I am hoping and praying that Susan’s bright spirit will continue to light my soul with her resilient courage and effervescent joyful laughter and tears, for as long as I may live.

Neighbors (Jan? Rina? Sheila?) brought Susan to my earliest Qigong/ Moving Meditation classes at First Congregational Church of Westfield, almost 20 years ago. That’s how I met her.  

Susan loved Qigong, as she loved life.  She engaged totally with the practice of embodied calm, hope, nature imagery, gentle breathwork and peaceful motion.  

Susan, by her nature socially outgoing, became Moving Meditation’s natural greeter, welcoming and interested in all newcomers, session after session, from 2002 through the pandemic summer of 2020, when classes met outdoors, masked, in the church nursery school playground.   

Susan and I became walking, hiking, snowshoe companions.  As we walked, we talked about everything under the sun:  How the world has changed in our lifetimes: families, parents, children, work, communication.  There were a thousand coincidences that connected us.  

She loved to tell about old Westfield in the 1950’s. Susan grew up here, bought her parents’ house, raised her children and lived out her life, on Mountain Avenue, two doors up from Miller Cory. 

Susan’s awesome courage, through her many-many years of chemotherapy at Memorial Sloane Kettering in New York City, was a humbling inspiration to me.  I don’t know how she did it, always with some wry and funny remark, trial after trial…

The important thing is that she loved:  

Susan loved nonjudgmentally, utterly and unconditionally.  She loved stray cats, lost dogs, the elderly, babies, eccentric characters.  

Susan said she had the best job in the whole world, as a social worker for the VA, visiting wonderful homebound WWII and Vietnam Veterans.  

She loved trees, beaches, ocean, forest, mountains, sun, snow and rain.  

She loved her boys.  Widowed young, Susan had raised her three sons single-handed, juggling full-time work.  Susan’s sons could do no wrong.  She was “tiger-mom” in hot-blooded advocacy, on and for their side of whatever situations life threw at them. 

Susan loved, she loved it all.  

Susan’s open heart reached out with a positive vibrational pattern.  In Susan’s presence, you couldn’t help but smile, knowing, with tears and laughter, that blessings abound.

Laura Berzofsky, July 22, 2021

One thing I learned from my mom is that you need to know what you want in life, pretty specifically at times; a key ingredient to living a fulfilling life, from my view. On her hospice bed, where we got a lot accomplished in little time, my mom explained in vivid detail what she wanted us to do with her ashes. She said, "I want you to divide my ashes between the three of you. Put them into three purple velvet pouches, each with a gold rope. And inside the purple velvet pouch, the ashes will sit in a cardboard box. Then, you'll tie the gold rope" and finished with a grin. I got the materials delivered in time.