Dear Jennie:

A gezunt in dein keppel: "A health on your little head."

This sentiment was expressed to me every time I saw you. I loved you for those words then, although I wasn't sure why. You taught me to repeat them [in Yiddish], my pronounciation improving as I grew. I knew it was some sort of a blessing, but had no sense of what it meant until years later.

As one of your youngest grandchildren, I only knew you for twelve years before you died. My conception of who you were was until very recently based on childhood's recollections of family gatherings, Chanukkah presents and seders. I always adored your name; somewhere in my child's mind there grew a dream that I would name my far-off daughter after you; the fantasy still exists.

What else did I know about you? Not much, I suppose. A regular Jewish grandma, just like everybody else's. Your culinary specialties of strudel and boiled chicken were unique perhaps only in their constant household existence. I remember that you always spoke in Yiddish to your children, broken but intelligent English to us [grandchildren].

I'd heard the story of how you taught me to walk one weekend, when mom and dad went away-as a matter of fact there are films taken soon after that momentous occasion. But of course that child in the images was aware of quite different sorts of phenomena than am I.

It was really only when you were sick that my twelve-year old mind began to understand some basics about life, and yet at the same time have cause to become confused. Although you were in the hospital for so many months, I never saw you there; I couldn't at all understand the nature of your illness. Remember when we visited you and grandpa in Florida that Easter? I couldn't figure out why you wanted to feed us two breakfasts. Or why you couldn't remember where we lived when we said goodbye. You didn't want us to go; so you blocked any knowledge of our separate lives in New York. I felt a strangeness wash over me as we left for the airport, caused by a dawning awareness that you were in another world. Perhaps it was a world populated by permanent dreams; images of your family always being together. But when I listened to the conversations of the adults, and the words forgetful and confused were constantly being applied to you, I still couldn't understand, but I was saddened.

I cried when you died because that's what one is supposed to do. I sensed that Daddy had been crying so I went upstairs where he wouldn't see me. It was very upsetting to see him cry, my Rock of Gibralter father.

I didn't know why you died, but nor did I quite know what death meant, especially to the living. I didn't go to the funeral, and it was only at the unveiling of the tombstone a year later that something was completed for me. It was about accepting your death, but I still couldn't account for the sense of loss I felt.