Elizabeth Tashjian, age 94, just died.

Elizabeth was an expert.

She was an expert on nuts.

The headline of her obituary in The Sunday New York Times read:Elizabeth Tashjian, 94, An Expert on Nuts, Dies.

I laughed out loud when I read that headline, laughed with happiness for this woman whom I had never heard of who had focused her life on something she was absolutely crazy about studying: nuts.

I thought, “Oh, to have such a passion for something—anything—that that subject gets mentioned in the headline of your obituary!”

It wasn’t easy for Elizabeth Tashjian. Some people called her the “Nut Lady,” and the name wasn’t exactly a compliment. Ms. Tashjian studied nuts, made nut jewelry and nut art, and even crafted a nativity scene made completely from nuts. She performed her own composition, “Nuts Are Beautiful,” when people visited her Nut Museum (admission was one nut at the beginning and rose to $3 plus one nut over the years.)

Elizabeth Tashjian was a trained academic painter (and a gifted violinist). She became a public personality on television and radio (Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Howard Stern, Chevy Case), always discussing her life-long passion: nuts. She was the subject of a 2005 documentary which chronicled not only her love of nuts but the difficulty she had maintaining her home and her nut museum in her later years.

The obituary of Elizabeth Tashjian made me think another death notice I read years ago in The NY Times…J. Blan van Urk. His obituary read: “He was 95 and a widely recognized authority on fox hunting and lunch.” So, clearly, it’s not the grandiosity of the subject that gets one’s passion mentioned in an obituary when one dies.It’s the very act of having a passion.

Love,

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.