Tribute

As I heard my mother's voice say the words, it felt like a bad dream continuing. I was still asleep, but must have instinctively known that something was amiss because before I was fully awake, I said, "What? What happened?" It was then that she said, "Pop died." No matter how much one prepares intellectually for the day when a love one will pass away, no efforts suffice to dull the pain in the heart when that day actually arrives.

I never thought that a 92 year old man would be one of my best friends, but during the last three years of his life that is exactly what my grandfather came to be. He was in excellent health until he was 89 years old when he fell. When my parents, grandmother and I went to visit him in the rehab home where he was staying temporarily, he was having a difficult day. Towards the end of our visit, he started to tear up, but was visibly suppressing it. My grandmother, aware of the mentality in which he was raised where men don't cry-- or at least not in front of anyone-- promptly said to us, "C'mon, let's go and let him be for now." As I walked out, something drew me back. Outside, I asked my parents and grandmother to wait for me. "I have to go back. I can't leave him right now," I said.  I walked back down the long hallway to his room and sat down beside his bed. I told him that I understood that he was upset about losing his mobility and that I knew how hard it was to have a body that doesn't always cooperate. And then, I sat with him while he cried. There was nothing else I needed to say or do in that moment and nothing else that could have been more gentle and powerful. Sometimes, the gift of presence is enough.

From that day on, I began calling Pop every day. It began as a way for me to cheer him up and break up his day--- even after he healed enough to return home. No matter what I was doing, I found a way to call him at a specific time of day. Even when I was teaching in the evenings, I would tell the students that we needed to take a five minute break. They would see me take my phone and walk out of the room and one once inquired who I was calling. I told her and then, they began asking how he was doing-- cheering him on in his recovery and wishing him well from afar. There was no one else I would have thought of calling during those classes and the thought not to call him never occurred to me.  Other times, I would call him when I was running to yoga class, on my way to my own classes after I returned to school as a student myself, when I was doing laundry, walking on the Promenade in Brooklyn neighborhood or en route to shoot a concert. It became one of my favorite parts of the day, a little ritual that was very grounding in the midst of my busy New York City life. A year and a half after the calls began, the tables turned. Faced with my own serious health crisis, Pop became my cheerleader, talking to me to wish me a better day.

By all accounts, I am a mutt that has come from purebreds. From each branch of my Irish, German and Polish heritage, I have gained specific traits and gifts through which I feel the whisperings of my ancestors edging me on with a single directive: "Live, Love." My grandfather's parents came from Poland. His mother immigrated as a seventeen year old orphan-- alone. While she was on the boat coming to the US, someone tried to steal her single valuable possession: her family's silver. Instead of letting a thief get it, she tossed it overboard saying that "if she couldn't have it, no one could." In addition to her spunk, her possessed a fierce love of and loyalty to her family-- something that she instilled deeply in her children.

Married to my grandmother for over 67 years, Pop was extremely devoted to his family and to maintaining the rituals that brought family together. I have spent every Christmas Eve since I was born in the same place: my grandparents' home. And, as death brings with it the flood of memories, I remember with aching fondness so many of the little moments, the tiny private things that happen within a family and through individuals that create a distinctness, a unique definition of "home." 

My last memory of seeing my grandfather was just recently, a few days before he died. After a brief hospital stay three weeks ago, he was moved to a rehab home where it was thought that he would recover enough to return to the home he shared with my grandmother. As my parents and I were leaving after visiting him, my father told him to look out his window and we would wave from the car as we were driving away. I saw his figure watching from the illuminated window, waving as we waved back before driving into the darkness. And, it was he who stayed in the light.