Liebe Oma Julchen,
Dear Granny,
you haven’t been popular, not even with your own children, weren’t an easy person. Well, I guess I know where some of my personality traits come from… Remember, even at your funeral you gave the bearers trouble and almost slipped from their grasp. And then… hope you like the ring that “got lost” in your grave. Keep it for me till we meet again, okay?
I know of that “dark side” of yours only from stories of your son, my dad. But even he would have to admit that you did so much for him if he thought about it more closely. You know that, don’t you? I always knew your granny side and none other.
I still have the plush seal you gave me when I was a small kid. It remembers me of you, even though I can’t keep it on the couch all the time… whenever I eat potatoes and soft white cheese, I remember you peeling ypour potatoes and giving me some. I remember how happy you were when you could see well again after that OP, and before you had said “Why should I be afraid of that operation? I didn’t buy that new TV set to only listen to it!” How proud you were of that Southern Beauty Monchicchi in its pink dress - all is gone, and I don’t know where to. But I keep and cherish two of your coffee pots at home.
I love you.
Dear great-grandpa,
I don’t even know your name. I can’t remember your face. I remember your workbench dimly, I was very young when you died, but I remember the promise I gave you. You had made two wonderful wooden candleholder, one brown, one blue, and you handed them to me, saying I should paint one and bring it back with me the next time we visited you. We returned, and I had forgotten to bring it. And suddenly you were gone. Mom went somewhere on her own, Dad took me to a famous restaurant in the Black Forest. I still think of the vanilla ice with hot berries on it, the dramatich skies outside, and how enraged I was when I heard where mom had REALLY gone - to your funeral, without taking me there to say goodbye. They thought I wouldn’t understand “death” at my age, but I did.
We visited your grave once, a tiny little thing somewhere in a dry, sandy place. You were a great craftsman, I guess, although none of your works remains to remind me of you. I regret that deeply, and I’ll find a way to get a photo of you. I dimly remember I liked you loads.
I love you.
All you who have passed on before me, shining stars in the vault of Nut, al you whom I never knew or got to know, be your travels in the other world safe, may you find sall to your liking. Pray help my parents and my relatives and me to see you as you were meant to be.
All my love,
~Anat~