Cathy R______ found this on the parish website to which the obit had
 led me -- it was distinctly odd to see that her memorial service was
 at a Catholic church. I put in a call to the church office, and they
 got back to me at the end of the day. Elli enrolled in RCIA (the
 Roman Catholic program for potential converts) in 2005, I guess
 shortly after the removal of much of her intestine (cancer?) and her
 retirement from newspaper work. Because of her generally poor health
 the Bishop gave the pastor special permission to give her Communion,
 but too late -- she was suddenly admitted to the hospital and she
 was already on a ventilator when he got there. He was able to hear
 her confession, confirm her, and give her the sacrament of the sick
 before the end. That's what I remember, anyway. It was all so
 unexpected.

 Elli was on a spiritual quest as long as I knew her. The college year
 she spent in India she did an extensive comparison of Shankaracharya
 with Nagarjuna in which the latter came out ahead, but told me later
 that it's all in John of the Cross. There was the Vietnam War and the
 smuggling of potential draftees to Canada. There was the Gurjieff
 commune, her experience of which prompted The Record to assign her to
 the local followup to the Jonestown massacre. There were the years of
 Reichian analysis, and perhaps some Jungian work as well, and the New
 Age books she worked on at Harper and Rowe, her working as a freelance
 yoga teacher -- my roommate and I were among her (few?) clients.

 I used to think Elli was PC before there was a name for it. When the
 late Bill Buckley began to appear on educational TV, he reminded me of
 her, though of course from the other side of the alleged spectrum. It
 seemed to me that her model was that Mrs. Roosevelt whom he so
 publicly hated and despised. If you knew Elli as a political being,
 you will smile to think that she chose Joan of Arc as her confirmation
 saint.

 But Catholic? It is easy to see Elli as part of the Church of Thomas
 Merton, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Bede Griffiths. It may be
 much harder to see that Church behind the Catholic Church of the
 headlines and the movies. If you are curious, perhaps one of these
 names will be a clue.

 As we say on Mulberry Street,
 Eleanor Jeanne Darc Bird Light
 Memory Eternal, Eternal Memory