My Grandma

by Sabrina Felson

My grandma will inspire stories for generations to come, like her father Jake before her. She was the life of the party, renowned amongst us for her iconoclastic humor and comic timing, resilience, dignity, and color coordinated accessories (hats, lipstick, sunglasses, gloves…). She was our matriarch, and with a generous and hospitable heart she oversaw many a birthday, Bar –Mitzvah, wedding, divorce, birth, and death.

I adored my grandma. While she was mother to 5, grandmother to 8 and aunt and friend to many more, I felt individually cherished by her. I’ve struggled to distill what it was that made our connection feel so deep and sustaining. She was so present as a grandmother, so spontaneous and unburdened. Our connection had physicality to it. I can feel her dry, soft, ringed fingers in my hand right now. We drove all over Cincinnati holding hands. I can feel her manicured nails tickling my back while tucking me into bed on the 2 nd floor screened porch in Rose Hill in the summer heat. When it was a siblings turn for tickling, I would pop the air bubbles in the brown paint on the wall and listen to grandma singing ditties like “K-k- k-k- katie, beautiful Katie or “I went to the animal fair”—songs I sing with my kids today. My grandma taught me to swim and to dive, by making a “donut” with her arms for me to fall through hands first from the side of the pool. Without any particular destination, we would set out on an adventure that might last the whole summer day. Sometimes we went bridge hopping, which entailed crossing over every bridge between Kentucky and Cincinnati before landing somewhere along the river to eat her notorious egg-salad sandwiches. We might drive to all the places she lived in Kentucky and in Cincinnati while she narrated her history. We went to the zoo, the opera, the JCC, and the cave at the natural history museum in the old Eden Park location. We played tennis at Hyde Park, and heard her repeat “Damn it Virginia, bend your knees and smell your elbow. ” I got my period for the first time with my grandma, and I was fortunately savvy enough to know that the elastic belt and pad the size of a diaper she offered me for my monthly “curse” as she called it, was a relic of her generation. She and grandpa took us to Disney World and she was the only one who would go on the roller coaster Space Mountain with me. She wrapped her arms around me as we twisted, climbed and soared in the dark, laughing with excitement. During the summers when we still had Rose Hill, all of my generation of cousins and our parents gathered for a reunion—eating Fanny’s meals around the big living room table, we ate crates of Sam’s peaches, swam in the pool behind the house, played fantan and casino. Later my grandma would visit Alex and me in college in Madison, where she once confronted the legendary Cosmo, a bean-pole of a man in high-waters who talked and laughed to himself in Steep and Brew coffee shop. The impulse of most would be to avoid eye contact, but my grandmother was drawn in– “Why are you laughing like that,” she asked. I think he answered something like “the stars are twinkling in the eye of the divine, haha!” She would and could literally engage anybody in conversation.

As grandma slowly became more physically frail, she allowed me the privilege of tending to her. Now I lotioned her legs and rubbed her feet and tucked her into bed with her blackies. She was real, and gracious and unsentimental. When I was recently holding her hand, I commented on how familiar it felt and she said, “Hhmm. Not to me.” With the help of family and her dedicated aides (Carmen and Shawnee) we’ve been able to get my grandmother to Jake’s North Carolina cabin to rest her feet in the cool creek—broken hip be damned. She’s held court at family reunions as far away as Cape Cod and walked me down the aisle when Lewis and I got married and she was 91. Now when I visited, grandma was the passenger as we drove through her old neighborhood of Avondale, ate Graeters ice cream, visited grandpa’s grave and went to new museums—like the Freedom Museum which captivated her progressive spirit, as did Bernie Sanders this past year. She told my cousin Jacob that she liked him cause he “would soak the rich and was good for the young people.” I had to cast a vote for him in solidarity in the NY primaries. Grandma worried that adopting a child from Africa would be too complicated, but when I visited with our daughter Tessa three years ago when she had just arrived from Ethiopia, she said to a photography at an event honoring Grandpa Ben, “Can you please take a picture of our 4 generations?” The matriarch, my mother, me and Tessa. Before visits to the hospital stopped and she opted for hospice care only, my grandmother’s heart rate was in the 30s and we decided—sort of against her jumbled judgment—to put a pacemaker in. When she was wheeled out from the OR she wagged her finger at my mom and said, “You better make this worth my while.” I’d like to think we did.

I’m convinced that grandma died from letting go—if she were autopsied, we’d find organs with wear and tear, but no stroke, or heart attack. My fearless grandma had been scared and anxious at night in the last couple of weeks.. She was ready to die, but she was afraid of suffering physical pain, and just didn’t know how to actually do it. She was very clear that she wanted to hold hands with someone she loved. My mom yelled into the phone, “wait for me mom, I’m coming.” I called my grandma the night she died. My mom held the phone up to her ear and I could hear her snoring while I told her we loved her, and were so happy she was comfortable and my mom was going to be with her all night. I’ve been told that hearing is the last sense to go. She and my mom squeezed hands, and with her daughter sleeping in the bed next to her, and her families voices in her ear, I think grandma realized, “Ahah, this is how I do it. I relax, I let go, I trust that my daughter and my daughter’s daughter (and all of you here today) will catch me.” Rest in peace grandma. We love you.