Strong

Dear Grandma,

  Your funeral was very well attended.  Pauline was there there.  Aunt Rose was there as well, but that goes without saying.  Beyond those two, you managed to outlive most of your other contemporaries.  Your children were all there.  Grandchildren, too.  Andrew even flew in from Germany with Caitlin.  All of Aunt Rose's kids were there as well.

  I bore your casket into the church, along with your sons and sons-in-law.  I thought I was doing well until the thought hit me that this was the last time you would enter the church that you had spent two thirds of your life coming to. 

  Charlie conducted the service.  Uncle Rick delivered the eulogy.  There was a small gathering in the parish hall afterwards. 

  Everyone seems to be doing as well as can be expected.  Logan and I each have our weepy moments. 

  Logan did well in his baseball game last night.  When his 3rd hit didn't carry over the shortstop, he came back to the dugout in tears.  Said, "Now, I can't hit 1.000."  His first thoughts after the game were of you.  Afterwards, he told me that he thought if he could hit 1.000 for the game, it would take his mind off of "something".  He was trying to channel his grief.  Still, he had a good day:  went 2 for 3 with a walk.  

  You always asked how he was doing and what sport he was playing.  I figured you'd want to know.


  Telling him you had passed was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. 


  I suppose we all knew that eventually your days would come to an end.  After nearly 94 years, this should not have come as a surprise to anybody.  It still did, though.  I think we had all convinced ourselves that you were eternal. 

  I know this letter finds you well:  in heaven, enjoying eternal salvation, at peace in the Catholic faith that sustained you for so many years here on earth.  We think of you always, and cannot help but miss you.

Love Always,
Jimmy


Strength

One of my earliest memories of my grandmother's house was of the Madonna next to the living room.  It was a small statue of the Virgin Mary standing on a serpent:  a symbol of love and compassion in a world fraught with evil.

In middle age, I had come to believe that my grandmother was the strongest person I ever met.  People all too often confuse strength with selfishness and self-interest.  Grandma wasn't strong because she was able to show other people up in anything.  It is closer to the mark to say she was strong because she was able to manage the many challenges life had to throw at her with dignity and courage. 

The true reason I believed that she was the strongest person I ever met was that she not only lived her life with grace and joy, but with compassion.  She was kindness personified.  I know there are others in the world who are as kind as my grandmother was.  However, there isn't anybody kinder.

It is really not that difficult to live life as a hard and cynical person.  All that takes is an over-developed sense of self-preservation and an inflated sense of self-importance.  To live life with kindness and compassion takes true strength.  The strength to give with no thought of ever receiving.  The strength to see good even when evidence of bad is all around.  The strength to try to lighten the burdens that others may be carrying, even when your own burdens are overwhelming.

Those are ideals that many people strive for, but very few ever live up to.  Those ideals described my grandmother, though.  In the eyes of many, she was like the Madonna next to the living room, a perfect symbol of love and compassion.

The Kline Avenue Girls

In the early part of the 20th Century in Akron, Ohio, there was a street of tiny houses called Kline Avenue.  It was populated almost entirely with immigrants and their children.  Despite being in one of the more prosperous cities of industrial America, many of the houses still had outhouses.  The children on the street were sometimes hungry. 

Children of more affluent families, who lived in better houses on nicer streets, would sometimes tease and belittle the children of Kline Avenue.  It was easy to do.  They were poorly dressed.  Their parents spoke English with the heavy accents of recent immigrants.  For the most part, these immigrants held low paying, menial jobs. 

"Hunky" was a derogatory term for people of Hugarian descent.  My grandma was a Hunky.  She would tell me stories of her childhood that would serve as insight into why she spent the rest of her life showing whatever kindness and generosity she could to others. 

Even as a woman in her 90s, when I would hear stories from my grandmother, it was easy to see her as a bright-eyed young child of immigrants. 

Just as recently as this year, she shared a story of a school party at the catholic school she attended.  She was obviously very poor.  Her mother literally scrubbed floors to keep the family afloat and to pay her tuition.  However, there was nothing extra for niceties along the way.  In fact, it is clear that there wasn't always enough for basic necessities.

