"For indeed I myself have seen, with my own eyes, the Sibyl hanging in a bottle at Cumae, and when those boys would say to her: 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she replied, 'I want to die.'"
-Petronius, Satyricon
The Sibyl at Cumae was loved by the god Apollo, and he told her he would grant her a wish in exchange for her virginity. She lifted up a handful of sand and asked to live as many years as there were grains. When she later refused his advances, Apollo still granted her wish for near-eternal life, but without eternal youth, for which she had not asked. She lived so long that she was eventually no more than a piece of shrivelled flesh in a bottle, left to hang in the Cumaean caves.
The last time I saw my great grandmother was in November. She was hunched over, her lower lip hanging loosely from her face, her unseeing eyes hidden behind a pair of oversized glasses. Before we had even sat down she offered us an array of cookies and chocolates and would not rest until we had each partaken of them. Despite the change in her physical appearance - compared to now, she had been lively and spry the last time I had seen her, at her one hundredth birthday party two years before - her personality was unchanged, and I was relieved to see that.
"How does it feel to be one hundred and two?" my sister asked her when we had finished our cookies. She was quiet for a moment; at first I thought she had not heard the question, but unlike her eyesight, which had failed, her hearing was still sharp. "It is enough," she said after a minute, and the words were heartbreaking. She was ready to die. When we left that day, I knew I would not see her again.
Last Wednesday, my great grandmother (called "Oma," the German word for "grandma," by her great grandchildren), died the way she wanted to; peacefully in her sleep. By the time of her death she had been witness to over a century of both global and personal history. In 1936, with her husband incarcerated in a Nazi prison, she left Germany with two children under the age of 5 and no knowledge of the English language to seek asylum in New York (my great grandfather, and most of her immediate family, were luckily later able to join her there). She saw the births of two daughters, five grandchildren, and ten great grandchildren and the deaths of her parents, husband (whom she outlived by forty years), siblings, and a grandchild (whom she outlived by almost thirteen). She lived through two world wars, the Holocaust, the Korean, Vietnam, and both Iraq wars, 9/11 and the election of the first black president.
Her funeral, an affair as simple and unpretentious as the life she lived (she had planned all the details and paid all the expenses years beforehand), was today, and I do not think I have yet begun to miss her as I will in the years to come. She has been a fixture in my life for the entirety of it and the matriarch of our family for even longer. She embodied selflessness, living her life for her family. Oma always knew the whereabouts and accomplishments of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, and took no small pleasure in telling her friends about them. It was her capacity for love, true and unconditional love, that distinguished her from so many other people in this world.
I do not know what happens after death. I suspect it might be nothing, and am okay with that. Whatever it is, I know that Oma, long-loving and ever-uncomplaining, is at peace.
The last time I saw my great grandmother was in November. She was hunched over, her lower lip hanging loosely from her face, her unseeing eyes hidden behind a pair of oversized glasses. Before we had even sat down she offered us an array of cookies and chocolates and would not rest until we had each partaken of them. Despite the change in her physical appearance - compared to now, she had been lively and spry the last time I had seen her, at her one hundredth birthday party two years before - her personality was unchanged, and I was relieved to see that.
"How does it feel to be one hundred and two?" my sister asked her when we had finished our cookies. She was quiet for a moment; at first I thought she had not heard the question, but unlike her eyesight, which had failed, her hearing was still sharp. "It is enough," she said after a minute, and the words were heartbreaking. She was ready to die. When we left that day, I knew I would not see her again.
Last Wednesday, my great grandmother (called "Oma," the German word for "grandma," by her great grandchildren), died the way she wanted to; peacefully in her sleep. By the time of her death she had been witness to over a century of both global and personal history. In 1936, with her husband incarcerated in a Nazi prison, she left Germany with two children under the age of 5 and no knowledge of the English language to seek asylum in New York (my great grandfather, and most of her immediate family, were luckily later able to join her there). She saw the births of two daughters, five grandchildren, and ten great grandchildren and the deaths of her parents, husband (whom she outlived by forty years), siblings, and a grandchild (whom she outlived by almost thirteen). She lived through two world wars, the Holocaust, the Korean, Vietnam, and both Iraq wars, 9/11 and the election of the first black president.
Her funeral, an affair as simple and unpretentious as the life she lived (she had planned all the details and paid all the expenses years beforehand), was today, and I do not think I have yet begun to miss her as I will in the years to come. She has been a fixture in my life for the entirety of it and the matriarch of our family for even longer. She embodied selflessness, living her life for her family. Oma always knew the whereabouts and accomplishments of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, and took no small pleasure in telling her friends about them. It was her capacity for love, true and unconditional love, that distinguished her from so many other people in this world.
I do not know what happens after death. I suspect it might be nothing, and am okay with that. Whatever it is, I know that Oma, long-loving and ever-uncomplaining, is at peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment