The generations turn over

Saying goodbye, and goodbye, and goodbye

You know it’s coming—it always does—but suddenly, there it is: The generations in a family turn over. The last of a generation dies, and now the subsequent generation is officially the oldest. This happened in my family during the pandemic. Grandma died, leaving my parents as the two eldest people on both sides of our family. 

Seven months later, we finally buried her and had a proper memorial service, with guests, back in the town she grew up in, in a plot next to both of her husbands, her daughter, and her son. As is so often the case, these occasions are bittersweet, because you get to see far-flung family and old friends. But in saying our final goodbye to Grandma, we also closed a massive chapter in our family history. 

For generations, my dad’s side of the family (and most of mom’s) lived in one Ohio town. (Our family unit moved away in 1993.) That’s where we returned for the memorial. Dad took us around on a tour of historic (family) homes. I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that so much of the family residences were within a few miles of one another—and mostly were in the same neighborhood. 

There was my great-grandparents’ house where my grandfather grew up; the house my grandmother grew up in (they were neighbors, aww!). There was my grandparents’ first apartment (which is still there, 70-something years later!), and their first house—an adorable bungalow that they built, and their next home, in a somewhat fancy neighborhood. My mother’s childhood home, and her grandmother’s home (where my siblings and I spent every Saturday morning for years), were nearby as well. 

But this time? We were tourists. We all stayed at a hotel, in our own home town, where my parents lived for forty years, and where I lived until I was 11. 

When I was little, most of both sides of the family still lived in the area. But over the years, most of my generation moved away. And more recently, my grandparents’ generation has been dying off. 

At the restaurant where we had the after-funeral meal, we were shocked and delighted to find a handful of old black-and-white photos hanging on the wall that were of my great uncle and aunt’s wedding in the 1950s. They’d had their reception in this restaurant (and, one of my relatives confirmed, their 25th and 50th wedding anniversary celebrations). In one photo is two full generations of our family. They’re seated around a big, long table. It contains my great-grandparents, all their kids, and all their kids’ spouses and partners (except for a couple of spouses who wouldn’t come into the picture until later). 

In the photo, my grandparents are young—recently married themselves, with my grandfather, the eldest of his many siblings, looking mature and dashing. My father isn’t born yet. Uncle Jerry, the youngest of that generation, is in the foreground, mugging for the camera (which was totally on-brand for him). 

Everyone in the photo is gone now, except for one great aunt. It’s appropriate that their memory remains on the wall of a fun eatery where they had big family parties, in this town that no longer belongs to us. 

It was wonderful to see so many old friends and family at the memorial, but it struck me that this was probably the last time we’ll see many (or even most) of them. Some we hadn’t seen for nearly 30 years. For others, I don’t know what occasion (other than another funeral—maybe theirs) would bring us together again in the same place at the same time.

Goodbye to the old generation. Goodbye to old friends. Goodbye to the geographic family center. 

It’s a little sad—but only a little. It’s been a long time coming, and we’re all ready. The trip and memorial served as a good goodbye. 

Note: Back in December, when my grandmother died, I wrote the below entry. I posted it elsewhere at the time, but it seems fitting to include it here now: 

Who you are at the end

Remembering the perfect grandmother

There’s a recording of Bob Dylan live on stage in 1967. His hero, Woody Guthrie, had just died. “They asked me to write something about Woody—like, what does Woody mean to you in 25 words. I couldn't do it. I wrote five pages,” he said. That’s kind of how I felt when I sat down to write just a few words about my Grandma Esther: “I couldn’t do it. I wrote five pages.”

She died today, my grandmother. It was complications from COVID-19; her heart just gave out.

Esther was the classiest lady I've ever known. Stylish. Cool. Kind. Cute. Impish sense of humor. Unbelievably, unfailingly generous. Could still tickle the ivories, almost nine decades in. She was the perfect grandmother.

Of course, that version of her had faded dramatically in recent years, as it always does when a person lives long enough. When people become very old or sick, and their faculties and memory slip, and they lose the ability to fake anything, they're distilled down to their essence. You can see plainly who they really are.

It turns out that at her core, Grandma Esther was who we thought she was all this time. Down to her very last interaction with another human being, mere minutes before she died--and loaded with medicines to settle her body and block any pain--she was gentle and sweet and engaging.

The last time we got to see her was this past summer. I had a gut feeling that would be our final visit. She'd been on the decline for years. By then living in a residential care facility, she struggled to remember names and faces. Because of COVID-19 protocols, we couldn't go inside, so the staff set her up on a back patio with us. As always, she greeted us with a little joyful gasp and an open-mouthed smile, as if our very presence was the best thing that had happened to her in ages. In recent years, her face also registers surprise, because she has a hard time remembering if or when people are coming to see her.