At this picnic, kids whose parents had bought tickets for a fundraiser of some sort got two hot dogs.  Kids whose parents hadn't, got one.  The greater part of a century had not erased the sting of that event from my grandmother's memory.  She wasn't bitter or angry about it.  She simply briefly remembered the incident to me and said, "they shouldn't have done that."

Another story was of her in her teens.  She cleaned people's houses while she was still in school.  She would earn ten cents a day for her labor.  Bus fare took up half of that.  With the other half, she could buy one piece of bread and a slice of balogna.  She was a child, literally working to feed herself and little else.

Grandma was never fond of gravy on food.  It was a hard thing to notice, but once she told me that the reason she couldn't eat gravy was that when she was a child, she came home and the only thing to eat was a bowl of gravy that had been sitting out.  Her mother worked all hours, usually with multiple employers, as a cleaning lady.  Grandma was left largely to fend for herself.  She ate the bowl of gravy and got sick afterwards.  From that day forward she seldom, if ever, ate gravy on anything.

It wasn't that my grandmother talked about these experiences often.  In fact, she almost never talked about them.  You had to be around her during an introspective, quiet mood when the story would come to mind.  More often, though, she'd talk about things like walking to school with her friend Katie and laughing so hard they'd pee themselves.  All of these stories were simply told in a matter-of-fact manner in the way that I might say, "when I was young, I played Little League baseball." 

Except in her case it was, "At Christmas, we would get an orange in our shoe.  If we were lucky, we might get a dime."

She also said that when the circus came to town, her father would take the children even if it meant not eating for a few days afterwards.  Now, I know that she was probably being literal when she told that story.

The depression hit just as my grandmother was becoming a young lady.  She would have been 11 years old when the stock market crashed.  When times are hard, they're hardest on the people with the least, and Kline Avenue was certainly not spared.  Akron, during the depression, had some of the worst unemployment in the nation.  We were also a nation with no social safety net and few protections for those with the fewest means.

These experiences of poverty in childhood, it would seem, would make a person bitter and angry.  The funny thing is, it didn't: not for her, and not for her contemporaries on Kline Avenue.  I'm not sure any of them ever thought their days on Kline Avenue were wonderful, even if viewed through the lens of nostalgia.  It was more like a common bonding experience they had shared.  Not an entirely bad experience, but not an entirely good one either.  Essentially it was neither good nor bad:  it was simply the days of their childhood.  As such, the days on Kline Avenue were almost always recalled fondly.

For decades afterwards, the women who had grown up on Kline Avenue called themselves, "the Kline Avenue Girls."  What had once probably been a term of derision had become a badge of honor.  In later years, other girls who had grown up nearby would call themselves Kline Avenue Girls.  They were politely accepted, but the real Kline Avenue Girls knew the truth.  Once in a while, they would say things like, "(so and so) says she's a Kline Avenue Girl, but she grew up 2 streets over."

Many of the things I say about my grandmother could easily be said about any of the Kline Avenue Girls.  My grandmother formed lifelong friendships and visited with them frequently throughout her nine decades.

Lover's Lane

My grandmother grew up to be a beautiful young lady, with multiple suitors.  One was a prizefighter.  When I enrolled in law school, she told me about a young man whom she had liked who was attending school to be an attorney.  He announced his intentions to her too late:  she was already engaged to my grandfather, John Strebler.  He was tall and good looking, with good prospects in life.  Because General Tire's baseball team in the Akron Industrial League needed a pitcher, he was able to get a job, even during the waning days of the Great Depression.

They bought a house on Lover's Lane where they started their family and raised five children:  John ("Skip"), James (my father), Nancy, Rick and Marianne.  Grandpa worked briefly for General Tire, then took a job at at Goodyear where he worked second shift.  He worked weekends at a local meat market.

Grandma stayed at home with the children.  At various times, different people lived with them in their tiny, crowded house.  Most notably, the newlywed couple of Rose and Jim Strebler stayed with them as they started their own family.  I knew them as Aunt Rose and Uncle James.

