​

      I can still hear her laugh, head thrown back, eyes shut, full of life. Not many octogenarians would cross their eyes and grimace upon request, but my Gramma would. She was an amazing combination of zest for life, quintessential pessimism, love of humor, brilliance, stubbornness, and fun. My memories are fresh and so thick that I almost have to brush them away from in front of my eyes to see the page on which I write.

 

      I hear music. It is soft and distant, and I don't know whether it is coming from the television or the record player in the Teaneck, New Jersey living room where I spent so many Sunday afternoons during my childhood. The music's distance reflects its relative lack of importance to my memory; but it is still there, a backdrop for the vision that is clear:

I am dancing. Dancing and spilling over with percussive laughter as my Gramma spins me around in her own version of the tango. She is laughing too as we spin and step, cheek to cheek, each with one arm outstretched, our hands clasped . . . and my legs flailing two feet above the floor. I am only three or four, and it will be years before my feet can touch the ground when I dance with my Gramma. Grandpa is there too, smiling, his eyes laughing, as he watches us cut the rug with great abandon.

 

        I see the lamp's light glimmer off the knitting needles that Gramma deftly orchestrates, while some yarn creation of beauty grows methodically downward from her hands and into her lap. I am standing close, watching intently, as Gramma looks first at her knitting and then at me over the tops of dime store glasses on their last legs, held together with wire. My 5-year-old fascination with her yarn masterpiece is exceeded only by my awe mixed with fear and curiosity as I gaze at her hands. Cruelly twisted fingers, bending where they should not and stiff where they should bend, somehow still manage to make the needles fly in silence and beauty. "What's wrong with your hands, Gramma?" I asked with no trace of apprehension. "Oh, I have arthritis." was all that she would say--matter-of-factly--with never so much as a negative adjective to describe her plight. Many were the times that my Gramma would spend fretting or cultivating her pessimistic arts, but I never once remember her complaining about her hands, contorted works of art that gave good hugs, prepared food that tasted like love, and knit, crocheted, and drew with poise and grace.

 

        Memories of my grandparents' home in Teaneck are thick and full, so I will sprinkle just a few more here. I remember staying over night--only a few times. (Gramma didn't like the bother and feared she would not be able to keep such an "active" little boy entertained.) When I did stay at their home I remember being homesick, but I also remember feeling safe and glad to be there. It was Gramma who inspired me to learn embroidery at the age of 7 or 8. She was the broken clock collector, encouraging my curiosity as I often dismantled them down to the last nut and bolt on the living room floor. She was the first to get a real tape recorder, and the first to let me use one. Her house was always immaculate and smelled of too much bleach, but she also let me bump down the stairs on my tuchus, even though it wasn't good for the rug. It was Gramma who instilled my love for building models, as well as my fascination with science, and her tiny ceramic animals were my favorite nap time companions on the green sofa, which sat through more memories than I can count.

 

        Our trips to Teaneck dropped off dramatically when Dad's heart attack scare and hospitalization put an end to regular attendance at Grace Church in Ridgewood, NJ. I was 9, and I missed Sunday dinners and my home away from home at Gramma and Grandpa's house. Then one summer during the early 70's, Mom invited me to go with her on a "mystery drive." Few are the times I recall my mother inviting me on an adventure, so I accepted without hesitation. "Come on! Where are we going?" I asked repeatedly as she drove towards Sussex-only 8 miles from our Hamburg, NJ home. Her silence to my questioning was punctuated by her smile, until finally she began humming a Christmas song . . . "Over the river and through the woods . . ."  My eyes widened with excitement as her humming cracked the code!   "To Grandmother's house!?"

 

       I grieved when my grandparents needed to leave the home they had purchased in the early 1920s, but the sorrow was softened by the knowledge that going to their house could now be more than an occasional jaunt. And it was. I remember visiting them more often, and I enjoyed their regular visits to the Whippletree Restaurant, where I began working at the age of 14. Eating with them was always fun, and I remember marveling at Gramma's automatic use of copious amounts of sugar and salt, before tasting anything. Given my Dad's heart disease, I wondered if she should cut back. Given her 99 years, apparently no reduction was necessary!

 

       I remember Christmas with Gramma in her new Sussex home, with the same decorations that had hung in Teaneck when I was small. There was always a little tree with lights, and quite a number of elves and pixies in green and red. The decided absence of anything Christian was painful and awkward to me from an early age. Over the years, I watched my Dad's own attempts to reason with his mom about Jesus slowly dwindle in frustration, while her staunch atheism grew more recalcitrant.

 

       As I grew older, my own conversations with her increasingly focused on faith, but to no avail. No one was as stubborn as Henrietta MacFarlane Bjorck!  I remember once hearing her claim that "if Christ appeared in my living room, I would believe."  I responded, "No, you might be impressed for a while, but you would soon figure out a way to discount it. You would probably conclude that you had hallucinated."  She paused for a moment, and then replied, "Well it could be a hallucination!"

 

       Still, in spite of her obstinacy, her love for me was always constant. As I got older and learned to drive, I would more frequently visit Gramma and Grandpa on my own. I remember working in the back yard once with Grandpa, who so thoroughly loved his wife . . . to a fault. As we stood leaning on our rakes, we watched her drive up the street toward the house, returning from shopping. Grandpa chuckled and remarked, "Here comes H.J. Foyt" [with the "H." standing for "Henrietta"]. Even before his cataracts stopped him from driving, he had long since given her the wheel, in more ways than one. In my opinion, one main reason for the duration of their marriage was the fact that Grandpa lived to please his wife, to the point of spoiling her. It wasn't healthy, but Gramma didn't seem to mind! She loved him too, of course, which was never more obvious than on Thanksgiving Day in 1981.

