Making Lemonade: A Eulogy
First of all, I want to thank everyone who subscribed and read my first post last week.
It’s scary to be vulnerable on the internet, but I’m blown away by all the support I’ve received so far.
I had a plan to do a roundup this week of things I’ve been enjoying lately, but my grandparents (Nana & Papa) passed away a few days ago and all I can think or write about is them and what they meant to me. I hope that this bit of writing honors their memory.
My mother’s parents, Louis and Jacqueline Zitnick, passed away earlier this week, just about 24 hours apart from each other. Jackie was 98 and Lou was 99.
They lived in Laguna Beach, on the top of a hill with a view of the ocean. On a clear day, you could see Catalina Island from their living room window encapsulated by the shimmer of the sun reflecting off the sea. My family lived in Avalon until I was ten, but my mom worked in Laguna, so I spent a lot of time taking the boat over to stay with Nana and Papa.
Nana went by Jackie, but Papa called her Jack. She smelled like powder perfume and called everyone she loved ‘darling’. I can still hear the sound of her slippers gently scuffing against the hard floor across the hallway to her room. There she would sit upright in bed, doing a crossword puzzle in the newspaper with an erasable pen or reading a book.
She must’ve read thousands of books. Sometimes she would take me to the library, where I learned to love the smell of old books and to collect them as idols.
We would drive along the coast to the sound of Sinatra on tape, me in the backseat of her Cadillac that always smelled of new leather. We would spend the day together, just the two of us, go to a matinee at the theater or run errands around town, holding hands below the eucalyptus trees. She had an aura of calm, of sunshine, of love.
She told me I was smart and beautiful and is probably the only person who has that I’ve really believed. She told me I was a talented writer, a passion I rediscovered just shortly before her passing. She took photos of all us kids and every year until we were 18 gifted us scrapbooks full of childhood milestones, first days of school, graduation caps, New Years noisemakers, pizza parties, all our happy memories.
Every time I saw her, she told me I looked taller, even long after I stopped growing. She hid kleenex in her sleeves and wore big clip on earrings. Sometimes she was self-deprecating, insisting that she annoyed us by always taking our photos but we never minded. We loved her wholly.
Papa wore suits and leather shoes. He smelled of tweed, spoke in a low voice and often had a big inviting grin. He ordered old fashions at dinner, even in the last year of his life. He watched college football with a beer in hand, in the tv room where all us kids had our height marked on the wall. There he had a little tupperware of dog kibble that he would feed to my parents nervous dog, Trader Joe, one by one as a treat and an offering of affection. My own dog, Honey, sat next to him on visits, knowing his role in our family. He would pat her gently on the head without a word, in silent approval.
Jackie and Lou grew up in The Depression. Lou with parents who had immigrated from Slovenia (formerly Yugolsavia). He was one of many children and they didn’t have much. He had polio as a kid which affected one of his legs so that he had to have his shoes altered for the rest of his life.
Jackie and Lou met in college, got married and had two kids, my mom Judy, the eldest, and my aunt Jan, the youngest. Sometimes as a kid, I would visit Papa at his office. I felt important there, everyone knew Lou. He’d take me to Baskin Robbins for ice cream afterwards where I always got sprinkles on top of my scoop. He kept working at the brokerage firm (if only a day or two) into his nineties. Work was important to him, a symbol of his duty to his family.
Their home didn’t change much as long as I’ve been around, the same shell adorned wall paper in the bathroom, carpet in the living room, bricks and burnt orange decor. They didn’t collect extravagant things, though I’m sure they could have. Their refrigerator was covered with photos of the family. I would stare at the fridge memorizing each one, noting any new additions.
When we were kids, they took the whole family, parents, kids, cousins on a vacation all together every Summer, to lake houses and beaches where we stayed and played card games and ping pong, boogie boarded and rode bikes, watched Disney movies and ate hamburgers, had the type of quintessential Summer that hasn’t existed since the 90s, since we all got so attached to our phones.
Every holiday they took us to a beautiful dinner where we dined on steaks and Yorkshire puddings, cocktails and wine, shared creme brûlée and slices of pie. Papa helped us all go to school, to have the opportunities to create the kind of life he had created for himself against all odds. For him, it was always about family.
The last time I saw Nana, I showed her pictures of the cakes I’d sold and the places I’d been with my partner, our home. She practically grabbed the phone out of my hand, to take a closer look at Max and Honey and I in Palm Springs. She exclaimed how beautiful my life seemed, that she hoped that I am happy. I’m so glad that I could tell her honestly, that I am.
It was hard to visit at the end because leaving always felt like it might be the final goodbye and she was a hard person to say goodbye to.
Papa went just a day after her, as if he had been holding on to fulfill his life purpose to care for her until the very end. My mom says they were really a pair, that they would hold hands from across their twin beds, parallel to each other in their room. They had a view of the ocean, the branches of the lemon tree in the backyard peeking in. That’s where they both passed, at home in their beds, so close together.
When we were kids, my cousin Suzie and I would pick lemons from the tree, cutting them and pressing them into the crystal lemon juicer to make a concoction so sour, you could hardly call it lemonade. We were proud nonetheless, receiving compliments from puckered lips.
I keep thinking about that lemon tree and how abundant citrus is even in the dead of winter. Jackie and Lou are gone now from the world that we perceive and yet live on like glowing orbs of light in our hearts, something beautiful and bright even on the darkest and coldest days of winter.