Rose was my grandmother's sister.  Jim was my grandfather's brother.  It is difficult to tell the story of my grandparents without also including the intertwining story of their respective brother and sister.  Although technically two separate families, we were more like one gigantic family.  When my father needed a ride to football practice and my grandfather was busy working second shift, Uncle James took him.  The workload of raising 11 children between the two families, was lightened by the combined efforts of four parents working together.

I will have to leave it to others more knowledgeable to fill in the details about the house on Lover's Lane.  I don't know much about it other than for the most part, it involved life before TV sets, where mothers stayed with kids and fathers took the families' only car to work every day.  They lived there until the mid 50s, largely enjoying the period of extended prosperity that followed World War II.

The Prizewinner of Tallmadge, Ohio

My Grandmother was a champ in the era of commercial contests.  She won everything from multi-thousand dollar prizes, to new cars, and appliances of every type.  For insight into what this era was like, there is a movie, "The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio."  That movie is based on a real-life character who was prolific in the same contests my grandmother entered.

The reason this era was short-lived is that talented people could get more than their share of prizes.  Obviously, a person who was good at writing essays that won prizes for one product could just as easily win prizes for others.

My grandmother was a talented writer who ghost-wrote for a journalist for the Akron Beacon Journal. In a different day and age, she probably would have been an accomplished journalist or marketing copywriter. 


Her love of literature was unparallelled.  Until her eyesight began to fail her in her very final years, I can scarcely remember a time when she wouldn't use every spare minute reading a book on the loveseat in the living room.  I don't ever remember naming a book that she hadn't read.


When she was a very little girl, one day she visited a friend.  The friend had a room with books in it.  Instead of playing with her friend, she sat quietly in the book room reading.  She read, and read and read.  At suppertime, her friend's mother quietly hinted, "don't you have to go home for supper?"


No, she really didn't.  A few more minutes passed.  "Are you sure your mother isn't worried about you?"  Her mother was working, scrubbing floors.  Grandma stayed until evening, using every precious moment to read. 

There is a tiny spark of writing ability that pops up now and then in members of our family.  I now know that it came from her.  Although a child of immigrants who spoke English with heavy accents, her mastery of literature and writing was exceptional.  She should have had a career in writing.  Instead, she won innumerable prizes.  The value of her prizes might have even exceeded my grandfather's income in some years. 

An example of her talent is her entry when the City of Akron had a contest to find a new safety slogan for traffic safety.  Grandma's entry?  "Better to take a little time, than to take a little life."

She could have been a legend on Madison Avenue.

The era ended when companies realized that contests that required talent only appeal to a small number of people.  Contests that require no talent whatsoever, like sweepstakes, garner a great deal more interest from those of us without much discernable creativity.

I brought the movie, "The Prizewinner of Defiance Ohio" to my grandma's house thinking she'd really enjoy it.  I was expecting comments like, "Yes!  That's the way it was back then."  She sat quietly through the entire movie.  She said almost nothing.  At the end, I asked if she had enjoyed it.

She replied, "I won a lot more stuff than that!"  Yes, Grandma, you really did.  In fact, Grandma had an uncanny knack for winning every door prize that she ever tried to win.  I'm not a person of much faith.  I don't believe in luck.  Except for my grandma.  I can't help but believe that somebody watched over my Grandma and took care of her during her entire life.  I'm not the only one in the family who thinks so.  The consensus at this point is that it was probably the Virgin Mary.


Tallmadge, Ohio

Beyond the city limits of Akron, the suburbs began sprouting up as America enjoyed a post-war economic boom.  Grandpa and Uncle James bought lots next to each other on a dirt road in the farmers fields that were being subdivided into residential lots.  It was the mid 1950s.  They built their homes next to each other.  My grandfather and Uncle James were not just brothers, but it became obvious to me after my grandfather died, that they had been lifelong best friends. 

