I want to write about sitting at my grandmother’s death bed, a small cot in a simple room, watching her chest rise and fall, listening to the surprisingly forceful snore of her body expiring. It was April. Bubbe had just turned 98. Or close enough—I never knew her real birthday. Facts like these were lost along with her entire family in the Warsaw Ghetto, in bombings and trains and camps that Bubbe, as a teenager, narrowly escaped, alone. They told me she could hear me, although she wouldn’t talk anymore. Alive, Bubbe could never hear me, I’d have to speak up. But it felt uncouth to shout into the ear of a dying woman. Luckily, there was nothing left to say. A lot has been said. Among all the things Bubbe was for our family, a dancer, a Rummikub player, a plastic bag hoarder, a tub-of-whitefish freezer, a body ogler ( Did you lose weight?), a body shamer ( I love you, I just don’t love your beard), a soap opera watcher, the hero of my first book , an encourager of all things life and love (get married, have a baby, make love whenever you wannit, it’s very natural!), she was a voice , a voice that sang songs from the old country, a voice that recounted her losses and griefs, her sister’s plea for a shtickle fun broyt— just for a piece of bread—her mother’s laments, her father’s demand to tell the free world what they did to the Jews . Without stories like Bubbe’s, we would never have come to understand why we always feel so hunted, even when there is nothing looming over us but shadows. An old person dies, you tell people it’s okay. She lived a good, long life. She had six great-grandchildren. That’s all that I wannit, Bubbe said, by the time she had just four. She died peacefully, avoiding pain, surrounded by family. A good death. I understand good death, having heard of such bad deaths, unmarked graves, and the rituals of remembrance replaced with fear and running. “It’s ok. It […]
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