SWEET MEMORIES

I received a lovely phone call last night from an old friend. Hedy married David’s best friend, Erv, more than fifty years ago, and remained Erv’s and our good friend even after they were divorced and even after she moved some distance away from us. In our conversation Hedy talked about the memories she had of David over the years, and I asked her to share them. She talked about the time she dated him (before I had met him – and which I knew all about), and she talked about how much she appreciated our making the long drive to see her on two occasions – the sad one when Erv died and the happy one when their granddaughter was Bat Mitzvah’d. Hedy asked if it was too painful for me to hear these memories, but I relished them and appreciated hearing through her voice and her memories how much she too loved and admired my David.

These are the messages that mean the most to me – the conversations and the notes in which people share their memories of David, because through all these memories he lives on. There’s the junior high school teacher who wrote to me of a time when David came to speak to his class and had the students mesmerized by his talking about his career in radio. (I know what a tough audience junior high schoolers can be!) Or the young man who wrote about how David had welcomed him into our home at a crucial time in his life. Or the trainer at the gym who told me of the good conversations they used to have. Or the young woman who lived next door to us as a little girl and still remembers his smile and how he helped her single mother clear away the snow in her driveway.

Some of these memories are new to me, or forgotten, so they give me the gift of seeing still another aspect of who he was – and what his impact was on people outside our family. I’m grateful for this gift.

“HOW ARE YOU?”

I am deeply appreciative of my friends and family who phone or visit me after David’s death, but when they ask this question, I don’t know how to answer. I’m not “fine,” and I’m not “okay.” I could say that I am, but what a lie that would be. So I have tried out various answers, like these:

“I’m taking it one day at a time.”
“I have a lot of support from my family and good friends.”
“I’m putting one foot in front of the other.”
“I’m eating and sleeping.” (Actually, I’m doing a little too much of the one – people have been much too generous bringing tempting sweets – and too little of the other – I’m discovering TV shows I never watched before -- but I’m sure that will change.)
“I’m breathing.”
“I’m getting stuff done.” (And there’s a lot to do, I’m finding out.)
“Compared to what?” (This, only to a close friend who appreciates black humor.)

What I find most helpful for well-wishers to ask is, “What did you do today?” or “What are you going to do tomorrow?” Specific questions that I can give specific answers to.

Everyone in this situation is different, of course, and everyone experiences a major loss differently, so I’m not giving any advice – just saying what it’s like for me. I’d like to know how other bereaved people answer this question from kind people who really want to know.

MY LOVE STORY

On October 13, 1955 when I was in my last semester at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia I had a blind date with a radio announcer named Mark Olds. By the second date I knew I wanted to marry him. Four weeks later he proposed and I barely let him get the words out of his mouth. We were married a month later, December 18, 1955. I learned that his family called him David, his first name, which he didn’t use in the wider world because he hated to be called “Dave.” I called him David – the rest of the world knew him as Mark. (When our eldest daughter first went to kindergarten, she came home and asked me, “What’s Daddy’s name?”)

On Saturday, October 3, 2009 David and I attended the Bat Mitzvah of the granddaughter of a close friend. We danced the hora, and then a little later were the only couple on the floor dancing to a Frank Sinatra medley. He was a terrific dancer, much in demand as a dance partner. After we drove home in a heavy rainstorm, David took off his dress clothes, put on his high rubber boots and slicker, and cleared leaves that had been clogging the drain in our driveway. The next morning we took a little time for some pillow talk before he went out for bagels. When he didn’t come home in a reasonable time I went looking for him and found him in our car in the parking lot of the bagel store, seemingly asleep. The bagels were in the back seat.

When I couldn’t rouse him I called 911, and our local Port Washington police and rescue squad quickly came and took him by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital, where the doctors told me he had suffered a stroke. He received excellent and timely care, but he never regained consciousness, never felt any pain or discomfort, and died in the Palliative Care division of North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York on October 8. I had slept in his hospital room the previous two nights, and so I was there when he left us. He was 88 years old, and we had often talked about the day when one of us would go first. We had promised each other we would not use heroic measures to sustain life when a meaningful life was no longer possible, and I fulfilled that promise when he needed me to.

