When I heard that my grandfather had died, the news did not surprise me. Granddaddy had slowed down for months. Whenever I visited my grandparents’ house, he was always sitting in the same, faded overstuffed chair near the front door, his spindly legs propped up on a gray ottoman. My grandmother, who everyone called Next Mama, would bring him a cup of coffee or a sandwich during the day. He got up with her help when he needed to visit the restroom, but mostly he read the Bible a lot in those last months.
Born into a Jewish family in Kentucky, Grandaddy was not very religious throughout most of his life. He must have started to worry that God would punish him if he didn’t come back around. He had married a Protestant woman, so some in his family were not happy about that. Yet his wife Mary Hayes hailed from a long line of famous Virginians, so how could his parents complain? Their three children were raised Christians and Next Mama took them to church regularly. Granddaddy stayed home on Sundays, escaping the noise of child’s play.
The day Granddaddy died, he was not at the little house on Beverly Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida, where the couple had lived since 1955, the house that their son Joe had purchased for them. Nor was Grandaddy seated in the faded, overstuffed chair. His Bible was not on the table next to him.
My younger sister Stephanie, 11, and I were playing a rousing game of bound-ball in the street in front of our house. It was nearly Christmas, but Florida was still hot and steamy. We finished several rounds and decided to go inside to quench our thirst. I was winning, so had no concerns about ending the game for the day. At 13, the real competition for me came in racing my sister to the front door. We both laughed at one another as we ran, our faces flushed with play. I arrived first and placed my right hand on the brass door handle, one of those fancy kind that you have to push your thumb down hard on the latch to open the door. My mother had special ordered it when my parents built their dream house on Whitman Street in 1960. As I was about to shove the door open, laughing and pushing my sister out of the way so that I could enter first, the dark red door appeared to open magically by itself. Standing on the opposite side of our gaiety was Next Mama.
“He’s gone,” our grandmother blurted out matter of factly, shaking her head. “Your granddaddy’s gone.” Her face motionless, void of passion, Next Mama stood there looking at us for a few seconds, then turned and walked back into the house.
The handle still resting in my hand as I half hid behind the door, I looked over at Stephanie who stood frozen just behind me. We stared at one another for what seemed an eternity before we tiptoed into the house without a word. Our cheeks still reddened from the impromptu race, we made our way down the main hallway past Mom and Dad’s bedroom and toward the kitchen. I turned my head to the left as I passed the open bedroom door and saw someone lying in my parents’ California king-sized bed. Too afraid to ask questions, we quickly moved past the bedroom doorway. My shoe slipped on the linoleum floor and I caught myself on the open shelves that separated the hallway from the kitchen. My mother’s collection of Hummel® figurines had populated those shelves for years. I could only imagine the punishment if I were to break one. Mom stood in the kitchen wiping her eyes with a tissue, then used it to blow her nose. I could tell she had been crying for a while.
“Go say goodbye to your granddaddy,” Mom commanded between sniffles. “He’s in our bedroom. He died just a little bit ago.”
I had never seen a dead person. One of our kittens was killed once when Mom accidentally backed the car over it. She didn’t know the kitten was under the wheel seeking shelter from the rain. Watching its once vibrant body turn lifeless was devastating. Then there was the time that Lady, our blond cocker spaniel, gave birth to ten beautiful puppies and they all died. We never knew what caused that tragedy, but my dad buried all the puppies in the backyard. Lady tried to dig them up.
Seeing my grandfather dead was totally different. I mean, he was a person, a living, breathing person who sat at the dinner table with us and walked us to the Five and Dime store and taught us lessons about life. Granddaddy was someone I loved.
Stephanie and I both folded our hands together and held them up close to our chests as though we were about to pray.
“You go first,” Stephanie whispered as she poked my arm. I looked at her, my eyebrows furrowed, and said, “Chicken.”
Mom’s eyes were still filled with tears. She sat down at the cluttered kitchen desk, an extension of the counter-top, a space built for sitting and planning menus. She took the yellow wall phone off its rocker, fingered the pages of her telephone directory and began dialing. The sound of each spin of the rotary dial, one number after another, told me that she was making a long distance call. The arduous process of informing others had begun.
I began my slow walk back down the hall toward my parents’ bedroom, my sister just behind me. As I got closer to the door, I could hear Next Mama’s soft whimpering and the sound of my older sister Anita, 16, speaking in low tones. I was glad Anita was there. She was level headed and would help Mom and Next Mama with all that lie ahead. Not only would they have to inform countless family and friends, but they had to notify authorities, call a funeral home to pick up Granddaddy’s body, make arrangements for a burial, order flowers, plan a reception. Then my parents would have to deal with the fact that Mom’s father had died in their bed.
But at this moment, they just had to grieve.
When I arrived at the bedroom doorway, I could see that the curtains were drawn. Next Mama was standing at the foot of the bed. Anita had gently positioned her arms around her grandmother’s shoulders. Granddaddy’s eyelids were shut. His cheeks already appeared ashen and he lay so very still. He looked like he was taking a nap. Yet nothing about him suggested the man I had known growing up — gone was the twinkle in his eye, the soft smile, the gentleman’s hat that he had always tipped to ladies who walked past him. His cane was propped in the corner of the room; it was the last day he would ever use it. I remembered fetching it for him once when he needed help. I searched around looking for his Bible.
“Did Granddaddy have his Bible when he died?” I asked in a low voice. Anita shook her head no. Next Mama’s head moved back and forth, as well, but more as a kind of disbelief than a response to my question.
“I know he was thinking about those words he read, though,” I said to offer some comfort to Next Mama. “He loved what the Bible said. He used to quote it to us all the time.”
Grandaddy’s family roots were in Germany. His father Levi and his two uncles Silas and Karl had immigrated to the United States as young men in the 1870s, leaving behind sisters Pauline, Bertha and Lena to continue the family’s German heritage. The brothers were adventurous and entrepreneurial, making their way from New York City to the South where they opened a general store in the small town of Olive Hill, Kentucky. Some of Levi’s children remained true to their Jewish faith. Others, like my grandfather, married Christian women. America was different from Germany and mixed faith marriages were more readily accepted. My mother had told me stories about her German cousins, the descendants of Levi’s sisters. Most of them had perished in the 1940s in concentration camps. Mother kept in touch with the only survivor she knew, Clara, who lived because of the kindness of a stranger in Amsterdam. I was reminded of those stories as I watched Grandaddy lie in my parents’ bed, his soul now drifted away from his body. I felt lucky that my great-grandfather had chosen to take a boat to America. Grandaddy’s death was so much more peaceful than the German side of his family had experienced during the Holocaust. His passing was still painful, nonetheless. Painful for those of us who loved him.
I could no longer bear to look at Grandaddy’s body. I knew I would never forget what it looked like. I knew that some day, I would look like that, too. Most teenagers think little about death since everything is ahead of them in life. That day, I was reminded that life is not forever, but that faith and love are everlasting.
2016
La Vue de rue Sleidan 