[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]Strictly Personal: When my sister telephoned at 5 this morning to report that Pop, frail and 92 years old, suffering from diverticulitis, had been rushed to the hospital, my impulse was to turn to the calendar. Check the date: Jan. 25.
Being a journalist always has meant record-keeping deserves primacy.
One night in spring 11 years ago I was returning to my longtime apartment in Venice. Something was peculiar as I walked through the front door, mainly because it was ajar, the living room was black and no one was in sight.
Until I reached the bathroom and found my brother lying dead, on his back, the victim of heart attack 12 hours before. Before dialing 9-1-1 or any of my sisters, I checked the calendar: Thursday, April 3, 1997, 9:30 p.m.
For months afterward, Thursdays were extraordinarily memorable, especially the 9:30 hour. Last week at this time, I would say, Paul still was alive.
When Mom Left
In the early autumn of 1981, I was the sports editor of the Evening Outlook — last one in the newspaper’s history, it turned out — when my wife called 15 minutes after I arrived at my desk. I made note of the hour and date I received the call Mom had died: 6:15 a.m. on Oct. 15, 1981. Exactly one year to the day before, my beloved grandmother, who had played an influential role in raising me, had died at the same hour.
Jews, thankfully, are obsessive, in a good way, about record-keeping. We are so few, so small, that we must leave a record for others to know we walked the earth. Similarly, we the living thirst to know from whence we came. Seeking out ancestors is a major feature of Jewish life..
It was my grandmother, who lived with our family, who inscribed on my soul and my mind the moral obligation of record-keeping.
The Writing of History
One of the helpful tools as she was teaching me how to hold a pencil and to make it work, legibly, was Grandma’s magnificent cache of treasured family records.
In a flourishing, almost flamboyant, style —that is what gave birth to my love affair with adjectives — Grandma recorded, by written word and by old-fashioned photograph, every family event dating from her 21st birthday.
In the spring of 1907, I forget the date, she moved to my hometown. Someone took a photo of Grandma, with a girlfriend, resting in a swing on the porch of Grandma’s “rooms.” No one said “apartment” in those times.
Thanks for the Memories
Every hiccup of my family and surrounding friends, from 1907 into the mid-1950s, the year of our final family reunion, is embedded in numerous well-preserved scrapbooks that are fraying but holding.
Practically the daily lives of our relatives through the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s are on film.
The written records are even more intriguing. Who became ill with what disease, for how long, and the precise dates.
Whenever any of us made a small trip, Grandma recorded the date, time, destination, reason and the names of all who were aboard.
Life cycle events were clipped from the newspapers of the day, which have yellowed over the decades. Both the style of writing and the personal references are archaic almost to the point of causing one to titter.
If you want to know what Grandma was doing on March 2, 1955, I can report with thoroughness and unassailable accuracy.
The Last Word
I was in the car this morning when my sister called. Since we had spoken several times yesterday about Pop, I knew why she was calling. We have a tradition in our family. The callee always speaks first. “Did he die?” I asked. “No,” she said, and I was so relieved I don’t remember what she said after that.