Rima Lois Brauer, M.D. died on May 17, 2015 in her apartment at Chatfield from a brain tumor, which gradually sapped her ability to talk and walk. She was born February 5, 1938 in Brooklyn, N.Y. to Gerald and Frieda Rubenstein. Her father was a hero of the State of Israel who secured a ship, the Hatikvah, that helped ferry Jews to Palestine post World War II. Rima grew up in Baltimore, attended Goucher College and then the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She Interned at Montefiore Hospital, trained in adult and child psychiatry at Yale University, and graduated from the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in New Haven. She was a gifted clinician whose results often exceeded her patients’ expectations. Rima met her husband, Lee David Brauer M.D. while dissecting a cadaver in medical school. They have three children, Samuel, Jennifer and Nathan and two grandchildren, Esme and Lion from Nathan and his wife Hilda. Rima raised her family while she worked as a medical student, intern, resident and physician. She and her husband maintained separate analytic and psychiatric practices in adjoining offices in West Hartford. She believed in a balance between work and family and restricted her professional hours to have time for her family. She valued education highly and supported several academic institutions. She also taught at the Institute of Living and she wrote a primer on psychotherapy with Gerald Farris, Ph.D. entitled “Listening to the Melody of the Mind”. Rima loved art, dance and music, and frequently attended concerts at the N.Y. Philharmonic. She also skied, sailed, hiked, cooked and did needlepoint.
Funeral Services will be at Temple Sinai at 458 Lakeside Drive in Stamford, Connecticut on Tuesday, May 19th at 10:30 A.M. followed by interment at Riverside Cemetery in Saddle Brook, N.J. The family will sit shiva at 71 Boulderol Road in Stamford at 7 P.M. on Tuesday after the interment, and then on Wednesday, May 20th at 7 P.M. at Chatfield, 1 Chatfield Drive, West Hartford CT. In lieu of flowers, please send any gifts to the Brain Tumors Program at the Smilo Cancer Center at Yale University. Arrangements are entrusted to Weinstein Mortuary, Hartford, CT. For further information, directions, or to sign the guestbook for Rima Brauer, please visit online at www.weinsteinmortuary.com/funerals/cfm.