When I invited Cathy Eisen to sit for an interview, she hesitated, saying “I don’t know if I’m interesting enough.” That notion was quickly dispelled as I learned about a woman who:

• Had a near-death experience at age 18, suffering carbon monoxide poisoning while on a road trip in a ‘60s-era Mustang
• Defied convention and her mother’s advice (“Be a secretary”)to be the first person in her family to go to college, initially becoming a teacher and later a lawyer
• Spent her meager teacher’s salary on a piano instead of a bed for her first apartment
• Competed in seven New York Times crossword puzzle tournaments
• Found a “different kind of love, and a patience I never knew I had” as her husband succumbed to dementia

A self-described “word nerd,” Cathy solves daily crossword puzzles using a physical grid, never online. “I tried and found it extremely annoying and unsatisfying. For me, crosswords must be done on paper while holding a good quality mechanical pencil. I currently own about 25 of those.” She was thrilled to meet Will Shortz, the crossword editor for the New York Times, at the annual tournament he hosts. She describes the scene as “600 nerds sitting around doing puzzles. I always placed in the middle, and I was happy with that. One year I placed 200 out of 600 and I was over the moon, because these people are crazy smart.”

Crosswords are not Cathy’s only word-nerd obsession. She collects interesting words and sayings she likes. “I have more scraps of paper around my house of things I’ve written down. It’s a little ridiculous. I laugh at myself—I know I am weird and I embrace it.”

Readers of the “word nerd’s” first book would dispute that characterization. Published in 2014, “What We Leave Behind,” is a blend of memoir and historical fiction. The book’s subtitle—”Four Generations in Cicero, Illinois (None of Them Knew Al Capone)”—hints at the humor that Cathy adds to the account of three generations of a family living a mostly hardscrabble life. One reviewer described it as “a fascinating read of triumph over difficult times.” Her book is available on Amazon.

Cathy’s next book (a work in progress) was inspired by the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s advice that everyone should write their own “Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life,” an A to Z set of recollections. Under “C” in Cathy’s version will be the account of the Mustang carbon monoxide episode: “Being 17, did we turn back? No, but we stopped at a hospital where I was given oxygen, then went on our merry way. We did have the tailpipe fixed and drove the rest of the way with the windows open (despite the November cold) while listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash singing ‘Sweet Judy Blue Eyes’ on the eight-track tape player. That song always makes me think of that trip.”

From Teacher to Lawyer to Love

After earning a degree from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Cathy spent three years teaching second grade, before taking a break to earn more than she could make on a teacher’s salary at the time. “I decided, all right, I’m going to make some money, and I’ll go back to teaching. I was working as a legal secretary, and I looked at the lawyers and thought, ‘I could do this.’ So I enrolled in Chicago Kent College of Law. I worked full time, went to school at night and passed the bar when I was 32. I got a job as a law clerk to the chief bankruptcy judge in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago, who was my future husband, Bob.”

“A match made in heaven” is a trite phrase, but it is an apt description of Cathy’s marriage to Bob. “I was 35 and he was 61 when we married. And I remember him saying to me, are you sure you want to marry someone so much older? And I said, ‘Well, if you live to 70, we’ll have like 10 good years together.’ He ended up living to the age of 97. He made my life so interesting in so many ways. And I wouldn’t have met him if I hadn’t taken the twists and turns I took.”

Happily, Bob was also a crossword aficionado. “We used to joke that there was not a puzzle that the two of us could not conquer,” Cathy recalled. “Bob did his in ink right up to the end, even as his dementia was progressing. That was one of the last things to go, but music stayed to the end.”

Cathy speaks candidly and poignantly of the challenges of caring for a partner as dementia progresses. An initial two-week stay in a respite care facility became a permanent placement. “He stayed there, not remembering that we had a home in LaGrange. It was a blessing and a curse… I’d be crying when I first walked back home and opened the door and knew he wasn’t going to come back. But I also found a different kind of love for him, almost like he was my child. I felt this tenderness toward him, and I found a patience that I never knew I had.”

Cathy treasures the three decades she and Bob had together before dementia entered their lives. “He was truly the smartest man I ever knew. I wouldn’t want people to think my life with Bob was just about caring for an older man—we did so much travel together around the country and in Europe. We had so many adventures. Bob was truly the most interesting man in the world. He made me the person I am today in many ways.”

Bob died on January 7, 2023. “He had a great respect for trees and nature,” Cathy recalls. After he died, she came upon a prose poem that Bob had written. It is now imprinted on a plaque on the remembrance tree she planted for Bob in the Morton Arboretum:

Quakers say that each person has
“that” of God within them.
The poet said a tree looks at God all day.
Ergo, a tree looks at me all day, too.
The admiration is mutual.
Those who talk disparagingly of tree huggers prove only one thing:
They have never hugged a tree.

“Finding My People”

In addition to her stints in teaching and law, Cathy also worked as a “humble bookseller” at Border’s. “There were three times in my life when I felt like I had found my people,” she recalled. “The first time was with my co-workers at Borders. None of us had children, and we all just talked about art and books and music. And the second time was when I went to the New York Times Crossword Tournament in 2011.” 

“And the third time?” the interviewer asked, hopefully. “The Sounds Good Choir,” Cathy quickly responded. “The very first day I walked into the Hinsdale rehearsal in the fall of 2023. I was scared to death. And I remember Jonathan Miller [conductor] and Jenna Eisenberg [choir liaison] greeting me. I came home that day and I wrote in my journal, ‘I think I kind of loved this.’ And I’ve loved it ever since.” If you see Cathy at a Sounds Good rehearsal (or most anywhere) she will be wearing one of her colorful hats. “I started losing my hair in 2013, due to alopecia,” she explained. “I really don’t mind because I never liked styling my hair. And hats are fun. But there are times I wish I had some hair, like when I have to take a photo for my driver’s license without glasses or headwear.”

Singing with Sounds Good helps Cathy recall how much she and Bob enjoyed singing together. Like many people with dementia, Bob enjoyed music until the end: “He would blurt out songs all the time. [The care home] would send me videos of him singing. He loved Frank Sinatra more than anybody in the whole world. So I have ‘Seriously Sinatra’ programmed on my Sirius XM channel because it makes me feel close to him. I have a video of him singing, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ because he liked that Sinatra song. And we would sing some of our favorite songs together. One of them was ‘There’s a Place for Us,’ which we sang in Sounds Good, and I always choked up.”

Among the rewards of singing with Sounds Good, as Cathy’s story illustrates, is that you are sure to meet many interesting people (despite their disclaimers to the contrary) and that it’s always okay to choke up.