David and I had been together for just a few days shy of 54 years. He was a wonderful man, husband, father, grandfather, and friend. He was my best friend, my rock, my staunch supporter. I know that our daughters, our grandchildren, our close friends, and I will get through this terribly sad time although we will never get over his loss. We’re all grateful that we had him as long as we did.

Obituary notices were published in Newsday and the Port Washington (NY) News.

TALK TO THEM

Jane Brody, personal health columnist for The New York Times and a grandmother, wrote a really important article yesterday, September 29, headlined “From Birth, Engage Your Child with Talk.” This generation of mothers is different from ours in many ways – one being those ubiquitous cell phones. Yes, I know, we use them too – but when we’re with our grandkids? Rarely. In her column, Jane echoed a point I made in the introduction to SUPER GRANNY:

“I often see parents talking on their cell phones while they are out with their children—walking in the street, pushing them on playground swings, or riding a bus—being more involved with the phone conversation than with the child. But I never see a grandmother opting for cell phone over child. No matter how busy we are, when we take time out from our careers and our other activities to be with our grandchildren, we know that this is an event, a precious interlude, one that we want to experience as fully as we can. We know how fast children grow up.”

Jane quoted communication experts on the importance of talking, reading, and singing to young children right from infancy, and she gives a lot of good pointers on having the best conversations – pointers that we grannies can also use. Just a few of her good examples:
* Talk while doing things and going places and point out sights along the way.
* Use simple but grammatical speech – no baby talk.
* With a baby who’s not talking yet, guess what she or he wants, and then answer with words.

She doesn’t mention in this article teaching babies how to sign, which I described in SUPER GRANNY as another way to begin communication with preverbal children. I only wish I had an infant or toddler in the family that I could talk to these days!

WHAT I LEARNED WHEN MY HUSBAND HAD SURGERY

This post isn’t about grandparenting – but it affects grandparents. Parents too. In fact everyone. Mark had had a hiatal hernia for some years, which he managed to keep in check with either prescription or over-the-counter medications. Recently, however, it became more troublesome, and his gastrointestinal doctor recommended that he have it surgically repaired. He had the operation two weeks ago, and he is recovering well. However, I want to pass on some of what I learned from the experience.

1) Don’t schedule elective surgery when your own doctor will be out of town. We didn’t learn until Mark tried to schedule his presurgical testing appointment that both his internist and his cardiologist would be out of town the week the surgery would take place. This created a little scheduling glitz, but the more important issue came up when the heart monitor he wore in the hospital seemed to show an arrhythmia. The question arose: Was this something he had had in the past that his doctor was either treating or didn’t consider a problem, or was it something new and therefore more problematic? There was no way we could get this information since both his doctors were away, and as a result the surgeon who was seeing him in the hospital (the doctor who had performed the surgery went away immediately afterwards so his associate whom we had never met was taking care of him) cautiously recommended that he stay in the hospital an extra night. By the following day, the heartbeat seemed normal, the hospital cardiologist said he could go home, and a follow-up visit after his own heart doctor returned reassured us that he was fine. The lesson: Even if surgery is scheduled, if you find out that your own doctors will not be reachable, postpone the surgery.

2) If anyone in your family (including you) needs to be in the hospital for any reason, it's very important to have someone with you, from morning to night if possible, and sometimes even overnight. During a previous stay when Mark received a knee replacement, I was able to keep a nurse from administering a medication that the nurse on the previous shift had already given but had not written down. Also, while patients are recovering from anesthesia they may be a little disoriented and it’s important to have someone to help them be comfortable. The nurses are too busy to be in the patient’s room all the time, and sometimes too busy to come quickly when needed. If the patient’s advocate is there, she or he can go out to get the nurse when necessary.

3) Ask for specific written instructions upon discharge. Mark’s surgeon told me while Mark was in the recovery room (still under anesthesia) that he should first be on a liquid diet and then move to a soft diet. I heard him, but I have to confess that I was distracted by my concern for my husband, and didn’t ask for specifics, like when he could switch from liquid to soft, what constitutes a soft diet, how long he should be on this, and so forth. We also didn’t establish what activities he could do, and how soon. We were confused, since the surgeon’s stand-in gave us some instructions for a low-residue diet (no rice, no bread or rolls), and the hospital meals included those items. When we got home I downloaded a low-residue diet from the Mayo Clinic website, and then asked Mark’s gastrointestinal specialist who had recommended the surgery for a written diet. Between the two, we worked out something that seemed to work, but I should have asked for something before the surgeon left town.

