in memoriam

[aryanhwy]

My Great-Grandma, Rose Abfalder Berger King Jablonski, died last night. She was 93.

As I was thinking about what I would say about this here, two things kept coming to my mind - all the things I remember and all the things I never knew.

I don't know whether her name was Rose or Rosalia. I have never known her to be called anything other than Rose, but I heard a rumor once that she was actually born Rosalia.

I know very little about her childhood or family. She was born in North Dakota, to a large farm family, and hated it so much that she got on a train to Wisconsin when she was 13 or 14, and never went back, even though an older brother was sent to fetch her. The only story about ND that I remember her telling was one day she was weeding in the fields, and at the end of one row, stopped to take off her cardigan because she got hot. By the time she got to the end of the row and back up the next to where she'd left it, there was nothing left but buttons; the grasshoppers had eaten it all.

There was a period when I was growing up that she had cancer; none of us knew until many, many years later, when she was healthy again.

And then there are the things I remember. I remember

- Thanksgiving at her apartment, with the rubber chicken hanging from the ceiling
- The first time I had duck, which was at Thanksgiving and at her instigation
- Getting to spend the night at her place when I was young, and getting to (bliss, joy) sleep in the lazy-boy rather than in a bed.
- Spending some of those evenings playing 31 and gambling for dimes. Grandma was not one to adjust her mode of play when her opponent is 10 years old, and I remember one evening joyfully cleaning her out of all her dimes.
- Her showing up at 6:30 in the morning with donuts for everything in the household, including all the kids mom was babysitting for.
- The cadillacs she owned over the years. I always enjoyed basking in the reflected limelight of someone who owned a cadillac.
- Her butterhorns (I gotta get the recipe for them!). Her home-made chicken noodle soup, the best EVER. When I was in college, whenever I'd go home for a weekend, mom would send me home with containers of frozen soup, which I could then defrost whenever I needed a homey, pick-me-up meal.
- Her knack for recognizing gaudy clothes at garage sales which she would pick out for me. (I still remember fondly one which had a zebra over a pastel background with fake rhinestones for the eyes. I loved that shirt).

I remember how proud I always was being part of a four-generation family, and, when my nephew was born, how proud I was to be part of a five-generation family. One of my deepest regrets is that none of my kids will ever know her and that she will never know any of my kids.

I remember, especially as I was older, watching her relationship with my grandfather, her son-in-law (and only child-in-law). The easy, comfortable bantering relationship between the two was unlike any I'd ever seen between two adults, and one which, in essence, I hoped my husband would have with my parents.

Grandma was married and widowed three times. Her third husband was the great-grandpa that I knew. He was wheelchair bound, and towards the end of his life he was in a nursing home, but I always remember them being happy together. Grandpa Wally died when I was fairly young, and then when I was a teenager, she started dating Frank. Around this time, my mom's hair had gone almost completely grey, and so then her mom (Rose's daughter) decided that it was OK for her to stop dying her hair, and so her hair was now white. Grandma and Frank had been going out for more than a year before any of us met him, because she didn't want him to find out how old she was! It's one thing to have a daughter with grey hair, but also a granddaughter... (I should note, Grandma continued to die her hair throughout the rest of her life). But when we did finally get to meet him, Frank was a very nice fellow, and I was sorry when he, too, died after not too long. Two things I remember about this in particular. One was thinking about how difficult it must be to have three husbands and a boyfriend die. The other was how completely natural it seemed to me that this 85+ year old woman had a boyfriend.

I remember how, at my own wedding, one of my coworkers pulled me aside and asked which was my grandmother and which was my great-grandmother - that's how young and healthy Grandma had always been.

For the last six years or so, she was living with my mom and dad. I know that one thing my parents had always really wanted, when I was growing up, was that when the time came they'd be able to do that, so that Grandma didn't have to go to a nursing home. I remember mom remarking once about how well the arrangements worked out. It could be difficult having your mom living with you, or having to live with your daughter, but a granddaughter is a different story. Mom mentioned more than once about how much fun it was to have her grandmother living with her, because she got to be a granddaughter again.

The hope was that in the end she'd go peacefully and she did. My aunt and uncle, my parents, my other uncle, and my grandma and grandpa all were there within the last few days, and most of them were there the very last time. I'm very very happy that she died the way everyone always wanted. I'm horribly crushed that the last time I saw her was over a year and a half ago and that I didn't get to see her one last time.

If I can grow up to be anything like her, as sharp, witty, self-reliant, comfortable, and strong, I will be very, very happy.

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[tedeisenstein.livejournal.com]

If I can grow up to be anything like her, as sharp, witty, self-reliant, comfortable, and strong,
You already are, dear, you already are. . .