Reflections
As I said in the weekend update post, I’m actually out of town all day, which I’ll get into in a little bit. First, I want to talk a little bit about S.J. Rozan’s ABSENT FRIENDS, her long-awaited standalone that will be published at the end of next month. After waiting for what seemed like forever, I finally read the novel a few days ago. It was everything I hoped it would be, and really marks a major step forward in Rozan’s career and her ability both to craft a novel and to dig deep for buried, half-suppressed truths. It’s also an incredibly suspenseful book, but that’s only the skeletal framework; ABSENT FRIENDS is fleshed out with an array of characters grappling with the sense of loss, both in the immediate aftermath of 9⁄11 and of events long ago.
The best fiction worms its way into your psyche and extracts memories and truths that you were either completely unaware of or had thought buried for good. It’s a process akin to resonance, where a particular tone or pitch is sounded that exactly matches the inherent frequency of objects nearby. Think of the old cliché of a soprano singing a note so high that it shatters glass; it’s not really because of the absolute sound of the note she sings, but that the pitch possesses the same frequency that the glass does, and so in a process that’s similar to positive feedback, the cycle’s repeated and speeded up over and over, so much so that eventually, the pressure inside the glass has nowhere else to expand except outward. Hence, the glass breaks.
I use this extreme-sounding example to make a point: ABSENT FRIENDS deals with loss in such a way that it cannot help but remind the reader of any he or she had faced, even—or perhaps especially—if the event didn’t relate in any way whatsoever to 9⁄11. As I saw the book through till the end, I couldn’t help but think of my own limited experience of losing loved ones and what that has meant to me over the course of my life. If that’s what the book did for me, I can only imagine the impact it may have on a great many other readers.
Granted, loss and grief has been rather prevalent in my thoughts of late. What happens today is, I hope, a cathartic experience for me.
On August 1, 2003, I was starting month three of my research assistantship at King’s College London. It was a Friday, which meant that I would have to report my progress for the week at the lab meeting scheduled for that morning. After several weeks of fine-tuning and learning the ropes, the actual project was finally beginning to take shape. In other words I was feeling pretty good. I arrived at work and proceeded to the computer lab to check my email. Twenty minutes later I was a sobbing wreck, completely caught off guard by the news I’d just received. I didn’t attend the lab meeting, and the entire day was a washout. So, too, was most of the weekend, and it took several months to feel completely normal again.
It wasn’t my father’s fault; because of the time distance and the expense of calling, he couldn’t give me the news in any other way. But there is something unbearably cruel about learning of the death of someone you loved via email. The words are there, seemingly dispassionate without any telltale evidence of the emotion that accompanied them, the agonizing over how, exactly, to convey the news in the best way possible. But he couldn’t have known that I’d read of my grandmother’s death in a public computer terminal, with dozens of others around me simply surfing the Internet or reading of more mundane matters.
I missed the funeral; although in theory, I could have flown home in time, flights weren’t available and even if they had been, would have been exorbitant at best. Even when I argued that I should be there, my parents refused, urging me to focus on my research, that they’d never forgive themselves—and neither would I—if I didn’t make an attempt to finish on time. But I’d attended the funerals of my three other grandparents, and each experience had not just helped, but been vital to the grieving process. Although the Jewish way of morning doesn’t have any built-in mechanism for grandchildren that there are for children or spouses (30 days for husbands and/or wives; a year for children) I took comfort from the services, burials and shiva period in the same way my parents and their siblings did. It’s odd to say so, but I’ve always felt that nobody handles death better than the Jews.
But it’s hard to handle things when you’re five time zones away and there’s not a single soul around who ever knew my grandmother. My friends there tried to understand as best they could, and I spent Sunday afternoon—the day of the funeral—in the company of good friends, eating good food and drinking Pimm’s. But the company and good cheer only went so far. Inside I was horribly lonely, and would remain so for a long time.
Still, one has to cope. One of the ways I did so, which will surprise absolutely no one who’s reading this right now, is to write. Only hours after I got the news, I sat in another public terminal, this located in the bowels of the student residence I lived. With tears streaming down my cheeks (and trying to ignore the curious stares of others who bothered to look at me) I wrote down my memories of the woman I’d known and of the woman she had been in earlier days: as a young wife, leaving her Montreal home for the very first time to travel north with her brand-new husband to embark on their life together; raising my father and uncle back in Montreal, a single mother in the days when there wasn’t such a term for it; and as a grandmother who absolutely adored the children produced by her sons and their wives.
I sent it to my father with an all-too-simple subject header: “I had to write this.” Three days later, I called my parents to ask about the funeral. That’s when I found out I’d inadvertently written the eulogy that my father delivered—all he did was add a brief introduction, but the rest was mine. Months later, even after I’d returned home, my parents were still receiving comments about my piece from people who’d either attended the funeral or read the eulogy via email after my father sent it around.
