Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Clear

By Ari Averbach

My whole family was sitting on the black and white couch. That couch was so ugly, but so comfortable, and we all had our favorite spots where we always sat. My brother and sister would fight for the “good seat” in the corner. One Thursday night, my sister won so I let my brother have “my seat” while I sat between my mom and dad, which was usually the dead zone (there was no place to put your feet when you sat there).

We were watching ER, not talking. We were only allowed to talk, use the bathroom, or grab another chocolate sorbet popsicle during commercials. You see, we took ER very seriously. This is back in the George Clooney days when people actually watched the show.

During the second act of the show, as someone was yelling “clear!” for the tenth time that episode, the phone rang. It was my grandmother.

“Hi Sammy, I need to talk to your mom now.” She always got me and my siblings’ voices confused on the phone, which made us laugh. But we didn’t laugh that night. I could tell that there was something else going on.

“Here.” I passed the phone to my mom. ” It’s grandma.”

We half-watched the television as my mom stepped into the hallway to take the call. She looked serious. Worried.

“Zane, we have to go. Zavi – watch your brothers. We’ll be back in a few minutes. We have to run to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

If we were worried, we didn’t show it. We still had another 40 minutes of ER, and Grandma and Grandpa lived right down the street, maybe five minutes by car. As my grandparents were getting older, these trips became more frequent. One of them would lose their pills or glasses or teeth. Or worse yet – the remote. One time they couldn’t turn off the oven. My grandfather was lazy, he would sit at the messy kitchen table and just stare into space. My grandmother was a little too helpful, except she had polio at a young age and had recently taken a nasty fall, so she was very slow to move with her crutches.

I don’t know why my grandparents ever got married. Growing up, I had only heard them fight. My grandma was beautiful and had the most wonderful singing voice. We have film, real film, from decades ago, of her singing “Sunrise, Sunset” at someone’s wedding. Even as a child, I remember her voice being so heartbreaking it would make me cry. In our eyes, she could do nothing wrong. We knew how much she loved us. Grandpa scared us and always seemed to be yelling at her, calling her “Booby” – a bastardized version of the Yiddish term of endearment.

My parents called to tell us to go to sleep and that we would see them in the morning.

Later, we found out that my grandfather had died that night. He had a massive heart attack. Soon after my parents arrived, the medics showed up. They probably rubbed those paddles together and yelled “clear!” as we had seen so many times on ER. They were probably calm. Routine. “I’m not going to lose this one!” someone may have shouted. In my mind, it was very melodramatic. But somehow, Grandpa was revived, although he was never the same after that. A piece of him definitely went, but he made it.

Two years later, my grandmother died after a long battle with leukemia and a cadre of other diseases. She fought hard. Then my mother was diagnosed with lymphoma – Stage 4 (there is no Stage 5). I buried a young cousin. I said Kaddish for a health-obsessed uncle as well as for an uncle who was using Fen-Phen. I went with my childhood friend to chemo and helped him with his homework. Another friend was run over by a Pepsi truck. My favorite high school math teacher died suddenly. I lost one of my best friends. My paternal grandmother also succumbed to cancer. I became jaded, numb to the recitation, “Yitgadal v’Yitkadash Shemay Rabah.”

In the following years, my grandfather had a few more heart attacks. He had complete kidney failure. His diabetes rendered his legs useless; his dementia rendered his mind useless. It became routine to get a call from the doctor saying that this was it, that they would not administer any new meds. Yet my grandfather still lived. We went to visit and never thought of it as tragic, this was somehow funny. His non sequiturs were classic: “Sam, you’re not funny – you’re fat.” “Sam, you’re handicapped between the ears.”

The poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling has really shaped my life in various ways. One line always makes me think of my grandfather:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve their turn long after you are gone
And so hold on till there is nothing in you, except the will which says to them ‘Go on’…”

The lines of poetry may seem out of place, but somehow I see my grandfather’s body forcing itself to move forward for another day, for no other reason than because that’s because what bodies are supposed to do.

For the fourteen years between when my grandfather died the first time and the last time, I often thought that I had all the answers. Today is Grandpa Jack’s first yahrzeit. Today I realize that life is never that clear.

Photo by Dev Null, licensed under Creative Commons.

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