Yahrtzeit

A year has passed since my grandmother passed away. (She actually died March 29th, but the Jewish date is today ).

A year is so long... yet seems so short. I saw a video of her recently and almost called out to her to come look at herself on tape. Memory has a way of playing tricks on you. I never thought I'd survive after she was gone, but with time, you, against your will almost, just learn to live with something missing. The despair lasted for months, and yet, I learned to get up and go on. I cannot imagine NOT going on anymore. So strange how we have a tendency of getting used to anything, even being alone.

I miss hearing her voice. I miss gossipping about everything under the sun, confiding in what worries me. I miss her laying out the cards for me. I miss the hours we spent playing card games in the summer. I miss her raging against the Democrats. I miss watching soap operas along her side. I miss her rich, deep alto when she sang songs at various celebrations. I miss her muscles of steel, her iron grip. She seemed to be made of metal. I miss her completely lack of sentimentality except when she drank. I miss watching her downing shots of vodka without blinking an eye. I miss the elaborate fairy tales she told me. I miss her drinking tea and I miss her being over-the-top overprotective. I miss eavesdropping on her enless conversations with my cousin. I miss her commanding tone. I miss her gefilte fish, even though I never ate. I just miss it lying on the table, and the praise of my cousins who couldn't tear themselves away from it and praised it every single time. I miss her jokes, not all of which were quite clean. I miss her tremendous will power. I miss the heat of her hands, so hot even in the coldest of times. I miss her way with children, the wya she somehow made everyone obey, without lifting her voice, without ever raising her hand at anyone. I miss her scurrying around the kitchen, cooking up a dinner for us all.

I miss the way my cat used to sleep on her back while we all watched TV. I miss the way she could get along with everyone. I miss her powerful, even domineering personality. I miss the way she could make her voice really resonate. I miss the way she used to cover her head with kerchiefs, and being taken for a Muslim. I miss the faces she made when she tried something really sour. I miss the way she taught me to eat tomatoes with sour cream. I miss the way she put too much sugar into the tea; that made me drink my tea completely sugarless. I miss the way she commented on my clothes, and the way she liked me being well-dressed. I miss the stories about her life, the way her voice changed when she told them.

I miss the way she could remember telephone numbers, even in her old age, remember them after only hearing them once. I miss the way she loved horses. She told me: "never hit a horse; they are very intelligent animals, you could get so much more of them with gentle treatment". I miss the way we went out to feed the sea gulls in the winter. She'd throw out a lot of bread, and the birds would hover over our heads. And the way we sneaked out food for the stray cats Upstate, when we vacationed, so that the owner of the house wouldn't find out. I wonder what happened to those cats since. i miss her home cures for various small diseases - colds, coughs, flu, stomach trouble. I miss her slightly archaic expressions. I miss the way she used to have midnight snacks. She could never eat anything in the morning, but she loved a cheese sandwich in the middle of the night! I love the way she refused to drink tea right after drinking some vodka.

I miss so many big and small things about her. Her gaze. Her soft, downy hair. I miss... everything. She's so real, despite already being gone for a year. I don't know where she is, but she's got to be somewhere, otherwise she wouldn't be so real even after a year. She'd be surprised if she saw that I remember so many things. These things are always easier to remember in perspective, than to appreciate them when someone's alive. Yet, at the same time, I can't feel completely alone. I ought to, but I can't. Again, it may be my own imagination, but it feels like now that she's no longer here, now that I don't have either of my grandparents alive, they are still trying to keep me covered even across the Great Divide (between the reality I know and what lies beyond). It's hard to explain - but I'm doing ok.

Strange, Yahrtzeit feels like a substitute for her birthday. She was liberated from one reality into something different, it seems. So weird the way things work out. I feel so safe nowadays, and I just hope my grandmother, wherever she is, knows it. What wouldn't I do to see her again, back to her former self, to give her a hug, she'd accept very reluctantly, and try to kiss her. She probably wouldn't let me, because she wouldn't want me accumulating her germs, and because, as I said, she hated sentimentality. But that's not to be. I don't know what will happen once I die, but until then I have to cope with what I have, and find my comfort in imagining she's not too far away, that she knows everything that's going on, that she knows me better than I know myself, and that she knows for sure everything's going to be ok in the end. (Yes, unlike me, she was an incurable optimist, probably stemming from the fact that she was a woman of action, completely unstoppable). I feel so safe...

I am not mourning. I can't explain what I'm going through, but what I'm feeling now is the joy of appreciation and the warmth of memory and caring, not the barren loneliness we all felt right after she was gone. A year. And here's to a year more, of your freedom, wherever you are. Next year, again.

Loving,
Irina