MY COUSIN JACOB SOLOME, or Jack, will only tell me how old he is; for the purposes of this article, he says, “Put me down in the high 90s.” He met his wife, Eda, now 99 and suffering from dementia, when they spent two years hiding from the Nazis in a Polish farmhouse, crawling under floorboards whenever they heard anyone coming. They’ve been married for 75 years. A retired obstetrician-gynecologist and news junkie, he’s long kept a full schedule of teaching, swimming, and driving like a drag racer to various social engagements. Pre-pandemic, we would meet at his favorite all-you-can-eat Pan-Asian buffet in Sheepshead Bay, not far from the Midwood home where he and Eda have lived for a half-century. Now, with each of us in isolation, I called him…
