Swedlow Central

Grandma had a lust for life, which you can see in this photo. She loved exercise, teaching and her students, theater, being Jewish, being American, Yiddish music and Broadway, and her family. Her 3 boys gave her a huge challenge as they were all super smart and much more educated, eventually. I think they were a bit rough on her. I loved spending time with her and felt she was truly a good person. I never saw her be bad or lie or be mean. I never saw one wrinkle on her smiling face.

She loved to laugh and hear details about what I was doing. I always tried to shock her with new ideas. She made the best Grandma Anne’s Cannonball Matzoh Ball soup ever. She tried to teach me Yiddish occasionally, but I never quite remembered it all. I remember seeing a photo of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the wall even when she was in her 70’s. One thing I remember is that she carried a million small purses that zipped in her larger purse – everything was grouped into these pockets of organization. It drove me crazy how she’d unzip them all looking for her keys. Now, as an adult, I completely understand the logic of having little purses inside the larger purse, but I didn’t have the appreciation of it then. Sometimes, one small purse would break. If that happened, she would tie a lot of thin rubber bands around it to hold it together, which drove me crazy. I had no understanding that this woman had gone through the Depression and the War scrimping and saving and never throwing things away just because one could. My Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Joe, on my mother’s side, were the same way, but even more fastidious. My generation doesn’t appreciate what they went through because we’ve grown up in a culture of plenty and one of mass consumerism.  I spend a lot of time, for example, staring at all my stuff and dreaming about how I can get rid of it because I have too much crap. It’s hard to make decisions about what to get rid of and what to keep, so one keeps putting it off and then things accumulate again.  I just spent a lot of time helping my sisters clean out my mother’s house so she could sell it now that she’s moving into assisted living in Columbus, Ohio. It was a huge job because she collected stuff and never threw things out.

Grandma Anne, eventually, succumbed to Alzheimer’s at the Wexner Heritage Center. I used to visit her once a month. I was lucky to get a full-time job in San Francisco, where I was living, as Multimedia Editor at Multimedia World magazine in the 90’s. Part of that job was to fly to Columbus, Ohio, of all places, to work on a multimedia CD they put out as a supplement to the magazine. It was beshert (Yiddish for “meant to be”)! I wasn’t afraid of flying back then, so I was incredibly grateful that I could fly in and spend time with her and my parents and sisters. I didn’t spend enough time with her, though, as she wasn’t very present mentally. One very strong memory is when I brought in a tape cassette player and a cassette of old Broadway and Yiddish music and played them for her. She brightened up immediately and hummed along! I’m so glad we were able to spend time together.  Eventually, some scumbag stole her wedding and engagement ring there because they could and she was unable to do anything about it. My parents decided that they couldn’t really do anything about it and that that person must have needed it more. I didn’t like that explanation, but had to accept it. Anyway, my mother, who was not her daughter, used to be her caretaker and did her laundry. My mother said that my grandmother died in her arms and how weird it was to be at someone’s moment of death and what a privilege it was. I imagine all this in my head like some classical painting from the 16th or 17th Century with dramatic cold lighting.

Speaking of being there when someone has just died: I was the first person to see that my father was dead on his bed at the hospice. He was very still. I’ll never forget it.

What matters most? I think it is spending time with one’s children, one’s family, doing things for people, media (like this), art of all kinds and the memories we carry with us and inscribe on public surfaces for more people to read and be inspired to do the same for themselves.