The same can be said for my grandmother and her younger sister, Rose.  My childhood is full of memories of not just my Grandma, but of Aunt Rose as well.  They were lifelong companions to each other through thick and thin, good times and bad, celebrations and difficulties.  In the 90s, I remember asking my grandma if she ever would ever think about moving somewhere else and she said, "Well, I wouldn't want to move away from my sister, Rose."

There, they raised their families.  I moved in with my grandparents in the late sixties.  My earliest memories of my grandparents' house were of waking up and hiding under the couch.  Aunt Rose came over, looked under the couch and smiled.  She said words of welcome. 

My Uncle Skip was just moving out.  Uncle Rick and Aunt Marianne still lived at home.  I shared a room with Rick.  Rick eventually moved out when he married a wonderful young lady who had been his girlfriend since the seventh grade.  Marianne married a handsome Airman and moved away.  We all attended Skip's wedding to a beautiful New Yorker who drank "kwa-fee" instead of coffee.  After that, for the bulk of my childhood, it was just me and my Grandparents in that home. 

I learned quite a bit about life by observing my grandma during those years.  For instance, although her childhood was one that most people would describe as challenging, she had nothing but fond things to say about her mother and father.  Grandma always had a soft spot for immigrants.  She felt that her mother did the best she could. 

Throughout Grandma's life, she would perform acts of charity.  When she did them, she usually went far beyond what most people would do.  She didn't donate money so that others could buy clothes.  She would personally find families in need, gather baskets of clothes and other things, and take them to the people, personally.


I can think of at least four families, offhand, who would get regular visits from my grandma.  To grandma, charity was a personal experience, from one person to another.  If my grandfather took too long to wear a sweater that he had gotten as a present, he was likely to see it being worn by a member of a struggling family the next time he helped my grandmother deliver boxes or bags to them.

I remember once my grandma had a garage sale and towards the end, a man and woman of Indian descent came and asked the prices on various items.  My grandma gave them those items, free, and many others at the garage sale.  As the people left with armfulls of things that grandma had just given them, gratis, I asked her why she did it.

"Because they're immigrants."  To her, immigrants always could use a little help.  Perhaps they had a little girl at home.  Grandma was going to do something for them once they came into her life.  Even though they were only part of her life for a few moments, she was going to help them.

Grandma also was a firm believer in civil rights.  As a victim of discrimination based on her ethnic group as a child, she had no tolerance for discrimination against anybody.  She was tolerant of every faith.  Tolerant of every person.  She had particular respect for the Jewish faith since so many of her early employers were Jewish.  As a lifelong Roman Catholic, she could easily recall an era when Catholics were also discriminated against.

In response to a world where intolerance was the rule, she welcomed all people with open arms.

I have often thought about how it must have been for my grandparents to have taken me in to their home at a time in their lives when they were probably looking forward to a life without children to take care of.  Kids are a hassle and a big bunch of work.  The only thing that makes it bearable, even enjoyable, is when you love them with all your heart.

Although I feel some twinge of conceit when I say this, I know I was loved.  To say anything less would be to shortchange all that my grandparents did for me.  If they ever thought of me as anything less than their own child, I never saw it.  This is not to say that it was always easy for me, and it was certainly more trouble than they should have had to deal with.  However, they always gave me all they could. 

Scarlett and Annie

Grandpa passed away in 1991, and it was an adjustment for Grandma.  Eventually, she ended up with two pets.  A little dog and a little cat.  She named the dog "Scarlett" after Scarlett O'Hara from "Gone With the Wind", which was a movie and book she dearly loved.

The cat was named "Annie" because it was a little orphan.  It had been attacked by some animal and was missing half the fur on its head.  It was attacked, we think, defending its kittens.  It was a frightening looking creature. 

Grandma, ever attuned to recognize a mother's love, adopted the cat because it was "too homely for anybody else to take."  Grandma thought the cat was a hero for taking care of its kittens out in the elements.  The cat flourished in grandma's house.  It grew a gorgeous coat of tortoiseshell colored fur.  Grandma loved that cat more than any other pet she had ever had. 

Eventually Grandma managed to outlive both the dog and the cat.  In her final years, it was simply too much work to take care of a pet.  So, for her last year, she was by herself.  No dog to walk into a snow-covered yard with.  No cat, to worry about having escaped. 

However, for those two decades, grandma seemed truly happy and at peace. Once a week, she went out to dinner with Uncle Gerald, Aunt Iris, and Aunt Caddie.  Uncle Bud and Aunt Dot would take her to dinner on a different day of the week.  Her friends, Milan, Katie and Pauline would come over.  I had never seen people so utterly full of the joy of life.

Her activities were too numerous to mention.  She was an amazing gardener.  She could make anything grow.  She belonged to the Democratic Club, the Library Society and countless other organizations like the Bible Study club. 

She was blessed with three children who never really moved far away.  She spent countless hours with each of them and their families.  When my father and uncle Skip would come home, she would have cause for a minor celebration.  Everybody would gather at her house.

Each of her children helped her immensely in their own way.  Not one of them ever asked for anything in return; each working diligently, constantly and in complete anonymity to provide her with whatever she needed.  When grandpa's pension ran out, one son stepped up and gave her that much money each month.  Another son paid to have her lawn cared for and her snow cleared.  Her daughters visited frequently, providing not just comforting company, but also checking to make sure that she was okay:  eating and taking her medicine.  Yet another son would come in to town for a week, twice a year, just to do handyman tasks around the house.  If her car was damaged in a fender-bender, it was fixed.  If she needed a new TV, she got one.

Her children were all attentive.  Her needs were always very modest, but I remember that during that time, it was almost a blessing to us to find out she needed something.  We wanted to do things for her.  We wanted to give her anything she wanted.  She just never really wanted much.

Even so, at a time in her life when others were seeking to do things for her, she would still do things for others.  A particularly humorous incident happened when she needed a ride.  She asked a daughter if she could take off work to give Grandma a ride to the doctor.  Grandma's confidence in her driving began to wane in her later years.

The ride was freely given.  However, it was later found out that earlier that same week, Grandma had given her friend a ride to her friend's doctor's appointment!  When asked why her friend didn't get a ride from her own daughter, Grandma replied, "Well... her daughter works."

To the end, it was simply not possible for Grandma to deny a favor to somebody who asked for it.



It was as though Grandma would always be with us. 

She came to the hospital when Logan was born.  She always felt a closeness to him.  I think he inherited her genes for compassion and kindness.  The two of them got along splendidly.  Logan would sit next to her on the couch and they would watch TV together.  Of all his memories of her, that is his fondest.  Simply sitting quietly with her on the couch.

I like to think that because I was special among her grandkids, that Logan was special among her great-grandkids.  He was an affirmation that things were going well. She had raised her children.  She even raised one grandchild, and now that grandchild had a child.  "These children are our future", she would say when Logan would toddle around her house.

When Logan was with her and we would go out, he would hold her hand, wait with her as I got the car, help her up steps and curbs.  She would say, "Sometime, I want your Dad to drop you off with me and I'll take you to the movies." 

In 2010, Grandma eventually went with Logan to see, "How To Train Your Dragon".  She was still getting around well back then.  This was probably the last movie she saw in a theater. 

Around that same time, as Logan was going to sleep one night he started to cry.  When I asked what was wrong, he said, "Grandma is going to die." 

I said, "No, she's not going to die, buddy.  Why do you say that?"

He replied, "Well... she's 92 years old!" 

I reassured him that she would die someday, but wasn't in any danger of dying right away.  At that point in time, Grandma was still a force of nature.  She had hardly slowed down at all.  I knew she wouldn't live forever, but it sure seemed like she might. 

The logical part of me knew that her days were numbered.  But the larger part of me felt like she would be around for Logan's High School graduation, at the age of 99.  She just seemed like, at the rate she was going, that she would outlive us all.

In 2011, though, she had a health scare with fluid that was building up around her heart.  Although she recovered, it was clear that this weakened her.  I remember telling everybody that if they were planning on seeing her, they should do it, soon.  She slowed considerably. 

I feared that the Winter of 2011/2012 would be the end of Grandma.  The harsh Ohio Winters were a yearly feature of her life.  If the Virgin Mary were watching over her, she certainly did so that year since we didn't have a Winter at all.  Virtually no snow.  No cold temperatures.  Many warm, sunny days.  It was as though she was to receive one last gift her final year:  an unusual respite from the cold. 

She lasted until about two months before her 94th birthday. 

Strength

I could not bring myself to tell Logan about Grandma's passing for several days.  Eventually, I broke the news to him and we both cried briefly.  I asked if he wanted to attend her funeral, and he did.  So, we jumped in the car and headed to Tallmadge.

In the end, Grandma had seen all of her kids in the two weeks prior to her passing.  I had gone a few weeks longer than usual without visiting because of Law School, but once the semester ended, I visited her twice within her final three weeks.  My father visited a little over a week before she passed away.  My uncle Skip was with her, doing handyman tasks in her house, when she finally died.  In a way, that is fitting.  He was her first-born.  The first person she had brought into the world. 

There is a certain poetry and symmetry that he would be with her when she passed on.  Three of her children lived close by.  Of the children who had moved away, she had been visited by the last child she raised, her second-born, and her first-born, in that order. 

She passed away in her sleep.  No illness.  No hospital stay.  No pain.  No nursing home.  Living independantly in her own home until the end.  Just went to bed one night, anticipating planting some flowers she had bought.  The next day, she simply didn't wake up. 

She had raised her children, and saw two generations beyond them come into the world.  In the end, she had seen everybody who she had raised, and passed away with her oldest son in the house with her.

The fact that she saw us all prior to her dying was probably not nearly the favor to her as it was to all of us.  Although we didn't know it at the time, each of us had the chance to say goodbye to the woman who had meant so much to us for so long.

I came back to Tallmadge to visit with the family that had gathered for the funeral.  Rose's son, Tim, had a small gathering at his house.  I had borne up well under the news until I saw everybody gathered.  Tim's daughter, Angelica, met me in the driveway and guided me to the back where everyone was sitting. 

When I saw my family, I knew.  Grandma was gone.  She was really gone.  I immediately began to sob, not knowing whether to excuse myself or simply sit down in my sorrow.  I tried as best I could to compose myself.  My Uncle Skip told me the details of grandma's painless last day.

We had all lost Grandma.  She had meant something slightly different, yet wonderful, to each of us.  We all loved her deeply.

Aunt Rose, though, loved Grandma for longer than any other living person had.  Grandma helped change her diaper when she was a baby.  Grandma was Aunt Rose's matron of honor at her wedding.  They had lived next door to each other for almost sixty years and saw each other nearly every day.  They were sisters.  They were best friends.   

As I walked Aunt Rose back to her home, we talked about how nice it was that everyone had visited Grandma so recently.  We also remarked how painlessly my grandmother had died. 

Aunt Rose said that the Virgin Mary must have looked over my grandmother even as she passed. 

Dear Grandma, 

  I miss you so very much, already.  We all do.  I know that over time, the saddness I feel will be replaced mostly by joy at all that you gave me.  You are one of the best parts of my life.  I know that many, many others feel the same way.  It was difficult to even contemplate that one day you would be gone. 

  Now that we miss you so much, we have to find strength.  This is easier to do since you showed us what true strength is.  As I move forward, I can only hope to be half as strong as you were.  To live a life without resentment or ill-will.  To love unconditionally.  To find the good in every person.  To look for people to help when I can. 

  If only you knew how many people loved you so dearly.  Then, I think you did.  When people say you were the best person they ever knew, others immediately think, "yeah, she really was." 

  You'll always be with me.  I know you'll always be with Logan.  So, in a way, you aren't really gone.  I know that you are happy in heaven.  You should be proud of the person you were.  A courageous woman of faith.  A kind soul to all. 

  You meant the world to us.  Now, we will have to make our way on our own.  Thank you for showing me the true meaning of strength.  I will need it.

Love Always, Your Grandson,
Jimmy