A Sister’s Death, an Overwhelming Task, a Local FB Group: How an UWS Woman Found Unexpected Help

By Gus Saltonstall

Last February, just after her sister Jilian Michelle Gotlib died, Valerie Gotlib Shepherd stood in Jilian’s Upper West Side apartment, absorbing the news that all of its contents now belonged to her.

Jilian had spent the majority of her life in the apartment at West 84th Street and West End Avenue. But not long before she died, the sisters had a falling out. So it was a surprise to Valerie that Jilian had left her all of her possessions.

“I really didn’t think she’d want me to have anything of hers after what had happened,” Shepherd said. “I almost feel like it was a gift and a little bit of a curse, because there were so many things, and [I wanted to] honor her properly.”

To make matters more overwhelming, Shepherd was five months pregnant, had a husband and toddler at home, was working a full-time job, and suddenly was faced with an urgent, daunting task for which she had no experience.

The Backstory

Jilian Michelle Gotlib was the first child of Georges Henri Gotlib, a Holocaust survivor who escaped from France and made a life in New York City.

Valerie Gotlib Shepherd was Georges Henri Gotlib’s last child, born 29 years after Jilian to a different mother.

Both of the sisters grew up on the Upper West Side.

“She and I were always very close, but the age difference did make it an interesting dynamic; we lived a block apart,” Shepherd said.

At the beginning of COVID-19, Shepherd and her husband moved back into her childhood UWS home to take care of her father, who was in poor health. She had learned she was pregnant with her first child around the same time, and her father passed away eight days after she brought her son home.

Then, in the summer of 2023, her sister Jilian, in her early 70s, was diagnosed with liver cancer. After an attempt at chemotherapy, she decided to halt treatment.

Around the same time, Shepherd found out that she and her husband were expecting their second child, a girl, whom they decided to name Sloane. Unexpectedly, and for reasons they never fully understood, that name enraged Shepherd’s older sister.

“She said it was a horrible name, that it was disrespectful,”  Shepherd told West Side Rag. “She said that we couldn’t name our daughter that, and she gave us a list.” 

The back and forth on the name went on for months. Then, last December, “We told her, ‘We love you, we want to support you, but you can’t dictate what we name our child,’” Shepherd said. “My sister decided that meant she was going to cut us off.”

The sisters did not speak for the next month, but when Gotlib’s health deteriorated, she said she was willing to see Shepherd again.

“I went over there and just sat with her,” Shepherd said. “At this point she couldn’t even open her eyes, but I was able to sit with her and have that kind of goodbye, which was very important,” she explained.

Honoring Her Sister

Gotlib died in early February, and then came the surprise that she’d left everything to Shepherd — and that it all needed to be removed as soon as possible so the apartment could be vacated.

“My first instinct was to throw everything away,” Shepherd said. “But that just felt terrible. I knew that would not be honoring my sister at all.”

That’s when she had an idea.

Shepherd had already used the Buy Nothing 76-90 St. UWS Facebook group to help get a nursery ready for her newborn daughter. Now, she reached out to Jenn Mattie, administrator of the group, to see if Mattie could help with her sister’s belongings.

The Buy Nothing group is a community of locals where residents exchange gifts and essentials free of charge. With its help, “and along with my sister’s friends and my amazing brothers, we began to champion an effort to get her stuff to people who could really use it,” Shepherd said.

Gotlib’s dishes went to a family moving to the city from Albania. Her many coats went to various shelters in the neighborhood, and her thousands of beads and art supplies (Gotlib was a lifelong artist) went to an occupational therapist for use in art therapy for kids.

But when March rolled around, the apartment still contained heaps of Gotlib’s belongings, and the building management began getting irritated about people coming over to collect things. So Shepherd had the idea to bring the remaining belongings to her apartment, where people from the Upper West Side Buy Nothing group could come pick them up.

Then she fell and spent several days in the hospital, before being sent home on bedrest for her pregnancy.

That’s when Jenn Mattie came to the rescue, said Shepherd, “going through everything, sorting belongings into different piles, working with people from the Buy Nothing group to make sure these belongings went to people that would honor my sister’s memory.”

“I was happy to,” Mattie said in an email to the Rag. “I always feel a bit sad when I walk by a building’s trash and see the contents of someone’s life waiting for the garbage truck. Lots of families have limited resources or time to empty these apartments more intentionally, so I understand the why, and I was happy to take the opportunity to help honor her sister, possibly help the healing process, all while gifting some really amazing items to those in our community who would appreciate them.”

“The thing I wasn’t expecting was that, although I had never met Valerie’s sister, I felt that I began to know her through her beautiful things, her art, and books,” she added.

Both women spoke to the importance of the role that the Upper West Side Facebook group played.

“We really exploded during the COVID shutdown as everyone was working/schooling from home and items were not readily available, so we looked to our neighbors to fill our needs or to gift items that others needed,” Mattie said. 

Shepherd said that being part of this process made her feel part of a community.

“I’ve met many of the members in person now and we’ve become friends,” she said. “When I needed help, and I thought I had to bring all these belongings to a thrift store, I had people I never met before reaching out.”

Members took turns taking clothes and jewelry, bringing books to local libraries, and offering leads on where other items might best go. At the beginning of July, Gotlib’s apartment was officially emptied out – and in a way that suitably honored her memory, Shepherd said. “To think of other people who need or find joy from these possessions, rather than just thinking about them in a landfill somewhere,” she said.

“It helps her live on a little bit.”

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