It had only seemed as if she would live forever. As the casket lowered into the ground, the reality finally hit that Grace Leinwohl, my grandmother, was in it.
The passing of a loved one is a universal experience, but that doesn’t make it any less sad and odd. Someone who’s loved you since birth (and vice versa) is now no longer in existence. In her case, a woman who was so indefatigable well into her nineties, she could exhaust anybody, even those born in the ‘90s. Just a few years ago, when she was holding court in the kitchen, each member of the family left one at a time, the same fatigued look on everybody’s faces as they headed for the living room to get a short break. How could anyone, especially at that age, have so much energy? When someone like that is suddenly gone, the quiet that follows can be deafening.
Our current reality added another layer of weirdness. Everyone wore masks and kept their distance from one another, since the funeral took place during a plague that shows no sign of ending, because too many Americans choose to put their faith in a pathological liar who purposely makes himself look as if he’s got a permanent rash on his face.
The irony of covering our faces at a time when we were mourning and celebrating my grandmother, is that she liked to brag about having, in her words, “the best looking family.” There was one Thanksgiving where my cousin and his girlfriend were visiting from college. Grandma focused like a laser on the young woman and enthusiastically asked, “Is this the best looking family you’ve seen?” As was her wont, she didn’t ask once. If the answer to a question wasn’t sufficient enough for Grace Leinwohl, she would keep inquiring. On that particular day, she had only asked twice, since some of us intervened before the situation reached a Where’s Poppa? level of absurdity. Times like these could be simultaneously exasperating and hilarious, yet in retrospect somewhat fitting. You don’t live to be 96 years old without having an extraordinary amount of persistence.
Determination and humor are a few of the characteristics that defined Grandma. She was old-school Brooklyn, back when everyone sounded like Bugs Bunny. You could often hear her saying, “It’s a tough life, but somebody gotta do it!” Solemn occasions weren’t solemn for long. After my grandfather’s funeral, she said to me, “You know, your grandfather was a great man. He really looked out for the little guy. There was one time when we were driving, he noticed a big guy beating up a little guy. Grandpa got out of the car and beat up the big guy. That’s the kind of man your grandfather was.” In the worst of circumstances, she could make you laugh without trying to.
Some things are too depressing to find any humor in. For the final two weeks of her life, she was in hospice care, mainly asleep. When the end is that close, you start to feel preemptive grief, and grieve for that person while they’re still alive. Everything will remind you of them, even the most arbitrary moments. After a Westworld episode, the brief Warner Brothers end theme was played on saloon piano, and an abrupt pang of sadness hit me. One of the prevailing sounds of childhood was my grandmother’s piano playing. A few days later, when Little River Band’s “Reminiscing” from 1978 came on the radio, I had to turn it off. The gentle, jaunty opening electric piano alone is usually enough to make you bask in the warm glow of nostalgia. But with impending loss, you’re not just mourning a person, you’re also mourning the past. With this in mind, a song from the disco era that rejoiced in nostalgia for the big band era, now served as a reminder of the near future, one which would not include my last grandparent.
The long, silent goodbye of my grandmother coincided with the release of Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways. The album’s ambience of funereal fury was deeply resonant, especially “Murder Most Foul.” Its sparse arrangement, mainly consisting of somber piano and violin, conjured up the image of people slowly filing in for a memorial, perfect for a song that’s essentially Dylan sitting shiva for the second half of the 20th century. Strange as it may sound, the album prepares you for loss. Unlike “Reminiscing,” it doesn’t inspire blissful feelings about the past. Instead, it allows you to take solace in its bleakness. In this case, throughout that awful, lonely time when you’re waiting for the call everybody dreads.
The afternoon we got the call, I’d been listening to Bruce Springsteen’s SiriusXM show “From My Home To Yours.” Aside from providing a sensible voice amidst the downward spiral of moronic cruelty, Springsteen creates playlists featuring a variety of artists, including The Hold Steady, Laura Nyro, Fugazi, Little Milton, Gram Parsons, The War on Drugs, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, Irma Thomas, Future Islands, and of course, Bob Dylan.
On that day, of all days, I listened to Springsteen play Dylan’s version of “Some Enchanted Evening,” which given the context, sounded more poignant than usual. It reminded me of when my grandfather would sing to my grandmother, and croon old standards that had been relatively new when they were young. A month before his death, despite being very ill, he was still able to sing to her. One of the songs he performed was “Some Enchanted Evening.” Hearing Dylan’s version not too long after we received the call, I’ll take it as a sign that my grandfather has resumed singing.
In the weeks before her passing, another Dylan song, 2006’s “Beyond the Horizon,” kept haunting me. It seemed like one of those standards Grace and Sid Leinwohl would’ve loved. Certain lyrics stood out to the point that I ended up reciting them at my grandmother’s funeral.
“Beyond the horizon, behind the sun/At the end of the rainbow, life has only begun/In the long hours of twilight underneath the stardust above/Beyond the horizon it is easy to love/Beyond the horizon, in the springtime or fall/Love waits forever, for one and for all.”
Now would be a good time to mention that my grandmother hated Bob Dylan.
Matt Leinwohl