Esther Miriam

Despite my intentions to keep this blog fluffy and leave the heavier stuff to my own venting grounds, I didn’t want what’s been going on during the last several weeks to go unrecognized: My beloved grandmother, Miriam Ferst, died on July 21. So I’ve been with my family in Detroit, saying goodbye to her while she was still relatively well and then mourning with them once she passed. I can say that, although she had been sick, she went on her own terms when she was ready, and I think she felt that her life was a full, rich one. We certainly did. And I can say with passionate gratitude that the support of those who surrounded my family this month has been overwhelming and deeply appreciated. It’s an incredible testament to the person my grandmother was. There’s an awful lot that I learned this past week about family and the dedication that goes with perpetuating relationships among relatives beyond one’s immediate unit; my grandmother had it down to a science, and I hope to make her proud.

I’ve had a very hard time writing about her — my sisters scooped me up and wrote our eulogy without much help from me, and they did Grandma proud — so I’m just going to say that her absence leaves a considerable void for all of us, and I’m going to miss her terribly. I can’t put into words how all of this makes me feel. I will in time, but I can’t right now.

What I’m not going to miss is people who show up to funerals and say things like this:

“You'll always have memories of your grandmother to share with your children [insert pronounced eye-roll and condescending tone here] IF YOU EVER HAVE ANY.”

There’s always one.

But beyond those who are disappointed with my unoccupied womb, there have been countless others who have been just so damn nice. Today when I came back to work, Lisa gave me a peach. It was a simple, sweet gesture (and super-yummy!), but what she didn’t know is that the peach itself meant something: Around the time Grandma was starting to get sick, she was falling a lot and cutting herself — her skin was fine like phyllo dough. She never wanted to be a burden to anybody and therefore tried to hide her injuries from us, both so we wouldn’t worry and so she could avoid the hospital. One day, her hand was bleeding profusely from a fall. When my mother asked her what happened, Grandma said she’d cut her hand on the stem of a peach, a rationale that made sense to Grandma at the time. When Lisa gave me the peach today, I noticed that it did not have a stem. It was a safe peach. No cuts, no hospitals, no pain, the perfect peach.

Another thing I learned is that you’re not supposed to say “thank you” to those who offer their condolences. This makes no sense to me. I’ve been groomed my whole life to thank people when they do something kind for me, and now when I’m at my most appreciative, I have to express it in another way? Perhaps I’m tacky, but I thought it odd. I couldn’t get used to it. I suppose there are problems worse than the automatic blurting of “thank you.” Like, for instance, Mel Gibson’s automatic blurting of the equivalent of “Yay, Nazis!”

I was grateful to return to work today. It’s a breath of normal when everything outside of work isn’t normal. I do want everyone to know that at my job today, my boss and I discussed where to add the hyphens in “sugar tits” in an item about Mel Gibson. Changing the world I am, one hyphen at a time.

Also at work today, I came across the entry “Babbage, Charles” in the dictionary. He was an English “mathematician and computer pioneer.” It also quite naturally reminded me of one Edna Babish from “Laverne & Shirley.” I mean, duh. So now I look at it as concrete proof that Edna was the true brain behind the Pizza Bowl and Cowboy Bill’s, and that Frank DeFazio was too stubborn to take heed in her savvy business advice. There’s no way that Edna would have approved of Shirley throwing knives at Laverne just to bring in business. Knife-throwing is so gauche. I mean, duh. Again.

So for now, I close with two quotes-of-the-week:

Wednesday was my sister Lauren’s 22nd birthday. We were getting ready to go out for dinner, our first night out after shiva ended, and Lauren was playing with my mom. “Thank you for giving birth to me, Mom,” she said. My mother humored her and said, “Um, you’re welcome.” Then Lauren said something like, “I hope I haven’t been a problem.” To which my mother smiled and said a hesitant, “Uh-huh.” And then Lauren said, “I hope I haven’t disappointed you.” My mom paused, and in the greatest delivery, put down her hairbrush and said, “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined you.”

And from Grandma, one of our favorite musings of hers on one of her favorite actors, Harrison Ford: “He can leave his boots under my bed anytime.”