 

       Several days before Thanksgiving, Grandpa had been taken to the hospital for stomach bleeding, the third incidence since 1978 (his first occurred while my Dad was in the hospital for open-heart surgery). After Thanksgiving dinner, I drove Gramma to Alexander Lynn Hospital to see Grandpa, who had stopped bleeding and was doing better. Once at the hospital, however, I watched this normally rational and articulate woman fall apart piece by piece, as we turned the corner to find nurses scurrying and buzzers blaring. "Oh my darling, what are they doing to you!" she cried, as I gently but firmly walked her back out into the corridor. By Ten O'clock that night, Grandpa was gone. After the blur of the funeral, it was my sister Ellen who came to the rescue, staying at Gramma's house to comfort her. I remember feeling helpless, back at college, while Ellen listened to Gramma crying herself to sleep every night. Those are sad memories of my Gramma, but they are no less precious.

 

       In time, though, Gramma got back to the business of independent living, as she would for another ten years. She made adjustments, too. For example, "H. J. Foyt" learned to ride in the passenger seat when traveling with us. Admittedly, this was a very slow process, frequently punctuated by her famous loud gasps of fear followed by laughter at herself. She continued driving by herself too, though, and continued to refer to her car as a "She," with names like "Bessie." The beautiful flowers and vegetables slowly ebbed away at the Sussex home, as it became increasingly obvious that Grandpa had been the gardener. Still, the house was clean and neat, and Gramma could still cook up a storm.

 

       During my year after graduating from college, I lived back in Hamburg. That year provided me with even more time to spend with Gramma. Whether I was cleaning her roof gutters with her complaining from the ground below, "You'll break your neck!" or whether I was helping her find something in the attic where she could no longer venture safely, I treasured the times we shared. No matter how much fun it was to visit, though, it was always sad to leave. In the warm months, she would stand in the driveway and keep waving until I had driven down around the corner and out of site. In the colder seasons, she would wave first from the window over the garage, and then switch to the side window to continue her wave. It was always hard for me to leave.

 

        It was also during these later years that her heart began to soften regarding things of God. She would still disagree, but not as vehemently. After Grandpa died, she began going to church with us and attended Mom's Bible studies. This began to have an effect. When praying before meals, she began to say "Amen." In church, she would sing the hymns, with her light, airy soprano voice that erased the years. (Her singing voice remained virtually unchanged during my whole lifetime.) And her objections to my statements about Christ and faith became few and far between.

 

       I particularly remember her 90th birthday. My brother Walter was able to be there, and Dad was not showing any signs of heart illness. It was a wonderful day. I took pictures that I cherish. For a 90-year-old, Gramma looked terrific, but her own words at our little party at 55 Hillside told another story. "I feel like I have aged ten years in the last year," she sighed at one point while opening her gifts. I soon would realize that she was right, but just then, my own life was swept up in a whirlwind, with Sharon's and my wedding, our move to California, and Dad's hospitalization, decline, and death. It felt like a different chapter had definitely begun in all of our lives, and Gramma began to show signs that her book was nearing its end. Still, she and I continued to enjoy occasional visits and letters, and more frequent phone calls.

       After I moved to California, I would still greet her by phone as I had for many years, with a silly little, "Hullooooooooo" that she would return in kind. Over time, our conversations became shorter and more marked by pain. With her love of sarcastic humor, though, there was still room for laughter. "How are you?" I would ask. Then, we would both say "Lousy!" in unison, and we would both chuckle. During those years, I was deeply encouraged to hear Mom's report that Gramma more than once had said a prayer to receive Christ. Hopefully, one of those prayers took! Something certainly did, because even when her entire memory bank departed for parts unknown, she would still say "Amen" whenever Mom prayed with her. I would have expected that her obstinacy--and not any remnant of faith--would be the survivor of Alzheimer's disease, given that her roots of stubbornness went much deeper and had grown for far longer than any spark of faith. Clearly, my prayer is that her "Amen"s reflected a relationship with Christ as Lord. Given that they did not start until very late in life, I am quite sure these spoken responses to others' prayers were not simply conventions.

 

       I believe that I saw her for the last time in 1996, when a business trip took me from California to New York City. Soon after I arrived at 55 Hillside Drive, my boyhood home, Mom and I drove to the Nursing Home in nearby Dover. I had seen Gramma there before, and she had still remembered me then. This time, however, she firmly asserted, "I've never seen you before in my life." But all was not lost. I asked her, "If I told you that I am your grandson Jeffrey, and that I love you very much, would you believe me?"  She looked intently at me, almost into me, with those clear blue eyes that still saw 20-20 and said, "Yes, I believe I would."  That visit was hard, as I knew that she was almost all but gone. Still, we enjoyed singing George M. Cohen tunes and old hymns together, without missing a word. Interestingly, while she stated that she did not remember me, we shared many nonverbal "memories" (e.g., my kissing the back of her neck and her resultant squeal that had become our traditional greeting) and some verbal clichés that were special only to us. That was a comfort.

 

       Through the years after Dad's death, I was always incredibly grateful to Mom, who so faithfully cared for her feisty, cantankerous mother-in-law--even when Gramma insisted on filling the bath tub with canned goods. If Gramma is in Heaven--and I am pretty sure that she is--I trust that her first words to Mom when she arrives will be "Thank you so much."  As for me, I know what my first words to her will be. I will walk up, kiss the back of her neck, and she will squeal and laugh. Then I will recite a slightly altered song from the 1940s that was also special between us:

 

 "Tell me quick before I faint!

Is you is or is you ain't

MY GRAMMA?"

 

 She will chuckle, smile, and say as always, "I is!"  

​

​

​

​