Granny’s Death

I was twenty-five years old and living in Oslo, Norway, when Granny died.  I knew when I kissed her goodbye in Pittsburgh, that it might be the last time. She was then over seventy, frail and blind.  When she was young, doctors didn’t expect her to reach forty.  High blood pressure.  Heart trouble. 

I remember clearly how I took the phone in my husband’s  tiny study, across from the Blind School.  My father-in-law said, “Nancy, sit down.”  I asked, “What happened?”  He said, “Your granny just died in New York.”  Under my breath, I uttered the prayer she had told me to say, “Gelobt seikst du Marie.”  

It is a line from Heine’s poem, “Die Wahlfahrt Nack Kevladr,” about someone who died of a broken heart.  Gran used to ask me to read it to her, when she lived with us in Pittsburgh, before I married and went to Norway.  I knew she was the person whose heart and body had been broken.  I knew she longed for a peaceful death, to end the pain.  

I couldn’t afford to return for the funeral.  In fact, I had a full-time job as well as a husband to care for in Oslo.  I never saw her in the coffin, although I know she wore the anchor-pin from Annapolis, which her only son had given her.  She always wore it.  

I have visited her grave in Hackensack Cemetery in New Jersey several times.  It is the kind of place she liked:  green and shady, with flowers and benches. Whenever I took her for a walk near Teaneck (where she lived during my childhood) she always regretted the absence of benches.  “In America, you can never find a bench,” she would say.  Or else:  “Ah! Here’s a bench at last.  Let’s sit down, Nancy dear.”  

Next time I go to NYC I want to go alone to that cemetery and sit quietly by her grave.  I think I will hear her speaking to me.  For me, she still lives.