by

We Share Our Losses

My grandmother wasn’t a happy woman, not when I knew her, so this picture I came across the other day is especially striking.

Pauline and Harry

The joy and openness in her eyes, the width of her smile, radiates joy. Beside her is my grandfather, a man I never met, who died when my mom was eight years old. A man who never felt like he belonged to me, in any way.

His ending was a cautionary tale of a congested heart. Three strikes and you’re out. That’s how many heart attacks it took to kill him. A young man, in his mid-forties, he left behind the love of his life and two bereft children. My grandmother never recovered from his death. It left her shattered and bitter, furious at her bad luck. The life she had imagined turned into dust.

I don’t know how my mother recovered. She had been a daddy’s girl.

When I was a kid my mom rarely spoke about her father, though I’m sure she must have explained to us what happened at some point. I remember how she used to light a yahrzeit candle a few weeks before her birthday on the day of his death. Quietly it would sit on the white countertop and burn without ceremony. For the rest of the year it resided in the rarely used kitchen cabinet filled with dusty wine glasses and an assortment of solitary cups and mugs that had lost their companions.

Looking back, I wish I asked more questions, I wish my mom had been able to share her grief with me. But as a cousin reminded me recently, grief wasn’t discussed openly back then. Maybe my mom thought she was protecting us by keeping it to herself, or maybe her memories were too distant to access, but the space it left, in the shape of a father and grandfather, loomed large in my imagination.

My childhood friend Tamra, who I’ve known since third grade, saw the photo when I posted it on Facebook and made a comment that caught me completely off guard.

She wrote, I see the resemblance with you and your mom. I automatically assumed she meant a resemblance to my grandmother, but when I read the rest of her comment, I realized she had been referring to my grandfather. I stared hard at his jovial good-natured face, searching for familiarity: I saw shadows of my mother easily, and then, I almost saw myself.

I stared at him, this man I had never met, barely knew anything about. Despite all that he was mine. He did belong to me. For a brief moment I allowed myself to imagine what life might have been like if he had lived. A grandmother and grandfather coming to visit, living close enough for me to spend the day, the night, to curl up in his big arms and be read to, held, and loved. My grandmother might have smiled more, and maybe, just maybe she would have been a better mother.

Up until this point I had never allowed myself to stake a claim on this man, to miss him, or mourn his absence. To imagine what he might have meant to me. I felt like that would have been selfish. This was my mother’s loss, not mine. But I was wrong. It was both of our losses. Just like her death is not just my loss, but my daughter’s, and my son’s.

It seems so obvious to me now. We don’t have to hide or hoard grief, we don’t have to pretend it’s not ours to mourn. Like love, there is enough to go around.

The spring before my mother died, when she was weak and recovering from a long winter illness, but before we knew she was dying, my uncle came to visit. Her older brother. When his father died, he became “the man” of the house, too heavy a burden for a twelve-year-old to bear. Nevertheless, he bore it out of necessity, and out of love for his little sister, but it left a bitter trace on him, a shadow of his mother’s twisted anger.

We talked about the past that day, which was unusual. Maybe it was me. Maybe I asked about my grandfather, maybe I offered what I had been unable to offer all those years earlier. An acknowledgment of their deep loss. My empathy.

I listened with rapt attention as my uncle recalled that fateful day of the final heart attack. Their father taken away, and then later, the news traveling back to them, my mother running to her room in tears.

“She couldn’t stop crying,” he said, looking awestruck so many years later.

Those four words hit me hard. I looked over at my mother. Her big brown eyes were wide with sadness and memory as she gazed at her brother. In a flash I saw the two of them as children, trying to care for each other.

Before he left that day, my uncle said goodbye in his usual brusque but loving manner. A quick hug for me and a wave to my mom across the room. She said goodbye from her reclining chair where she had sat for nearly a decade since she lost the use of her hands and legs to multiple sclerosis.

“Go and hug her,” I told my uncle in a low voice. He looked at me surprised. This was not his usual way. I don’t know for sure, but I think her handicap made him uncomfortable. Maybe it was too hard for him to look at her in that chair. But that day I didn’t give him a choice. I took his arm and pulled him into the room.

He leaned over her chair and hugged her, maybe for the first time in years, and I heard him say in a voice so tender, “I love you Susii,” her girlhood name. The name her father must have called her. The name my father called her until she became my mother and decided she was no longer a girl, and to please call her Susan.

The next time he saw his sister, she was under hospice care, unconscious, and close to death.