We sat under a big umbrella for shade. It was sunny and bright and warm, but comfortable. Idyllic, with birds chirping. We were somewhat closed in, hugged by big, fragrant evergreen bushes.

"Grandma, the smell of these bushes reminds me of those tall pine trees you had at your house on Northwood," I said. She murmured some kind of cheerful affirmative acknowledgement. I did love those pine trees. In my memory they were a hundred feet tall. They had long, soft needles, and there was always a thick carpet of them covering the ground all around her house. You could smell them from the street. Every time I catch a whiff of fresh pine, I’m a little kid back at her house, tumbling out of the station wagon, eager to slip inside and see what treats or toys she had waiting for us.

Her house always smelled great, too. Not typical-grandma great, like freshly baked bread, nor old-lady great, like perfume. Something different. I don’t know how to describe it, actually. You know how every family’s house has a unique scent? And, like, it’s on their clothes and kind of follows them around? It was her version of that—and when matched with the pines outside, it was heaven. Even now, if we pull something that belonged to her out of storage, like a fancy tablecloth or something, we’ll get a whiff. And I am deeply happy every time I’m reminded, when we walk in our own front door after days away, that our family-house-scent is a variation on hers.

There on the patio, I think it took her a minute to collect who we were. We tried to gracefully spark her memory by deftly folding our names and our kids’ names and relationship to her into the conversation, like script writers trying to establish character relationships. (“Hello Pierre, dear brother of mine. Funny how it’s rainy today here in Paris—little odd for early April 1933, don’t you think?—and it’s making me late for my visit this afternoon with Beatrice, who, as you know, is our mother.”) In short order she brightened, remembering, putting it all together.

But she got kind of stuck in a loop. She asked how the drive was. She said she’s so glad we’re here. She remarked on the lovely weather and chirping birds. She said she prays for us every day. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

At a couple of points throughout the conversation, she asked us if we were interested in taking home the patio furniture. Such a classic Esther move, even though this time the furniture wasn’t hers to offer.

She was constantly giving us stuff, or trying to. How about this side table? This recliner? These paintings? This jewelry? How about the chandelier? We said no thanks most of the time, but even so, we have a reputation among our friends: Upon seeing some new vintage item appear in our house, one of them would guess, "Oh that's cool--is that a Grandma Esther thing?" It always was.

Grandma was always looking out for us, in ways small and large, and that was one of the main ways we could feel her love. Once, when we were little, she brought out a Friendly’s watermelon sherbet roll—it’s this extraordinary dessert composed of watermelon sherbet, lemon sherbet, and chocolate chipsthat looks like a watermelon—and I was so taken with it that she made sure to have it on hand at every visit for years after. And there were the big ways—for instance, helping us buy a car when we were broke and in grad school, and our only vehicle turned out to be an irreparable lemon. And helping us buy our first house (a sound investment, we thought, in 2007), and then bailing us out of that house when it became an albatross in 2011, post-recession.

She would have given her family every cent she had if we let her. I really don’t know where we’d be without her financial support at a couple of those crucial times—probably stereotypical Millennials who are overeducated but failed to launch. Instead, we’ve thrived, to the point that we could now support her, had she needed us to.

Our patio time was up. She left us with a chuckle at some little joke, and a blessing. She said she was so glad to see us, that she loves us, to give her love to our girls, that she’s praying for us, always praying for us. (We weren’t able to hug her because of pandemic protocols. I try not to feel bitter about that.) The caregivers wheeled her back into the facility, and that was the last time we saw her.

I’m glad that was our last interaction, though—my final and lasting memory of her will be Esther distilled: kind, grateful, generous, pleasant, polite, happy, untroubled. I can always visit this memory and be reassured that at her core she was, indeed, the person I loved so very much.

One of my favorite phone conversations of all time when was I called her to tell her that we named our new baby girl “Esther.” She gave that little happy gasp of hers but stumbled over words. I think she was just genuinely shocked that anyone would name a person after her. It wouldn’t have occurred to her that she’d had such an impact on people, such a presence in their lives, that her name would come to mean something deep to them, so much so that they’d want to yell it at their child a hundred times a day for the rest of their lives. Nor that another great-granddaughter, born years later, would wear her middle name—Clara—with the same reverence and affection.

Even though we lost her earlier than we should have, to COVID-19, she was ready to go. She’d been ready for a few years. Not depressed or fatalistic—quite the opposite: content and peaceful. She felt she had a hell of a run, and she was good with that. Ninety-five good years—who could ask for more?

I’m just glad I got to share a lot of those years with her.