A Short Trip to New York

I've just returned to Washington after a short, unplanned trip to New York. My grandmother (Sylvia, on my mother's side) died on Friday, and I left work early and went up to New York. The whole trip was spent in Brooklyn and Queens; I didn't once set foot in Manhattan. I spent Friday night with my immediate family in Brooklyn- the rest of the clan arrived on Saturday. The service and burial were in Queens, after which we went back to Brooklyn. The Shivah process is both comforting and exhausting as you're constantly with people. Took off Monday from work, slept in, and paid a shivah call to my grandmother's brothers and sisters.

Eulogy for Sylvia "Bubbie" Safron, 1921-2010.

Bubbie made the most delicious rhubarb. It was stringy and sweet, blood-red and soaked in sugar. She’d bring recycled glass jars of the stuff on visits to her grandchildren. Rhubarb was accompanied by compote, stuffed cabbage, fresh gefilte fish, carrot kugel, and mandelbread. The glass jars would remain in our freezers weeks after she left.

Sylvia Safron, or Bubbie, as we called her, had seven grandchildren: Jacob and Benjamin, Raphael, Yasha, and myself, Lena and Eli. While most of us were young or unborn at the time of Pa’s death, we all knew and adored our bright-eyed little grandmother from Flushing. Lena once compared her to Elmo: sweet, cuddly, and always smiling.

Bubbie often remarked on how much the world had changed during her lifetime. She was in continual awe of the material prosperity of our lives: our ipods and travel to faraway countries were met with a Yiddish phrase: “Anandade Welt.” Bubbie was our link to the old country and distant American past of the Great Depression and Second World War. She spoke Yiddish, clipped coupons, authored long handwritten letters, took public buses, practiced her water exercises in Florida pools each winter, religiously watched jeopardy, and prayed each night before going to sleep.

Bubbie was a ham. While modest to a fault, she had a dramatic presence and enjoyed dressing up in bright colors, charming someone she’d just met, and singing to capture a room’s attention. She had a voice like warm lemon tea, and would often hum songs from the nineteen thirties and forties. My favorite was the Rich Maharaja of Magabar, who According to Bubbie: “had diamonds and pearls, and plenty of girls…but he didn't know how…. to do the rhumba.”

Bubbie wasn’t a maharaja and this suited her fine. She was deeply satisfied with her lot in life: living in Flushing, speaking daily with her sisters by phone, visiting her children, attending simchas, and listening to “programs” on the radio. Only in the last year of her life did I ever hear her complain, and it was of not being able to do these things and becoming fully dependant upon others.

Bubbie somehow managed to find something positive even in this dependency: a gratefulness to her children for taking care of her. As she often told me, the best thing she had ever done was to have children. Even while suffering, Bubbie was full of gratitude, love, and concern. “Thank you for calling, darling” she’d say at the end of every phone call- “please take care of yourself.”