in loving memory. . .

i wanted to give a eulogy at my grandmother's memorial service, but in the short notice i had (from my arrival in panama on wednesday afternoon until the service on thursday evening), i could not find the words.

though this won't be a eulogy, it will be my thoughts in some sort of way. the word eulogy comes from the greek, meaning a good word or speech. obviously this isn't a speech, but i do hope my words are good.

my grandmother was a woman of strength, a woman to be admired in that. she was educated, and a working woman in a time when that was rare. it is said that she handled herself well in a male-dominated workforce.

her own mother died when she was only four. perhaps it was this loss, or having been raised by a couple of aunts instead of her own father, or something else, that gave her this strength.

unfortunately, she never learned to put that strength aside for the sake of becoming warm or affectionate, thereby remaining someone that was hard to get close to.

she was difficult in many ways. with her strength came stubbornness, that made it difficult for many people, particularly those as stubborn as she - such as my mom and me - to be close to her.

she was a woman very concerned with proper manners. i fear that i have always failed her in that sense. i have never dressed properly enough for her. i have never been girly enough. i have never been feminine enough. i'd still rather wear jeans than dresses. i've never quite been able to cross my legs properly. though i do know which fork is which at the table, what to do with a napkin when i'm finished using it or when i get up from my seat, and to never speak with my mouth full. i know not to reach across the table and to always say please and thank you (whether i always do these things is a different matter).

i spent all of my summers in junior high and high school living with her in panama. she connected me to my homeland. she taught me a lot during that time, though i believe i'm only beginning to see how much.

my grandmother had breast cancer years ago, which was treated successfully.

at the time of our wedding, seven and a half years ago, the cancer returned and metastasized into her bones, eating them up and leaving them full of holes, like sponges. through these seven plus years, she went through every cancer treatment possible, exhausting them all. she lost her hair for a time. she was in much pain. she aged significantly. but she went through this all with much strength and grace. in all those years, it was only in this past year that her health truly began to decline.

she always seemed younger than her age. even in her eighties people thought she was in her sixties. so it was only really in her nineties that she seemed elderly at all.

she feared death. and she certainly held on to life, living past her 95th birthday. as my mom put it, the only way she would be willing to go was if life became just uncomfortable enough for her to not want to withstand it any longer. thankfully, she didn't move past that into a point of much suffering.

i can't help but believe that her fear of death had much to do with her avoidance of spirituality. she was jewish, though never one to practice the faith she was born into. from what i learned this past week, it seems that her response to the difficulty of being jewish in her day and age caused her to move away from her religion (her sister on the other hand, embraces it whole-heartedly). in some ways it seemed odd on thursday night to sit in a synagogue for her memorial service knowing that she would hardly have stepped foot in that place herself. it seems as if my mom as a catholic, and i as a mostly-protestant, have carried on her judaism more than she ever could, through the ways each of us personally believe and live out our faith.

she was a woman of strength to be reckoned with. a lover of life to be admired. the matriarch of our family. a solid connection to my home in panama. and one who will be sorely missed, even by those of us who struggled in our relationship to her.

i regret now how little i let myself know her. i regret not listening to her stories. i regret not making a greater effort to express warmth and affection to a woman who needed it by virtue of not knowing how to give those herself. i regret not spending more time with her when we were with each other.

but i am thankful that i had those summers with her. i am thankful that we had the last several christmases together (even while sick and in her nineties, she kept coming up to the states for the holidays). i am thankful for who she was, even in the ways she was difficult for me. and i am thankful for what i learned from her.

so this post is in loving memory of Audrey Eisenmann Kline
(August 24, 1911 - November 25, 2006).