For Gram - She's 102!

LesbosOnTheCouch by Beth C, one of the Lesbos

Today is my gram’s one hundred and second birthday. Today is also the day she is to begin her life in an old age home…at 102 years she is still beginning something new…I wonder if she knows either of these things. Does she know that she is 102 years old? Does she know she is moving to a home? (The last time she was hospitalized she thought she was on vacation at some nice hotel that had brought her breakfast all the way to her bed!)

My gram…she was the source of so much information. The only Yiddish I know, I learned from her. When I moaned that I was bored, she’d tell me, “Gai kochin uffen yam!” – Go shit in the ocean! 

When I wanted a sweet snack, she’d give me carrots.  She told me that white flour was bad for me and that eating too many processed foods would make me unhealthy and fat. She ate a bowl of vitamins with every meal, went to a chiropractor instead of a doctor to heal her ills, she swam all summer long in the ocean after walking 2 miles to get to the beach. When I moved to Israel, she started studying Hebrew – at the local college at the age of eighty! She worked, she studied, she read and practiced a ‘healthy lifestyle.’

She taught us that not being in motion –is death…

My gram folked danced. My gram went to concerts and plays. When I was in junior high school, she took me to my first off Broadway play…My gram considered herself an intellectual – and she was…Did this make her a bit cold? Probably, but she’s my gram. .. and she’s an hundred and two. The irony is not lost here—I can’t help thinking of my aunt, her daughter, dead of cancer at sixty four. Gram, at one hundred and two does not even really remember my aunt – or anyone else…and yet she lives…My Gram’s message of a healthy and vigorous life was embodied by my Aunt…who died of cancer at 64.

(I am making the sign of hold ‘the scales’ in my hand.) Irony. One hundred and two, and unaware – sixty four, and enjoying life and loving those whose life you’ve touched…The scales are never balanced. They never will be…

Back to my Gram. My last visit with her, some 2 weeks ago, we looked at a photo montage of all her years. Her parents, her husband (my Grandpop), her children (my mother and my aunt) and my siblings and I. She loved looking at the pictures. When I pointed her out in some of the pictures, she continued to stare and replied, ‘Really?’

Really Gram. That was you. You are the Gram. The Grandmother of three, the mother of two. Your husband died at 84 yrs. Your youngest daughter died just last month. She called you every day to tell you that she loves you. You said ‘Thank you.’ Do you notice that she doesn’t call anymore?

When I got up to leave, I also said, ‘’I love you.”

You said, “Oh. Thank you.’ And then you said, ‘’Why did you come here?’’

I said that I came here to see you and tell you that I love you. I told you that I came here because I love you.

You said, “oh. Really?”

Gram…Really. I love you. Ellen loved you. We all love you. Happy birthday. Enjoy your next beginning.