Dear Grandma

by Elicia Brown
Special To The Jewish Week

I’d planned to sit beside you, Grandma, holding your hand for hours while you rested in this narrow hospital bed — much the way you grasped grandpa’s hand throughout his last decade of increasing dementia, a steady support in the face of so much confusion and fear.
I’d planned to tell you all: what a role model you’ve been during every stage of life; of how as a young child I eagerly bounded up the brick steps of your home on Avenue S in Brooklyn, anticipating how I would inhale the familiar, mingled scent of sweat and chicken soup and how I would bask in your unconditional love.
But now, Grandma, you’re 91, and you lie here drifting in and out of sleep, your

eyes rolling backward when you struggle to prop them open. And I’m acting like an awkward stranger. I’m so scared. I want to run down the hall like Joel and Talia, your great grandchildren, my children.
You know what Talia did the other day? She’d learned in school about how at the Passover seder we remember the pain of others, we recall the suffering of the Egyptians by removing some of our own joy, by spilling drops of our sweet wine or grape juice. On the Friday night that she heard you were sick, she set aside a small portion of her beloved challah. “This is for great-grandma, who has always been so nice to us,” she said, holding up a sliver of her slice. Later, she devoured that challah. But her point was made.
Through your eyes, Grandma, I can glimpse the sunny world you inhabit — one where you can raise four healthy, doting children, one where just enough money is enough, one where you loved a blue-eyed postal carrier so deeply, so passionately for six decades that when he died on Mother’s Day four years ago you asked if you could follow with him into the ground.
But then afterward, you didn’t crumble, you didn’t succumb to depression. In your wheelchair, you played catch with Joel, the baby who was inside me when grandpa died. You held hands with Talia. You thanked us for the “nice people” who have aided you, who have accompanied you everywhere, staying over every night in your apartment for the last five years.
And you made new friends at the senior center. “Smile and the world smiles with you,” you told me. “If you share your worries, they run in the other direction.”
So I’m not going to share my worries now, because you’ve left the hospital. We won’t talk about the diagnosis, or ask how long you can sustain yourself on a few spoonfuls of raspberry ice cream each day.
On my next visit, I’d thought, I would sing old songs like your four wise and wise-cracking sisters do when they come. And we’d talk about other days. About how I treasured your and grandpa’s attempts year after year to teach me to play tennis —“You need to run!” you’d shout, dancing a little sideways jig with your feet to demonstrate, your miniskirt flapping in the wind.
We’d talk about how the sound of a lifeguard’s whistle will always transport me back to The Beach — Brighton Beach Baths, of course, the now-defunct Brooklyn club where you and grandpa passed so many happy days in the sun.
We’d laugh about how “this is a party!” because whenever I visit you, there’s always food and fun, as there was at all those other parties large and small in the past, with the entire rollicking Goldfarb Family Circle, or with just one of your own grandchildren.
But then yesterday, when I returned to you, and crouched over your hospital bed, I realized that I didn’t want to evoke memories that long slipped from your mind. I couldn’t bear to see that cloud of confusion pass over you. Every time I re-entered the room, we began our visit again. “Oh, you’re here! How beautiful you are. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
A few days ago, I imagined I’d lean over your sweet, withered face and whisper my secret. Now I know that probably won’t happen. Still: You’re my favorite, you know. You always have been. n
Elicia Brown’s column appears the second week of the month. E-mail: eliciabrown@hotmail.com.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization