1998
Grandma passed away this morning. She lived a great, long life. I think she made all the people she met happier. I know that whenever we visited her in Brooklyn or she came out to Long Island, she was always smiling and happy. She always had lifesavers. We had to guess the right number to get one, it was always one of my favorite games. Did you ever see grandma do the crossword puzzle? She could do the entire puzzle in an hour. I'm not talking about the easy daily puzzles, I'm talking about the New York Times Sunday puzzle. Most people have never heard of most of the words in that thing, but grandma would finish it. Did you ever play boggle or scrabble with grandma? She would come up with words and dad or mom would always challenge her, but more often then not the word was found in the dictionary.
I don't know if there are many people who had such a positive outlook on life as grandma and grandpa. They never bought a big house, in fact neither ever learned to drive. Grandpa knew everyone in the neighborhood, even the scary italian gangsters whom we met in Brooklyn one day. They never saw color or status, they treated all people equally. They would attend dodger games in LA, rooting against the dodgers for vacating Brooklyn years ago. You would enter their apartment and food was always being prepared and opera would be playing on the stereo. Grandpa would run around saying "this is real music, not that heavy metal". He would cover his ears when rock would play. I think the greatest lesson I learned from grandma was that you take what life gives you and do the best you can. She had polio almost her entire life, yet never asked for anything.
We will miss grandma. Some people teach with words and some with actions. Grandma never gave much advice, she just carried on the only way she knew how. I never heard one negative word come from grandma, think about it, did you? I didn't think so. I will miss having her roll in front of me with her wheelchair during football games, I will miss getting beaten in scrabble by her, I will miss her getting under dads skin during card games, I will miss her Christmas and Birthday cards, I will miss sitting down at 7 and watching jepoardy with her. She'll be with each of us everyday though, because if you knew her, you are better for it.