Is there ever a good time to die??

This post is really long, its more as a short family history for my kids as well as the last few days of Josh's best friends mom. I print out these posts at the end of every month and have them for my kids as a diary of what we did when they were young.

Today I went to Josh's best friend, Bob's mother's funeral. It was an odd event it really made me think about my own life and the legacy I want to leave behind. I know of professors who ask students to write their own eulogy. I don't want to achieve greatness or cure the common cold. I want to be remembered for how I make people feel. I want it to be like the way I feel when I smell the scent of Tea Rose and feel surrounded by my grandmother who when she lost her sense of smell would drown in the perfume. Or my mom who leaves a trail of Cartier Musk in her wake. I want to be like the warm taste of chicken soup that transports you to safe place in your life. I want to be remembered for so many things.

Bob's mom decided at a young age that she was going to live to be 87, she died 2 months shy of that date. It was sad really as she left behind two kids who are enemies. They are 10 years apart in age and worlds apart in their lives. They don't want to be in the same room and while they did not have mean things to say about their mom, their speeches were not filled with warmth. Bob's niece who is my age was the one who felt the brunt of her loss. Who sobbed for this woman that is gone forever, who has a scar permanently embedded in her heart for her grandma whom she knew and loved better then her own kids. I could not believe how fortunate she was to have known her grandmother for such a long time. My moms parents died when I was young, her mom when I was 4, her dad when I was 9. My dad's dad passed away when I was 12, his mom when I was 24. Except for the passing of my mom's dad, whom I was not connected to, I have stories that accompany each of their deaths.

My Granny Ninny (yes that is her real name), was born to luxury in Germany. Germany in the 30's was not a place for a beautiful Jewish woman she was the equivalent of a baroness, she fled to South Africa without a penny to her name, where she met the man she would one day marry. He adored this beautiful lady, all who knew her only use the word lady to describe her. He threatened to kill himself when she tried to leave him, and ended up marrying him for fear that he would carry out his threat. She lead a quiet, simple life of happiness through her kids, not her marriage. Her husband was a furniture salesman and money was always tight. She lost many siblings in the holocaust, only a sister and two brothers survived. Her sister and one brother ended up in South Africa, Rosie had the misfortune to lose her true love, before she left Germany, his ship passed the dock where she was standing waving at him, they caught each others eyes just as a torpedo struck it, it sank, he died before her eyes. She never recovered and would never find love again. My mom's brother Nathan, lived with his sister, he was quite the ladies man but never married. They bought properties in Hillbrow which when they lived there was a vibrant town, filled with immigrants, safe with beautiful apartments. Hillbrow is such a rough place to be now but when they died, the properties went to my mom, her brother and sister. Unfortunately, my two uncles managed those properties and the sale of them, they had a rough financial time themselves and mismanaged the properties and we lost everything.

Ninny and I had a connection that was so strong, I have such vivid recollections of her and whenever I go to fortune tellers they always see her standing next to me. When she was sick, she was only 50, I was 4, my mom was just on the road home from the hospital, no cell phones in those days, aparently, I started crying, unable to stop, the time I started crying was when she died, my mom walked in our house in that pre-cellphone era to find that she had just missed her mom's passing at the hospital. She never forgave herself for not being there at the end. One of Ninny's brother's, Joseph ended up in Israel, he got power of attorney from his siblings, after the war he petitioned the German Government for reparations for all the family had lost, he ended up taking it all for himself, leaving his siblings with nothing, I never met him but have heard how hard his life was, not financially but how his kids suffered and the tough times they endured, I guess his children had to pay for the sins of their father.

I guess I was payback to my Oupa, Harry who was married to Ninny, as I say I don't remember him but apparently I tormented him, after she died he came to live with us until he died of lung cancer. My mom adored her daddy and looked after him until he died. He was a tough man, a Russian immigrant but his kids adored him and that speaks volumes. For all his failings as a husband, he had three kids who all had a strong bond for each other and their families, we grew up around the corner from my cousins, my mom would see her sister almost every day and the 11 first cousins grew up very close and connected. The son a doctor, the two daughters, smart, independent women who sacrificed enourmously for their families. My mom the glue to the family, the middle child always making peace and taking care of everyone around her.

