor by inviting her to dinner at our house. It was like a final exam. Did our cooking pass muster? It did. At the end of a lovely evening, Charity declared, excitedly, "the evening has just begun!"

"We are going to a Viennese Ball!" It was ten-thirty Saturday night; we thought that since she was an old lady, that would be it. We were tired, thirty years her junior, and thought she was just kidding. But she was not! Sure enough, her son, Alex had organized an old-fashioned Viennese Ball with an orchestra playing Strauss waltzes at the Fries Ballroom of the War Memorial. Unbeknownst to us, Charity fully intended to have dinner with us and then go out dancing! Sure enough, the ball was in high gear and she waltzed with the best of them till midnight. She knows how to have a good time and she pulls all the stops.

Her son, Alex, told the assembled that it was her wish that at her wake there would be music and champagne, and that is what we had. It was not a sad occasion, because her presence was everywhere and memories of her were deep, intense and profound. That is the kind of person she was. She lived a rich and full life. There was nothing to regret. There was no talk of her passing to another existence, no talk of everlasting life or heaven.

She was an epicure, perhaps a hedonist. She was not constrained or shy or bashful. She took in life and gave of herself. She enjoyed a double fortune, and that is having a clear and alert mind up to the end, and considering her outgoing personality and giving nature, must have had an ideal childhood. She had an abundance of everything that nature and nurture had to offer, and so she is a role-model of mental health.

As I said at the time, I saw no significant inhibitions or complexes; she was not at cross-purposes, she was all there, intact, unified, unique, creative and endlessly growing. She left a legacy of bountiful goodness to all who came in contact with her. This is the kind of existence to which we can only aspire.

T'is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Let her example be followed in so far as is humanly possible.

Dr. Bloom lives and practices in Grosse Pointe Park. He is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.