I hope I won't have to use this hard-won knowledge, but if there is another hospital stay in the offing, I think I'll be better prepared.

GRANDCHILDREN GO TO COLLEGE

This past weekend Opa and I drove Stefan, our firstborn grandchild, up to Oswego, where he’ll be studying this fall at this branch of The State University of New York. Oswego is a “partner school” of Osnabrueck University in Germany, where Stefan is pursuing a degree in Cognitive Science (an interdisciplinary approach to studying the mind, with an emphasis on the interaction of people with computers). As an exchange student, he can pursue the same basic curriculum and get credits toward graduation.

It’s very different taking this grandchild generation to school than it was when we took our daughters. I remember very well when we drove Nancy, our firstborn, to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and I didn’t anticipate what a wrench it would be. We had two younger daughters at home, I was deeply involved in my writing career as well as my family, and thoughts of an “empty nest” were far from my mind. But then, much to my surprise, after we came home from Ohio, I went to the supermarket here on Long Island, saw someone I barely knew, told her about taking Nancy to college – and burst into tears. An era had ended. While I may not have shed tears in public after taking our younger daughters to college in their turns just a few years later, each one brought the mixed feelings of satisfaction that our major parenting jobs were coming to an end (we thought), along with a feeling of loss that our major parenting jobs were behind us (we thought).

One big difference, of course, is that Stefan and his sisters have not lived with us. They have lived an ocean away, so actually up at school Stefan is geographically closer than he has ever been. Another difference is that Stefan did not go to college directly from high school as all our daughters did. But the biggest difference is – as I have told interviewers who have asked, “How is being a grandmother different from being a mother?” – as a grandmother you don’t worry so much. You’ve been there before, you have confidence that obstacles can be overcome, and that challenges become growth experiences more often than they become problems.

NANA & OMA

I can’t believe how much time has gone by since I was last in these pages – so much that Susan, my new granny friend on grandparents.about.com emailed me to find out what was wrong. Nothing at all was wrong – things were very right. I was just too busy being with my grandchildren to write about grandmothering. Since I get to see my grandchildren from Germany and their mother, my daughter Jenny, only once or twice a year, when they’re here Opa and I clear the decks and make no non-family plans.

We played Scrabble, Pictionary, Boggle, and “Stinker” (see p. 114 of “Super Granny”). Opa and Lisa got to see “Ice Age 3,” and we all got to see and love “Up.” (It presents a funny and often moving picture of old age and friendship between young and old.) We went to the beach, we did artwork for Mak-a-plate plates and mugs, we took photos (especially Maika, who has a wonderful eye for subjects and composition), we had a delicious Un-Birthday cake and made up for it by jogging, biking, and taking long walks. The time flew by, and now there’s a little time to write before our grandson, Stefan, comes to visit.

The evening when my daughter Nancy had to leave the beach to take Anna, 17, to her flight for a youth conservation project in Idaho, Nina, 9, stayed with us. As she was about to go to sleep that night she buried her face in the tee shirt Nancy had worn that day and announced, “I’m going to take Mommy’s tee shirt to bed with me because it has her nice motherly smell.”

One highlight of our week on Long Beach Island, the New Jersey seashore community where we (variously including other daughters and grandchildren) have been renting a house for the past eleven summers, was a visit from another new friend in my granny network, Barbara from Nana's Corner. Thanks to reading her blog, I had learned that she lives in New Jersey and also vacations with her family on Long Beach Island. We exchanged phone numbers, and I was so glad that this busy grandma, teacher, poet, and blogger made time to come down to see us, accompanied by her lovely daughter and adorable baby grandson. To see Nana and Oma together, see the photo on the right-hand side – another family affair, taken by my husband and enhanced by my daughter, Dorri. It was a delight to meet Barbara, and I look forward to staying in touch. Talk about social networking!