When I got pregnant, shortly after my mom died, I knew right away there was one thing I’d do differently. My children would know their grandmother. I would tell them her name, show them pictures, and talk about her life, her art, and one day, her death.

There are two of them now, grandchildren. A girl and a boy, in the same order my mother had me and my brother. A strange kind of twinning, but not.

They do not wonder about the blank space as I once did because it’s always being filled.  My hope is that she is as vibrant and beautiful in their imagination as she was in life.

mom and Harry

My mom and her dad, my grandpa Harry

Rest in peace, Harry Cooperman, grandpa. I know I would have loved you.

22 thoughts on “We Share Our Losses”

  1. Thanks for sharing Dana. As you know, filling the space is something I think about a lot and deal with on a daily basis. It’s such an important thing to pass on our love of someone to others. This sentence was clear and pretty: “Like love, there is enough to go around.”

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  2. There’s certainly enough grief to go around, you’re right. And my first thought was that he does look like you! I tell my kids about my father, the grandfather they’ll never know, little by little. Nothing big yet.
    I imagine that your uncle still looked at your mother and saw the young girl.

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    • The moment I saw your name pop up in my email, I realized you lost your dad at a similar age. I love that you’re sharing your father with your kids little by little. That last line of yours struck a deep chord – yes, you’re absolutely right, that’s exactly what he saw – a young girl. Thanks as always for reading and your thoughtful comments.

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  3. This is so beautifully written, Dana. It brought me to tears. I love the idea of holding space for family that have passed, making them a part of our kids’ lives through photos and stories. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. I loved this. Your writing is so clear and from the heart. We are lucky to live in a time when it is socially acceptable to talk about grief and loved ones who have passed. You are giving your children such a precious gift, of your mother’s memory.

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  6. Dear Dana,

    Exquisitely beautiful. I love that you are sharing the gift of your mom with your children. I never met my grandparents, they had each died before I was born. My great-grandmother was 92 when I was born, I have brief memories of her. I didn’t cry when my father died. i was told that we were of strong stock and had to maintain that veneer at any cost. I am grateful that the dialogue is changing about grief and mourning. The light went out of my mother’s eyes when my father died and never came back. Thank you for sharing your wonderful pictures, you can feel the love in them.

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    • Terri, thank you so much. It makes me sad thinking of children, like yourself (and probably my mom and definitely my uncle) being told to repress their tears. Yet, I did this myself as a teenager when my grandmother (of this picture) died. I willed myself not to cry at her funeral. I think I didn’t feel safe expressing my sadness in front of people. But I hope not to pass that down to my own children. This line of yours, “The light went out of my mother’s eyes when my father died and never came back,” is striking.

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  7. Oh Dana, this is so beautiful! So much love! The part where your uncle hugged your mum brought tears to my eyes. I’m so glad you’re keeping your mother’s memory alive for your children. You paint such a vivid picture of her for your blog and I know that’s just a tiny fragment of her story – they must get so much more. And, just from the photos of you I’ve seen, I can see a resemblance between you and your Grandfather. You’re right, we should be able to express grief, it’s so important. It’s part of love. xx

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  8. This piece brought about several emotions in me, Dana. It’s so beautiful and it made me think of my grandfather who I never met. When my father left India to come to the United States, my grandfather didn’t take it well. He loved my Dad so much. One of my grandfather’s sole wishes was to meet me. When my mother and father learned that he was ill, they jetted back to India with me, but we were too late. I never met the grandfather that loved me so much. This line in particular resonated with me so very deeply, “This was my mother’s loss, not mine. But I was wrong. It was both of our losses. Just like her death is not just my loss, but my daughter’s, and my son’s.” Heartbreaking, isn’t it? xo

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    • Oh, that is a terribly sad story about your grandfather, Rudri, and for your father. And yet another connection between us, a grandfather we never knew, but one who would’ve loved me, who did love you. Thank you as always for reading.

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  10. This post is so beautiful. All of it. And when you wrote about the candle in the dusty cabinet with the solitary mugs and cups that had lost their companions…

    Well.

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    • Thank you, Julie. That part about the candle in the cabinet of lost forgotten things, it just came out of nowhere and the metaphor of it nearly knocked me down.

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  11. Dana this is so beautifully written. Your family history is so important to your children. My children have had lots of special memories with grandparents. They had to do an assignment on their great, great grandparents. It is a fascinating thing to research your families history with the kids. I was lucky one of my cousins had all the information and we learned so much about our family.

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    • Thank you my friend. I love that your cousins supplied information about your family to your children. I need to gather some questions and ask my mom’s relatives while I still can!

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