Remembering My Grandma
My Grandma Ettie passed away on Friday morning. She was 90. Her funeral was yesterday. I just ate chocolate pudding (with skin) that I cooked earlier in her honor. She used to make it for us grandchildren.
I used to like sitting with her, just sitting together, holding hands.
She was the shortest person I know, shorter than me. I loved it when I was growing up and she started to get shorter than me.
She was a really good cook. I liked her hamantaschen especially, her soup, and the aforementioned skin-topped pudding.
She was a wicked card player. I didn't play with her and my grandpa as often as my cousins or sister. I preferred it when she pulled out the Rummy-Q game.
She HATED Basher. Hated all dogs. They flocked to her like she had dog biscuits in her drawers. She'd tell Basher, "I like you, now go away!"
She was very proud, and she liked to be primped and proper. She never liked to have her picture taken if she didn't have on makeup, and she was still in her housecoat. It took her a long time to relent and start using a walker. She got her hair done often, and slept with that pink tape in it to hold it in place.
She and my grandpa moved from the Bronx to Boca Raton in 1996. I remember a lot of things about her apartment in the Bronx, 11F. The weird dollar store Barbies with crocheted dresses that sat over her toilet paper rolls. Her cans of Aqua Net and rolls of pink tape for her cute bouffy hair.
The awesome, long table in her eat-in kitchen (it was a long room) with an equally long mirror on the wall above it. The china cabinet in the back corner that she kept locked. Every time she needed to pull dishes out of it, she'd have to unlock it. It's the one piece of furniture of hers that I didn't get in her move that I wish I had.
I could never figure out the lock to the terrace in that apartment!
Every time anyone visited, there were dishes of cashews, candy and halvah out.
She was very accepting of people and situations. A different little old Jewish lady may not have been so accepting of her 2 daughter-in-laws (she had 4) who aren't Jewish. But she was realistic, and told me "times are different than when I was a girl".
She took such good care of my grandpa. He died in September, 2005. She was an "old school" wife who stood by her man. Soon after his death, her health began to fail. She felt she had no purpose, and she was very lonely.
I love her so much. I saw her most recently on Mother's Day. She was very skinny and sad. I am so glad she got to meet Mason, and he was able to make her smile every time she saw him.
I walked with my cousins as pall bearers after the funeral service. We all walked beside the casket, with a hand on it as it was wheeled to the hearse. Holding the casket, I felt like I was holding her hand one last time.
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