Bubbie

Reflections on my great grandmother

My great-grandmother’s name was Rivie, but all her great-grandchildren simply called her Bubbie. She died in July 2015, at the age of 96.

For all of my life that I remember, she lived in a retirement home, though she was always much sprightlier than the others in the retirement home. While the others in the retirement home were old, frail, and decrepit, she was, until shortly before her death, almost supernaturally energetic. She would go to the baseball games of my brother and me well into her nineties, keeping quite careful track of the game, at every point completely aware of the score—and even broader features of the strategy. From talking to her, you’d have no idea that she was was well into her nineties; she had the vim and vigor of someone in her mid-70s.

I’m writing this to maintain a written record of what she was like. While I have many memories of her, they aren’t as clear as they once were—they have the same fuzziness that events from a long time ago normally do. I’m hoping this is the sort of thing that I’ll be able to look back at when I’m 60 and my memory is fuzzier, to remember what she was like.

We great-grandchildren would often spend the night over at her house; she’d babysit us when we were just a few years old. Not many women above 90 are able and willing to babysit, but she was. I have fond memories from these excursions; playing with a blue truck, placing things in the small paper cups that she owned and would let us play with, being ogled at by the other people in the retirement home who were shocked to see anyone south of 75 (okay, that last one wasn’t so pleasant!)

She was married to her husband for 68 years, before he died. He died several years before she did—I was only three at the time. I have many fewer memories of him, but I still have some. Toward the end of his life, he was very hard of hearing and couldn’t see. When we’d come over, Bubbie would always instruct us to shout to Zayde that we had arrived, and if he couldn’t hear us, she would shout “Ben, your great-grandchildren are here,” (she’d shout, of course, because his hearing was very bad).

Bubbie and Zayde met in high school—I think he was a senior and she was a sophomore. She had liked him for a while before he asked her out, and described being completely over the moon that he liked her as well. That same sense of wonder that people often have in the first few months of dating was something that she maintained for as long as she was alive.

Even when Zayde was very old and many of his faculties were failing—she had to help him in the bathroom, for instance—she never fell out of love with him. Even most of a century later, she still maintained the same sense of wonder, that Ben, the cool, older boy in high school, had picked her. They were married for 68 years.

On the day that Zayde died, Bubbie said that she was the luckiest woman in the world because she had been able to be married to Zayde for 68 years. She was the sort of person not merely to say something like that, but to mean it.

Of all the people that I’ve met, with the possible exception of my grandfather, she was the kindest. Towards the end, when Zayde was largely non-functional and caring for him was a very demanding task, she never complained, never seemed to regard it as unfair that she, well into her nineties, had to care for someone who had become, at that point, quite difficult to care for. She’d come over to our house, on Shabbat, for many years. I can’t recall a single unkind word she ever said.

After she died, my parents cleaned out her house. They found a record of all the people she lent money to. Now, she and Zayde were by no means rich. But she lent a lot of people money; when they were in a rough spot, she’d graciously lend money, even to people she didn’t know very well.

At her funeral, my uncle said that she made all her grandchildren feel like her favorite grandchild. She’d give them—as she gave us—her full, undivided attention, always making one feel cared for and special. Even when she was nearly a century old, she’d get down on the floor and play with us—even though playing with trucks was, no doubt, not the way she’d ordinarily like to spend her time.

No one ever had an unkind word to say about her. She was simply never unkind to anyone, always helpful, gracious, and loving. She valued family greatly, and even after a person was no longer technically part of our family, on account of divorce, she was a major part of keeping them a part of our family—still inviting them to family gatherings.

For example, when my great-uncle and his wife got a divorce, his wife remained part of the family. To this day, I call her “aunt,” and she’s a part of the family—I think of her the same way I do my other great-aunts. Bubbie was incredibly close to her, as well as her new husband after she remarried, who had a similar air of benevolence. Bubbie also got along quite well with my grandfather, the other person with a plausible claim to be the kindest person I’ve ever known, who I’ve mentioned before. She got along well with everyone, but especially those who were particularly kind.

She liked talking with everyone. My mother informs me that when she was in Europe, with her patchy combination of languages—English, Yiddish, and a bit of Spanish—she’d try to talk to everyone, despite the difficulty of communicating with, for instance, the French.

Even in her later years, when she started to age (in the last two or so years of life, she was a lot less energetic than she’d been earlier), we’d still come over and sit outside with her. While she was no longer equipped to play with us (and we’d outgrown playing with trucks on the floor), we’d sit outside and talk with her, sometimes playing games. She’d always tell us that she loved us. Even after she declined substantially, losing much of her mental competence, she still remembered that she loved us.

Bubbie said she talked with God every day. If there is a God and a heaven, I imagine she’s currently up there, smiling, laughing, and dancing with Zayde and the substantial cohort of loved ones she developed over the years. I’m not sure if there’s substack in heaven, but if so, I hope that she’s reading this.