I’m writing this from my grandma’s room at her assisted living home on Long Island. I drove out to meet people who are coming to pick up her furniture to donate it.
At my grandma’s funeral, the Rabbi said burying someone is the most selfless Mitzvah you can perform, because you know they can never pay you back. You’re honoring their life and legacy by putting them to rest and they’ll never know or be able to thank you for it. I think the most selfless Mitzvah is driving on the LIE during rush hour, but that’s not expressly discussed in the Torah.
The past few weeks my family and I have been sorting through my grandma’s things. When you die, all that’s left are your things. It’s important to have things you like in life, even if you can’t eventually take them with you. We’ve been going through photo albums and boxes living through her memories. Our most special find was a box of letters my grandpa wrote to my grandma while he was overseas in WWII. They don’t teach you this in school but a lot of war is just sitting. Sitting and eating and waiting for something good, bad, or neutral to happen. My grandpa told her about the weather, about how much he missed her, and complained about the milk being weird. Runs in the family I guess.
When someone dies, they don’t take their stuff with them. Now, this stuff around me is all we have. Letters and photos and sweaters and unidentifiable figurines. It’s been difficult to look at the things that represent a life when the life is gone. I miss my grandma, but I’ve missed her for many years. Dementia and memory loss in general is a painful thing. To watch someone slip away when they’re sitting next to you. I’m supposed to be grateful that she lived so long, that she did so much. But I love rom coms and I love happily ever afters.
This process, the aftermath of a family death, is not all sad. So much of these past few weeks have been full of laughter, down time, and too much food. Grief makes you sometimes so hungry and sometimes so full. It empties and it fills you and you just have to let it run its course.
I’m sitting here waiting for the people to come and take her furniture away. The chair my grandpa used to fall asleep in. The cabinet that held their collected items from 7 continents. The couch that sat on 209th street for 50-ish years. All of these things are just things without the people sitting on or near them. But they are still comfy and will be comfy for someone else.
Well, the truck came, they don’t want my grandpa’s chair. The guy said it’s too old. I want to live long enough to take enough naps in a chair so at some point, 70 years from now, someone can tell my grandkids it’s too old. Then they can get in their hover car and ride off into the sunset. I hope they tell their friends on Instagram how cool their grandma was.
An excerpt from Letter #6 to my grandma, September 1945:
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, but for me it’s just plain agony being away from you. So-long, till tomorrow. Love, Your Sid.”