Alef: The NEXT Conversation

My Jewish Jeanne

By Ally Iseman

My grandmother, Jeanne Iseman, was one of the most special people I’ve  known. When she died on September 29th, I lost one of my best friends. I’m still grieving viscerally, so writing this piece is a powerful challenge, one that I know she would be proud of me for meeting.

Grandma was one of the strongest people I’ve ever met and one of the most honest, especially when it came to giving you her opinion. She taught me the value of honesty, both through its intense presence in her life and in the specific moments she chose to leave it out. From my clothing to career choices, Grandma would never cut any corners or smooth anything over whenever I came to her for advice. However, the few things she wasn’t so honest and upfront about stuck with me in a very different way.

I didn’t know she was sick. Or at least I didn’t know exactly how sick she really was. She’d been fighting one thing or another for 40 years, but never seemed to make a fuss about it no matter what it was, from multiple eye surgeries to double hip replacements. In our weekly phone conversations she always wanted to know what was going on with me, what was happening in my life. No matter how humdrum I felt it may be, she wanted all the details. That started to change over the past year. Our conversations started to be filled with her terrible chemo experiences, the experimental drug treatments that made the skin on the bottoms of her feet fall off, how tired she was…That should have clued me in, but when I asked her about it, her attitude was that “this too shall pass.”

Maybe it was the simple bliss of denial that kept me casual about it. She was the anchor that kept my family together, or at least tried to. She was certainly a staple in my life, a pillar of strength and the woman who introduced me to the concept of true forgiveness through living example. Grandma wasn’t going anywhere! Not in my reality.

Then she asked my Dad, her son, the boy who she adopted as her own when she married my Grandpa Abe, to come down to Florida to be with her. That’s when my Dad knew it was serious. The same woman who wouldn’t even tell anyone she was sick until after the surgeries had already taken place, that woman was asking for his help.

I had already planned a trip home to Maryland that I had postponed twice over the course of summer and autumn, but I refused to postpone it a third time and had committed to flying down right after my birthday. My main focus was to spend as much time with my mom’s mother, “Granny,” as I could before she slipped completely into the dementia she was so hastily approaching. When I landed in D.C. and got home to my mother’s apartment, I received a call from my Dad.

“Ally, I need you to come to Florida,” he said. “I need you to go to the house…and I need you to pick out a suit for me…”

Static filled the air around me and I don’t think I took a breath until I hung up. Then I hyperventilated. Then I screamed. Then I cried and let my mother hold me. I got on a flight to Florida the next day.

When I landed, my Dad told me that he had had to convince Grandma to let me come. She didn’t want me to see her this way. He hadn’t prepared me fully. My rock, my anchor, my best friend, was a jaundiced skeleton who could barely speak. I came just in time; right before her communication skills completely failed her.

Hospice is not a happy place. Over that next week, I helped my Grandma die. Nine days after my 25th birthday, Jeanne Iseman allowed the liver cancer to win. She slipped away in her son’s arms in the middle of the night.

I didn’t have funeral clothes with me. How do you shop for a dress for a funeral? How do you not feel guilty that you still want it to be stylish, flattering, and fit you? Grandma liked shopping with me. She liked my style. She always told me I looked nice in comfortable clothes, so with these thoughts in mind, I chose a dress. I wore flip-flops to Grandma’s funeral.

I picked out her final outfit at my dad’s request. Her favorite color was green, but she hated wearing it, so I went with a pair of neutral pants and a brown blazer over a pretty yellow blouse with floral lace trim. My dad said it was perfect. I picked out her coffin. The simpler the better, she hated extravagance. I picked out the restaurant for the reception after the funeral. It was where she always went with her girlfriends after the theater. I spoke to the rabbi about her impact on my life, who she was, and our special relationship. I said goodbye to her lifeless body at the funeral home. I put dirt on her grave. The sound it made when it hit the top of the coffin will never leave me. I cried. I flew home to Maryland. I spent a day with my other grandmother. I flew back to LA. Life continued.

I wondered, how does everything stay the same? Didn’t the whole world stop when mine did?

Since her passing, I’ve learned more about her past. I’m not sure how I neglected asking these questions when she was alive. I’m unsure how to not feel guilty about that.

Grandma’s journey to Judaism was much like mine.  She was raised by an atheist, my Great-Grandma GG, and had no experience with religion as a child. My mother is a self-proclaimed agnostic and my only introduction to Judaism was as an obligation to my father to attend Hebrew school and services on Holy Days and sporadic Shabbats.  This starkly nonspiritual image of Judaism devoid of passion was the root of my dissociation with Judaism as a part of my identity and as a whole. Grandma studied to become a librarian long before it was normal for women to go to university. She was granted a position as the librarian at a Jewish Day School. Through this position she not only became active in the surrounding Jewish community, but Grandma became a board member at the affiliated synagogue, had her bat mitzvah, and became an observant Jew. All in her adult life! My connection was ignited through my Birthright trip in August 2008, when I was almost 24 years old. Since then I have immersed myself in countless branches of my surrounding Jewish community and was even given a position as one of the first four fellows with Birthright Israel NEXT in Los Angeles!

To me, she had always been the family member most connected with Judaism, so I had just assumed it was always that way. To find out that our beginnings were so similar, our journeys so intertwined, I now more fully understand our connection. We both grew up completely detached from our Jewish identities, and knowing that she was able to see me find my connection to Judaism – something so beautifully integral to her being – within her lifetime, fills me with happiness.

Our bond was not one of blood relation, but one that goes much deeper. I now know that she truly lives on in me. Not in my DNA nor just in my heart, but in my journey forward. Grandma lives on in my stubborn zest for life and in my passionate exploration of my Jewish roots.

Photo by Brittany G, licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: Death, Funeral

Posted by Sarah, Wednesday, January 13th, 2010, 3:56 pm, Death and Tragedy.