Until I was 11 years old, my grandma was my best friend.
That is, or was, until she basically dropped dead at 72 right in front of my brother and me.
In the parking lot outside of the downtown Milwaukee office that my dad shared with other assorted relatives, my grandma told us to pipe down, that she wasn’t feeling well. We laughed at her. Our steady grandma — Nanny pronounced (n-ah-nny) — my personal savior and the most solid part of my life, surely didn’t ail. She didn’t falter. The fifth child of her family of 12, she was one of the first born on US soil after their escape from the tsar in Latvia. In addition to Nanny, she was known as Mary, Maryon, Marion and Phoebe.
She flourished in the immigrant-rich streets of Milwaukee, eventually meeting my grandfather, who as the fourth child in his 12-member1 family was also one of the first born here — his family on the run from what is now Ukraine. We called him Fafa; he was also known as Sidney, Sid and George.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this history at the time. I just knew that in a world that felt unsafe — coddled though it was within the faux sheen of the suburbs — Nanny was my safety net. Her ample bosom (omg did I just say that) provided a haven from the unpredictablity of my dad’s moods and my mom’s mental illness.
She was dead of that heart attack within 24 hours, though I knew sooner that she was gone. I remember looking out the window of the car as my dad drove us home … knowing she was gone forever.
Death at that time was merely a concept. At home, later, when my dad gathered us together to tell us the bad news, I closed my eyes, willing myself to cry, afraid I might laugh or be otherwise inappropriate, not knowing at all how to behave properly — now that the person I loved most in the world was gone. In an instant.
So it shouldn’t suprise you
That I hate sudden endings. I’ve got what the psychiatric community likes to call “abandonment issues.”
It’s part of why my brother’s death was so devastating, though it’s hard to top the inate devastation of losing a 37-year-old healthy sibling in the prime of their life but yeah, the suddenness of it all was what tore me apart. My mom’s death two years later, with only eight weeks from diagnosis to death, felt just as quick.
Since then I’ve lost friends to sudden death — or what feels like sudden death — and it always leaves a permanent mark.
What goes around
In spite of the suddenness of the deaths of my mom, grandma and brother, and the sadness and pain they left in their wake, their passings gave me gifts that I still receive till this day. After my grandma’s death, it was she who I prayed to when I was in a synagogue or in fear or late at night. I didn’t not equate her with a higher power but I did believe she was watching over me.
Later, after I was suddenly laid off from the biggest job in my life, I needed to heal. I went to my grandma’s grave and this is what I said: “I need a sign that things will be all right. And nothing ambiguous. I need a ring that appears out of nowhere.2 I need a painting to change in front of me.” And then I went on with my life.
The next day, I went to Holland to surprise my lifelong friend Gary who was visiting our mutual friend Dan. Our merry trio trooped around Amsterdam, sampling the various wares and almost overdid it. We decided to go back to Dan’s apartment.
But without discussing it with one another, we simultaenously veered into a different coffee shop and waited for the guy at the bar to be done looking at the menu. When that guy put the menu down it was my first cousin Steve, looking back at me. The youngest grandchild of our mutual grandmother was standing in front of me in a random coffee shop that we weren’t even going to go into. And I happened to be with two people who had known him nearly as long as I did. It was clear to me that this was the sign I had asked for.
And the signs abound. When Ross was in a coma prior to his death, we did not know that he would die. The outcome of death wasn’t even discussed. But sleeping in the nursery with my 3-month old baby, I shifted fitfully between awake and the alpha state you’re in right before you fall asleep.
I saw my brother rising up above me. “Where are you going?” I said, willing my eyes to open and being unable to do so. He smiled. A huge shit-eating grin. He kept rising, higher and higher. I said, “No, don’t go. I need you,” and then he was gone and I was awake. Two days later we got the call that he had passed away, though I think his soul likely departed at the moment I saw him.
The Death Card
I love the Death Card in Tarot. It encapusulates everyting I love about Tarot — that behind every ending there is a beginning; that change is the only way to move forward; that you NEED death to appreciate life; that if you are open-minded you can find the guidance you need and that it’s rarely about what is good or bad, it’s about seeing what is. I try to follow this philosophy.
But embracing the circle of life, or a positive philosophy, or even a belief in ghosts, doesn’t mean that I don’t feel abandoned, that I am not in deep grief and that I don’t think about the ones I’ve lost all the time. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s an attempt at peace. And it’s a way to keep on going on.
Needless to say, I have a lot of second cousins.
Yes, I talk to dead people. And graves. Occasionally, stone pillars of any kind.
👋👋👋 Thank u for your courage to write this. And I too, am an experiencer of sudden death. I also believe we need to shift our idea that death is not the worst thing that can happen in life. And as a spirit beyond-the-grave once said, “Tell everyone death is 100% safe.” Lol.
Well written piece. My grandfather escaped from Cossacks in Latvia by swimming over a frozen river in Riga. He brought his family to Baltimore in 1912, then opened up a corner store in DC afterward. My father was born in DC back in 1915.
While living a long life is a good goal, the saddest part of it is to watch people you’ve known all your life die before you. If I make it 100 (extremely unlikely), nobody I know will be there to say “Happy Birthday.”