Grandma Goldie

Today is 8 Elul (Hebrew month), which in 2024 corresponds to September 11. This Hebrew date is the yahrzeit of my maternal grandmother, Goldie Halprin Koplow.

Elul usually corresponds with August, but 2024 is an exception since this Hebrew year is a leap year. The Hebrew calendar is a lunar one and consists of approximately 354 days. The three main holidays of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot are tied into seasons, spring, summer and fall, respectively. For the holidays to fall out on those seasons, the Jewish calendar is adjusted to the solar year by adding an extra month every three years, or seven times within a 19-year cycle. The extra month keeps the holidays in their correct seasons.

Grandma Goldie died when I was around seven or eight, which would have been in the summer of 1961 or 1962. My memories of her are few. We would visit my grandparents once a year. They lived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This trip was a three-day hot one in a car with no air conditioning and three kids squished together in the back seat. Plane travel was almost impossible and expensive, something a family of five couldn’t afford. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa came to Baltimore when I was young, but I have no recollection of this happening.

Grandpa was 89 when he died and told us many stories about the old country (over and over and over again). Had Grandma lived longer, perhaps she would have done the same. I know very little about what her life was like in Eastern Europe.

What I do know is thanks to genealogy research done by my cousin Dave. According to him, Grandma’s younger brother Markus was shot and killed in WWI. Her older brother Fayvl Leyzor ended up in Siberia for reasons that are unclear. He was never heard from again. Dave believes he was sent there after the war, but is not sure. He is still researching this.

Grandma’s father Itzhak died of a heart attack in his early 50s in the 1914-1917 timeframe. He had a successful wholesale kerosene business. Her mother Pesha died of a heart attack or stroke in her mid-50s in 1921, just as Grandma was preparing to leave for the US with her new husband, Grandpa and her sister Gladys.

Grandma Goldie was interviewed on April 15, 1922, by the Sioux Falls newspaper, the Argus Leader. She described what it was like living for seven years in Vilna with soldiers, first from Germany and then the Bolsheviks.

“You see for seven years I had been in a war, with armies always coming and going and taking away all we owned with them. I had forgotten both what it was to dance and what it felt like to have enough to eat.”

What do I remember about Grandma Goldie? Sadly, I remember an old lady sitting in a wheelchair, not particularly communicative. Then again, I was a shy kid so maybe I didn’t talk to her. She was virtually a stranger to me.

Her death certificate states she died of renal failure. That doesn’t mean much to me; perhaps her kidneys failed due to something else. I remember my parents and other relatives whispering about her illness. Everyone was impressed that Grandpa took her to the Mayo Clinic for the best possible treatment.

However, I do distinctly remember learning of her death. My sisters and I were in the kitchen eating the breakfast that Dad made. I asked, “Where’s Mommy?”

Someone, probably Dad answered, “Grandma Goldie died. Mommy went to Sioux Falls.”

I began to cry. My family thought my tears were related to Mom being gone. They reassured me she’d be back within a few days. However, I was not crying for Mom. I was crying because my grandmother was dead. Why? I hardly knew her. Perhaps hers was the first death of someone I knew; perhaps it was because I was truly sad that she was gone from my life. The opportunity to know her was lost.

These feelings were never shared with my family. And I believe I am the only relative who remembers to light a yahrzeit candle in her memory.

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Read more by Eileen Creeger.