My heart and my head are full as I wake up leisurely this morning. We have death anniiversaries this week of our father, who died in 1976 and of our grandmother, who died during this week in 1968. I have written much about each of these towering figures in our family's life. How my father at the end of his life, at 64, opted for additional surgery which his heart could not tolerate, because he refused to live life as a dependent person. I was quite angry with him for many years, after he shared that information with me. I actually told him he was depriving all of us of him by his choice. I understand it better now. And my grandmother hung onto life so strongly as she became weaker and weaker. Our grandfather had died the previous June 12, just twelve weeks earlier and our Oma wanted and waited to see my sister's second son be born and named after his great grandfather. He was born on July 17, was named eight days later.
Yesterday I met a young family in the park. I can''t quite believe the mom , Stephanie, is already fifty years old. She is the daughter of my dear friend, Bernice, one of us four women who supported each other while pursuing our graduate degrees at NYU in the early 1980's. Bernice, who never smoked, died of lung cancer in 2002, never having met her son-in-law, nor this adorable four year old grandson.
Stephanie's dad died soon after, leaving a lovely house with a huge yard in a cozy town outside the city. Everyone advised her to sell it. She was determined to keep it and to move back into it, one day. In November, they moved back from California, where she had been living all this time. She had found renters, she had paid off the mortgage and they are now modernizing this contemporary style ranch house.
So much strength of character.
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