My grandma’s spirit died long before she did.
To say that her grandchildren were devoted to her doesn’t begin to describe it. Once a week, for more than 10 years, my sister and cousins gathered at her house for dinner. Before I moved home to Los Angeles and joined that weekly pilgrimage, I called from Boston every week to amuse her with anecdotes about my days as a graduate student. While actually living my life, I would simultaneously compose a story about it to entertain her.
As her world grew smaller, hearing about her family’s lives became a substitute for her own. She spent her days sitting and reading in her living room, doing crossword puzzles and talking to her children and grandchildren.
After awhile, she stopped doing anything but sitting. We tried to summon up her spirit with our stories, but we could barely engage her. It was heartbreaking to watch her vivacity slip away. She lived like that for almost a year: alive but not living.
She’d had enough, and the fierceness of our love for her could not change that. To see her like that was a reminder that her life had not been easy.
In the years since my grandma died, I find myself longing for a time when my stories for her helped to give shape and meaning to her life, and to mine. So I’ve continued to think of my life as a narrative I’m writing for her.
That’s how I’m keeping her spirit alive.
Tobin Belzer is a sociologist of American Jewry at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/