Eventually, life went on. I finished my thesis work and flew back to Canada to start the write-up. Other things, good and bad, happened that had to be dealt with, some more easily than others. And a few months later than everyone else, my parents took me to where my grandmother is buried, next to my grandfather (who died when I was twelve.) I finally had the chance to shed the tears I’d had to keep in all these months. If there are any still unshed, I might get my chance later this morning, when the headstone bearing my grandmother’s name—both in English and Hebrew—is unveiled. Then, I suppose, several cycles are complete; my grandmother next to my grandfather; all of my grandparents gone; the year of mourning for my father and by extension, the rest of his family; and maybe, the vise-like grip of bad news that’s held my family in its thrall over the course of the past year.
I could go on about how much my grandmother meant to me, and how I miss her and no doubt always will. But frankly, I think I said it about as well as I could last year. Although she was a very unassuming, no-nonsense woman, I hope she won’t mind my sharing a piece of her with the world. In another time, and another place, she might have had the kind of opportunities afforded to me, and would, no doubt, have been Somebody. But she never needed to be Somebody; just herself. Which is the best kind of person one can be.
IN MEMORIAM: Anne Segall Weinman, 1912-2003
There are many words I could use to describe her, but the one that always comes to mind is that she was sharp. Sharp as a tack, to the very end. In her last years, her body may have been infirm, her hearing sadly diminished, and her eyesight failing, but lord, was she alert. Every time I went to visit her, she always knew what I was doing, always knew what was going on in our family. The good, and the bad, even when we wanted to keep the bad news from her. But there wasn’t much that fazed her. She lived 91 years, and really had seen and heard it all. There were times when I’d forget just how much she paid attention when she’d come back with a comment that startled me. Every time I was reminded anew that she was very much a part of this world.
Luckily, most of my memories of her aren’t solely limited to her time at the Maimonides nursing home in Montreal. I remember her best as she sat in the living room rocking chair in the duplex on Plamondon Street, where she and my Zayde lived together for almost thirty years. I’d usually sit next on the couch to her left. Sometimes we’d talk—well, she’d listen to me and I’d listen raptly to stories of her childhood and life in La Reine and in Montreal. Other times, usually on Saturday nights, we’d watch TV, like Lawrence Welk. Somehow it wasn’t a piece of hokum when we’d watch it together. It was a chance for me to spend time with her, and for that, I have fond memories of that show where others might recall it with scorn.
Bubbe lived her life with absolute dignity from beginning to end. She didn’t have the easiest of lives; a difficult childhood, leaving school at the age of 12 to go work in various factories. Then she met my Zayde and left it all behind—only to go off to a new, uncharted territory, where she didn’t know the people and didn’t know the language. But she learned French with ease (and picked up a fair amount of Cree, too) and got to know the townsfolk of La Reine, and they her. She became a part of the community, and treated everyone with respect, no matter what their backgrounds were. She was non-judgmental and tolerant before society realized those traits were important.
She also took whatever difficulties came her way and dealt with them—she didn’t fuss, didn’t wallow in self-pity, she just had a no-nonsense approach. It always amazed me that she raised my father and uncle largely by herself after they moved to Montreal, as Zayde supported them by staying behind in La Reine, running the Hudson’s Bay factory General store. How did you do it? I’d often ask. Single motherhood is no easy task now and must have been all the harder then. Every time, she just shrugged, brushing the incredulity away. What was the point in dwelling? She just did it, year after year.
Most of all though, when I remember her, I remember that she gave so much love. The happiest years of her life started when my brother was born, and she doted on him, me, and my cousins. We were the center of her life, and no matter what, she loved us and were proud of us. Every milestone in my life—whether it was graduating from McGill, moving to New York, getting my diploma in Voice Performance—she not only kept track, she was so very happy for me. The last time I saw her, it was in late May, just before I left for London. I had told her over the phone, but the conversations over time got shorter and shorter as her hearing worsened. I wasn’t sure she’d heard me, as I’d had to repeat the news several times. But when I arrived, she immediately brought it up and wished me the best. And told me she loved me, and to “give her a call when I had the chance.”
That was the way she ended every phone conversation with my brother or me. She knew we had busy lives, and never demanded attention; far from it. She just wanted to know we were all right. And that she thought of us, always. I never called her as much as I could have. And in the end, the conversations weren’t very long and we didn’t say very much. But the words never mattered. They were placeholders for the one simple fact: that she loved me very much, and vice versa.
Bubbe was remarkable for many reasons, but especially for this: she saw the best in people, wanted the best for people, and ultimately, was the best of people. They don’t make people like her too much anymore. My family always said I was the one who resembled her most in appearance and personality. Whether that has proven to be true, I don’t know, but I said years ago that I wanted to grow up to be like her. I still do.