A Story About My Grandfather

My grandfather had this big white beard that made words disappear.

Our family would go to visit my grandparents, my father's parents, and at first it was fine, even fun. We would pray and eat and pray and walk to the synagogue and pray and shake hands with the neighbors, and go home and eat some more, and pray just a little bit more. But then he would call me into his room, close the door behind us, sit me down beside him, and begin talking.

God, I wish I had been able to get what he was saying. I mean, I got a few words here and there, to be sure. Some words did penetrate that beard. I know the basic subject was religious philosophy. I know he sometimes talked about the wonderful service we were both a part of, even though for me synagogue meant staring at the walls, occasionally bending my body like the others to avoid embarrassing him and myself.

In short, my grandfather was this happy Orthodox Jew who liked to discuss philosophy and I was a kid who didn't care. Same old story everywhere you go in the world, pretty much.

But this one was different. I was living in England when I got the late night phone call, telling me he died, that he fell and held his wife's hand before she called the ambulance; that he peacefully asked her to stay a moment with him because he knew he would soon be dead.

Late night phone calls always mean someone is dead.

My mother was on holiday with her sister in Europe when he died, and when she returned, she talked to one of her old friends and told her that when she was away, her husband's father died. In turn, my mother's friend told my mom someone else died that week, a holy man who healed her broken arm.

It's still impossible for me to imagine that all these people saw my grandfather as a holy man. He immigrated to Israel illegally to escape the Nazis, spent some time in British jail, was a cook, a milkman, he got married and had children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, he had a big white beard that held on to bits of food like it knew something we didn't. He loved religion and philosophy. Apparently, he was also a holy man; a healer. Fancy that.