My grandmother used to read the obituaries in the paper out loud. Her lips moving, her eyes scanning, her worried head shaking.
I was 15 when both my grandparents left their cozy apartment and moved in with us to help my mother (presumably with me, and to help support her financially) after my father died.
So I was living with two old Eastern European Jews with their broken English and their old-country values.
Turn off the lights, was my grandfather’s mantra. What do you need with a lamp in the middle of the day? Electricity costs money. Even though I resented it, now I know he was so ahead of his time. (He would roll over if he saw our most recent electric bill.)
And my grandmother was adamant about waste. No food was ever to be thrown out. Shriveled carrots? Throw them in soup. Cut off the green from the cheese. Put stale crackers in the oven. Pour water over hard bread and heat. Curdled milk? Make rice pudding.
In those young days of mine, I must have thought my grandmother was crazy to spend any time reading dead people’s names, names of people she didn’t even know.
But somehow, probably the one that stands out clearly in my mind, the one that must have seared itself into my psyche, the one where I stood in the living room listening to her reading to herself but loud enough so I could hear it —
As she scrolled down the column, this is what I heard (try to hear the Yiddish accent):
“Adimz” (Adams)
“Baykerrrr” (Baker)
“Donahue”
“Fitzhugh”
“Garrrrity” (Garrity)
“Harrrison” (Harrison)
All the way down to “Xavier.”
And then she closed the paper, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Tank God nobody died.”
I said, “Gram, what do you mean nobody died? You just read a list of 25 people who are dead.”
She said, “You know what I mean.”
And it took a bit (remember I was 15) for me to get it. She meant nobody Jewish died.
I was horrified.
Probably due to that experience, obituaries became some sort of an interesting art form for me. When I taught literature for social reflection for Robert Coles at Harvard (yes, I’m sorry, I know I’m supposed to say “a school in Cambridge,” but it’s my mother’s most proud accomplishment of mine), one of the assignments I gave the kids was to write their own obituary. I remember being blown away and saddened by the pieces that they wrote. All of them leaders. All of them top athletes in the schools they came from, all of them the smartest. With all their confidence and achievements and the fact that they had everything going for them, more than a quarter of
the class wrote about how they died penniless and alone.
My friend Bob Drogin, a journalist who encountered atrocities in many countries he covered, now back stateside, writes advance obituaries (or as he calls them, the final nod) of famous people, so the story is ready to post as soon as they pass.
So I guess the whole topic, which at some point in my life I might have called a bit morbid, is part of life, and why now I see it as important closure.
“Susan Brainard had a generous spirit. She was 76.” “John Lacoste had a deep sense of loyalty. He was 81.” “Steven Manning was a great gardener. He fought his battle with cancer valiantly. He was 56.”
I have to say, when I skimmed the headlines, I always thought they were summing up a whole lifetime in a few Bodoni Bold captions. But now that I’m taking the time to read, I’m so gratified to know that under the cryptic one-liner are the stories.
I love knowing how they got to the Vineyard. What led them to the Island. What they studied in school, the journey of their illness. What took them down.
I guess it’s because of my age. Maybe it’s because we live in such a tight, loving community that I don’t want to miss anyone in case I need to write a note, send a card, bring soup. Which maybe explains why, when the paper comes now, it’s me turning to the obituary page first.
It’s taken a while, but I now understand how my grandmother thought “nobody died” was an OK way of seeing the world. That was her community, her tribe.
We all of us here on the Vineyard may not know each other personally, but we have passed each other at Stop & Shop in Aisle 3, we have pulled into the same gas station, pumped our gas, maybe our eyes met and we smiled, maybe we have eaten near each other at the Black Dog. We are connected.
Because everyone, everyone (and I know you know what I’m talking about) here is our community.
P.S.: Of course I’d rather see you in Cronig’s than on the obits page of the paper.
