Leila Cohan

Zum Sterben und Zu Meiner Ruh'

In high school, I performed with a treble ensemble at a local music conservatory. Whenever I saw my grandparents, I would, on request, perform the songs I had learned. Both my grandparents are huge classical music aficionados, but my grandmother, in particular, was always thrilled to hear me sing the lieder she loved in her native language. My repertoire was modest and my voice essentially mediocre, but my grandmother's eyes would light up as I performed all that I could remember. Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden, zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh'. "If you are with me, I'll go gladly to my death and to my rest." That Bach piece was always my favorite. It doesn't sound like a Bach. It's not complicated and the voices don't swirl and cascade the way they do in his choral pieces. The notes are, for the most part, unembellished. Simple. Pure. Bach wrote the piece for his wife and it is, basically, a love song, albeit a slightly melancholic one. If you didn't know the German, you'd never know the meaning. The way the tune lifts, reaching highs on the words Sterben and meiner in a lyrical upswing almost too beautiful to be heard, belies the morbid subject.

When the doctor tells my grandmother that she has advanced lung cancer, she takes a moment to absorb the news and then looks him in the eye and tells him that she only wants to live long enough to do two things: "to see my granddaughter graduate from college and to vote this Bush jerk out of office." Six months later, when she learns that the cancer is terminal, she tells me that she won't be around long enough to do the former and maybe not the latter either. Crying, I nod.

My grandmother refuses to die in a hospital. The very idea is an affront to her European sensibilities. She wants to be at home where she can supervise the food, even though she can't cook anymore and can barely eat. She's still not going to let anyone buy tomatoes that aren't San Marzano or salami that’s not Di Fini. She wants to have her cleaning ladies come every Wednesday and make her bed just the way she likes it. She wants to get her things in order, to write in her old-fashioned cursive on my grandfather's legal pads the way she wants everything to be after she's gone. Flipping through one of the pads, I see lists of who to call after she passes, the charities she wants money given to in lieu of flowers, and possessions she wants certain people to have: a collection of campaign buttons dating back to the 1950s for me, rare coins for my cousin. Even with this proliferation of legal pads steadily piling up next to her seat on the couch, she still moans several times a day that she doesn't have enough time to prepare. When I tell her that no one prepares for death, she just sighs and looks at me like I don't know anything. Which may be true.

My grandparents meet when my grandfather is stationed as an Army spy in Wurzburg. A friend of my grandfather, another American spy, offers to set my grandfather up with a friend of his German girlfriend. "She's a great girl. You must have seen her, she works at the library." My grandfather, ever one for research, stops by the library one afternoon. The only woman in sight is heavyset, and rather more frau than fraulien. My grandfather declines his friend's offer, only to return to the library a few days later. Behind the counter is a glamorous young German woman. Summoning all his chutzpah, my grandfather returns to his friend to reverse his earlier decision.

My grandfather assumes that his parents would never accept a German girl. It is the early 1950s and the Holocaust that claimed all my great-grandparents' Polish relatives is only a few years in the past. From the beginning of their relationship, my grandfather tells my grandmother that things will have to end when he returns to the United States. A few weeks after arriving home, he sends her a telegram saying that he can't live without her. Soon, she, who has never been outside of Germany, is moving to Detroit. When it comes time to introduce her to his parents, my grandfather wants my grandmother to pretend to be from Switzerland. My grandmother refuses to participate in this charade. "They’re going to be my family. I won't lie to them." Resigned, my grandfather introduces Maurice and Lillian Cohan (all names changed at Ellis Island) to Heidi Seelman, his German girlfriend. My great-grandparents ask if they're in love. When they respond affirmatively, my great-grandmother tells my grandmother that she will be her new daughter.

It is almost possible to add "and they lived happily ever after." They didn't, of course, at least not in the fairy tale way. There were ups and downs, like in any marriage, in any life. But my grandparents shared a deep and beautiful love: the kind of love that comes from knowing each other better than anyone else possibly could. Over their fifty years together, they traveled around the world, met political, musical, and literary dignitaries and collected a home full of beautiful objects. Both of them knew, however, that the most beautiful part of their home was the other. Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden, zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh'.

