One of the highlights of the meaningful Zoom memorial service that good friend and spiritual leader Jimmy Levinson led for my late husband Murray was when he shared some of Murray’s hobbies and then invited each of those present to raise their hand if they also had that hobby and would think of Murray when they did that. Among Murray’s hobbies were hiking, gardening and photography. While taxes were certainly not a hobby, Murray always did ours, first by hand and in later years using Turbo Tax.
While this year was a bit more complicated due to his passing I decided that a way to honor Murray was to continue with his tradition and to do the taxes myself using Turbo Tax instead of organizing them and sending them off to an accountant. I am really glad I did. As I worked on them I felt a real closeness to Murray and a satisfaction of knowing that I was honoring the way he did things.
Now…. Let me be honest, Turbo Tax has an upgrade where they offer 24/7 chat or phone calls and I took that upgrade and did I use it. I never hesitated to call them or chat whenever I had a question and they took their time working me through the questions and the inputting of information. Numbers and math have never been my thing but I did do the easy 990 form for my non-profit dance company and the financial statements for both the dance company and Healing Voices.
It has now been just over 6 months since Murray passed. I miss him a lot and find ways to both keep him in my memory and to honor our years together. This May 6th would have been his 81st birthday and I wanted to make a contribution in his memory. With the devastating news out of India I knew I wanted to make a contribution to an organization in India. I reached out to my good friend Jimmy Levinson to ask what his son Noah’s organization, Calcutta Kids, was doing related to COVID and Jimmy shared that they were setting up a vaccination site. I decided to donate to Calcutta Kids knowing that it was a small organization that I have supported in the past and that they have made and are making a difference in young children and moms’ lives starting with pre-natal care. Here’s a link to their organization in case it interests you: https://calcuttakids.org
I close this blog with a few favorite recent pictures of Murray! (Photos were taken between 2015 – 2018.)
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