My Dad's parents are a different story, Lionel, a peace loving man first left Lithuania to go to Israel before there was a state of Israel. He was a religious man, who went to Temple every day, when he arrived at the Kibbutz and was handed a rifle, he looked around, decided it was not for him and boarded a boat for South Africa where his sister lived. He was an artist, a photographer who in those days had to handpaint colour onto photographs. One day while walking down Eloff Street he bumped into this beautiful woman, the date was the 11th of November, it was way before the end of World War II but Armastice Day, the anniversary of the end of WWI, would prove to be a lucky date for them. He was a shy man, and my grandmother had to get her brother-in-law to re-introduce her to this handsome man who had captured her imagination. Quite scandalous as Rae as my grandma was called came over as a bride, married to a mean man with the last name of Cohen, he was her visa from Riga into South Africa during WWII, he married himself a slave but he never realized that he married Rachel, a strong minded woman who got what she wanted when she wanted it. His slave did the unthinkable for that time, she divorced him and moved out. She lived with her sister and her sister's husband, and their kids until she met her soul mate. She married my grandfather on the 11th of November a year after they met in a rented dress and a he in a rented suit. What a gorgeous couple they made. They were married for over 40 years and truly loved and cherished each other. Every year on Armastice Day, the 11th of November she would buy bunched of paper poppies from war heros to commemortae their day. to this day I buy one everytime I pass a vet selling them. They tried to have a huge family but only one child survived, my dad, Jack. He was the center of their world and them his. He was an unbelievable son who took such great care of his folks, they truly moulded a great man whom so many would admire.

My granparents were incredibly involved in our lives, they were old fashioned, but they worked hard and saved, my dad's parents lived in the servants quarters of a house in Mayfair, they saved for their own home, once they got their own home, they moved into the servants quarters of that, rented out the main house, paid off the mortgage and then started investing in real estate, building a small but comfortable living. My grandmother was the business woman, had she been born in a different time she could have established her own empire but she was happy to stand behind her man whom she adored. They made sure to broaden our horizons which included a trip to India, Greece and Israel, many family vacations at the Balmoral Hotel in Muizenberg and stays at the Carmel Hotel in Warmbaths. They would only stay in Kosher hotels and liked the comforts of familiar places.

After my Batmizvah, when I was 12 (a Jewish girls confirmation, when she becomes a woman), my grandfather was sick, they were not sure if he would be able to attend the ceremony, but he did. Proud as punch.

My folks worked incredibly long hours, sometimes 6 or 7 days a week. They were trying to keep afloat. They were not around much during the year but over our summer holiday, every December they would take my elder sister, sometimes my younger sister and I away on magical trips to exotic destinations. The year of my Batmitzvah they took us to Portugal and Switzerland. One night in Zurich we were staying at the Kindli Hotel, my elder sister and I woke up, and could not go back to sleep, my little sister woke up a few minutes later, crying hysterically about a bear, a big brown bear. We consoled her, I was 12, Heidi was 15, and Nin was 8. None of us could sleep and ended up going downstairs to have some Swiss Hot Chocolate, an incredibly decadent treat. On the way back to our room we saw our parents light was on in their room. We knocked on the door to find out my grandfather had passed away. Funny we all had this uneasy feeling and I came to trust that instinct as I got older.

When I came to the United States, I did a Contiki tour across the Southern States, when I got to Durango in Colorado, there were wide open spaces, gorgeous black skies at night with a million stars, I even went horseriding with a man who swore he was the original Marlboro Man. The place was pretty remote. In the middle of the night, I woke up with that feeling and just knew my grandmother had died. I started sobbing and could not stop. I went to the payphone but the lines to South Africa were not working, I had to wait 3 days before we reached Vegas, I had this knot in the pit of my stomach, and the tears just flowed, I could not stop them. I finally got to a pay phone, my dad answered, I said to him, when did Grandma die, he wanted to know who told me, I told him that I just knew. Just as an aside, it was quite funny (in my family we have a really warped sense of humour), when I got to LA, my cousin Wendy picked me up in Anheim, we had planned to go to Disneyland as the bus dropped me off nearby for the end of my tour, when she arrived I told her that I could not go, my heart was not into it as my Gran had just died. She told me it was no problem, that she would pick up take out food and get a video. She brought the food, chinese food in those little cardboard containers I had seen in movies, she popped in the video, it was the Cemetay Club, Oh my word did we laugh, I sobbed through it but it was so funny.