I spend a week at my grandparents' house in Ann Arbor after the doctor's pronunciation lets us know that we don't have much longer. She's too weak for the things we usually do when I visit (shopping, visiting museums, going to the theatre), so mostly, I sit with her on her hospital bed and she tells me stories interspersed with frantic bits of advice. In the middle of a story about her first date with my grandfather, for example, she tells me that she hopes that someday, I meet a man as wonderful as he is. In the next breath, she blurts out "But when you do get married, please, Leila, make sure that your wedding dress isn't ongepotchket. Keep it simple." My grandmother is dying, and she worries about me wearing a tacky wedding dress.

Even though she's the one racing towards death, she spends quite a bit of time comforting me. I want to be a rock of strength for her, but I spend most of my time crying while she assures me that she'll always be there, just maybe not in as obvious a way as before. She must be frightened, I think, but she betrays very little. When I ask her one day if she's scared or angry, she looks almost puzzled. "Of course…of course I'd like to be here a little longer, but really, I can't complain. I grew up in Germany during the war and I would refuse to go to the bomb shelter during the air raids. It's lucky I didn't die then. And I've had a wonderful life, a good family . . . I can't complain." I spend most of my week in Michigan crying, but strangely enough, it's not actually a bad time. My grandmother is good company and only the hospital bed and my grandmother's sporadic loss of voice reminds me why I'm there. My grandmother and I open up to each other, temporarily forget the fifty years between us. The beauty of the week belies the morbidity behind my visit.

At the funeral, I'm in a daze. Somewhere within me, I can hear my grandmother's voice admonishing me to "entertain the guests, Leila. They haven't seen you since you were a baby," so I spend the hour before the service politely chatting with the large crowd of elderly Midwestern Jews who have come to pay their respects. I have the same conversation over twenty times. Yes, I just got back from London. It was lovely, thank you. I might apply for law school next year. Yes, just like my grandfather. Thank you for being here. Thank you.

The service and the next two days of shiva go by in a blur. My family and I sit in the formal living room—a room that is, ordinarily, rarely used. I sit on the uncomfortable beige velvet couch and stare at the spot where, two days ago, my grandmother's hospital bed stood. Now the spot holds a table groaning with Jewish comfort food: cold cuts and rugelach. We eat massive amounts of brisket and, when the more religious guests are gone, ham. I see family friends I barely remember. Baby cousins who were still learning to read the last time I saw them are now showing off their drivers' licenses and talking about college plans. Phone calls come in from all over the world: my great aunt and uncle in Frankfurt, one of my grandmother's best friends in Milan. In a strange way, shiva is almost fun. People laugh and gossip and it's easy to forget the reason we're all gathered. My grandmother was famous for throwing parties: an authentic Mandarin dinner for thirty Chinese diplomats that Detroit Edison, where my grandfather was a vice president, was trying to entertain, an engagement party with almost a hundred guests, everything cooked at home by herself. During shiva, it feels like just another of my grandmother's parties, like she's perpetually upstairs freshening up. I find myself waiting for her arrival, waiting for her to criticize the rugelach and admonish me for the run in my stockings.

In many ways, it still hasn't hit me. My grandmother died almost two years ago and I still pick up the phone to call her at least once a week. I want to tell her about my LSAT scores, my new haircut, the terrible dress I saw in last month's Vogue that brings new meaning to ongepotchket. Every time I try to cook her recipes, I want her to tell me afterwards what I did wrong, why my dish didn't turn out as good as hers. Did I use the wrong pan for the German apple pancakes? Not add enough sugar to the amatriciana sauce? Even without tasting the dish, my grandmother could always tell me what I did wrong. I want to talk politics with her and hear her say "that Bush man is such a jerk!" (It is probably worth noting that "jerk" is the strongest epithet I've ever heard my grandmother hurl.) Then again, now that he's been re-elected, maybe she's better off.

The sadness washes over me in small waves. Every time I realize that I can't, in fact, call her, a small pit of sadness expands like a balloon. Even something as maudlin as an episode of Gilmore Girls can set me off in quiet tears. The other day, I discovered a website where you can listen to almost any classical music piece in existence. I played "Bist Du Bei Mir" and allowed myself to sob in the privacy of my room. I try to sing that song, my favorite piece, but it's still too raw. The words don't come.

Leila Cohan is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She is a recent graduate of Smith College. Read more at http://www.leilalovestelevision.com.