Therapy in Blogopathy

My Grandmother, Roslyn Marcus, passed away on February 7th, 2010. For most people, their grandmother passing away is a sad event. As her first grandchild, it was more than just some old lady who made me cookies every now and then dying. I was the first grandchild for about 8 years, and that was when my brother Nick was born. My cousins are even younger so, as my cousin J.R. (14) said after she died, "she was always old to me." Yeah, that sounds kind of mean, but it's also very true. She couldn't get around like she used to once J.R. was around but when I was young...she was always on the go. So my perspective and memories of her are much different than all the other grand kids.

She took me every where and we did every thing together. Any time I came to her house in Oxen Hill, she took me to whatever restaurant I wanted to go to. She would take me to the park, the pool, to the movies, or anything else that I wanted to do. As I got older, she would take me to Baltimore Orioles games. Any stupid movie I wanted to see, she went with me. She definitely took me to see "Dumb and Dumber" when I was about 11. I think she actually said after the movie "that was the stupidest movie I've ever seen." I felt I owed her for that so when I got to be in my teens and she was a little less mobile, any time she wanted to see a movie, I took her. "The Birdcage," which most teenage boys wouldn't really want to see, was one that we saw together. I figured we were even now.

When she wasn't busy spoiling me, she was always on the go. She was president of the Over 50 club in her home town, she was an active member of the Kennedy Center's Patrons for the Arts and Hadassah (a Jewish Women's Club). When she wasn't doing that, she was bowling or traveling around the world. When I was young, I remember her going to Israel, Alaska, Seattle, Arizona, Germany, Italy, France and that's only what I can remember. You couldn't slow her down. And through all of this, she was single. As long as I knew her, there was no "Grandpa" in the picture which wasn't common in her day.

She was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania where her family had been coal miners. During the Depression they were able to move to Brooklyn, NY because her older sister got a job as a nurse. Nursing was a common bond for the daughters because she and her twin sister Annette both became nurses as well. Right around the time World War II started, my grandmother was scheduled for a shift at the hospital that she didn't want to work. Her supervisor told her she had no choice and, as my Uncle Jeff put it, "she told him where he could stick the job." She then joined the Army as a nurse and was on her way to India. After the war, she came back to the states and continued nursing. She had 3 children; my Uncle Jeff, my Mom, and my Aunt Doris.

After she died, my mom, Sandy and I were looking through boxes and boxes of photos to make an album in honor of her. It made me laugh going through all of those photos because they reminded me of her amazing sense of humor. Her sister Annette and her were identical twins but you could always tell them apart. Aunt Annette was always very proper and serious in the pictures and Grandma always had some smart-ass smirk on her face or was doing some ridiculous pose. Even into her 90's, she still had her sense of humor. She loved "2 and a Half Men" on CBS. The ridiculously over the top sexual innuendos would crack her up. Most people that old are uptight and only watch PBS. She would always call Kramer from Seinfeld "a jerk," but would watch every episode with me and laugh.

There's so much more to her though. She never yelled, was always calm, and very rarely got angry. When she did, you listened to what she had to say. Even when I was in my 20's, she would insist on making me food. "Grandma, I know how to cook. I can get it." "I don't want you messing up the kitchen." That was her way of saying let me do it for you. The same thing went for if I had friends over the house, she would make them food, too. As long as it was a sandwich, you were fine. If she actually "cooked" something, you had to be careful. She was known to burn everything. I didn't have a non-burned pancake for at least the first 10 years of my life.

It's been about 2 months since we buried Grandma, and this is the first time I've really put down words to express how I feel/felt about the whole thing. It all happened so fast I never really got a chance to be sad, there was too much stuff to do. Throughout writing this, I've smiled some and teared up a little, too. I miss her. When I needed advice, she was the one I turned to. Whenever I had a problem, she seemed to be the one to bail me out. I'm glad she was able to meet her great-grandson. I'm glad that every time she held him, he would smile at her. One thing she loved was to be around her family, and I hope that now she's with her siblings and parents in heaven.