Both of my maternal grandparents and my father’s father
passed away when I was very young. My father’s mother is still alive and well,
and full of insightful stories, in fact, she turned 93 just yesterday. But I was lucky enough to be “adopted”
by my mother’s brother’s wife’s parents.
Jean and John Yunger became my “faux” grandparents and I spent every
Thanksgiving and Christmas with them since I was quite young.
Jean and John were amazing people. They both grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in
the high 70’s which had a big German and Czechoslvakia population back then.
They actually met when Jean was beating a dirty rug out over her fire escape,
and John was down below, sitting there. He yelled at her and they started
talking. She was 14 and he was 17. A few years later (this was the 1930’s) they
were married. My Aunt Ellen was one of their three children, but the only one who
lived near them in her adulthood.
I can still remember playing in their backyard after my Aunt and Uncle’s
wedding in the mid-70’s.
They used to love my stories about living in New York City
and Brooklyn, they could relate to the places I went to and got big kicks out
of my exploits in the city. They
called each other “Mother” and “Father” as terms of endearment. Like, “Mother,
do you want a drink?” “Yes Father, I’ll have a whiskey.” Although that sounds a
little waspy, it was all love, and spoken with just a hit of a Czech accent.
Their 50th wedding anniversary was at the Bohemian
Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens. My
parents went and came back with amazing stories about the place. John was hard
of hearing for most of the time I can remember. One Christmas Eve he was yelling at me (unintentionally, as he had no idea how loud he was, especilly when he was excited) that it was "about
time I made it there, because the beer was delicious and very cheap!' He
proceeded to tell me a few more stories about going there with his own father for
Czech meetings, back when he had to wear short pants! He and Jean had had a
few dates there as well, later on in life. I finally made the treck out there the following
summer and was so excited to tell him not only had I been, but also I planned
on going back again and again.
Early 2004, Jean was diagnosed with jaw cancer. I had not
even heard of such a thing before. This vivacious, wonderful woman was
transformed in a matter of months to someone old and feeble. The first time my sister and I saw her after the surgery, when my cousin sang at Lincoln Center (deamed by her "unmissable" even in her weakened state) was shocking. Her wacky, colorful outfits (always
with matching holiday jewelry) permed dyed hair and dentures were replaced by
shapeless clothes and white hair. It was heartbreaking to see someone who had
had such an impact on my life change so suddenly. The medication and surgery on someone so old did not sit
well with her, and as her body deteriorated, her mind did as well. It was difficult to realize that the
woman who had always been such a big encouragment, who would gossip with me about
boys, talk about Manhattan restaurants, and wink and hand me $20 to “have fun”
when my mother wasn’t looking would suddenly be feeble and have a hard time
comprehending the simplest thing.
The hardest thing to see was the fact that, without part of
her jaw she could no longer eat like us, and she loved to eat. Last Thanksgiving, my mother had to blend up
all the food on the table into a baby food consistency for Jean to be able to
eat it. John stood in the kitchen
and supervised at tremendous volume, how everything was to be, as to make sure
it was “how Mother wanted.” As we all ate our turkey and stuffing, Jean
pondered through her mush with a spoon, trying to keep up with the conversation
in our loud and uproarious family. At one particular time, there was a lull,
and you could hear the silver spoon scraping loudly on the china plate.
John, in his booming voice, louder then necessary due to his hearing disability, intoned, “Do you hear that sound? That spoon? That is the most beautiful sound in the
entire world, and I don’t know what I will do when I don’t hear it
anymore.” It was so gorgeously touching and
full of sentiment; no one even knew how to continue conversation. This was true
love.
I type with tears in my eyes to recount the tragedy prior to
last Christmas. In a freak
accident, their house in upstate New York caught fire (faulty wiring to a space
heater) and according to the papers, the old house apparently went up in a
matter of minutes. John made it out, Jean did not. Even the papers, who didn't know them at all, were able to capture how distraut he was knowing she was inside, even for just a few minutes...She survived but was in
critical condition for a few weeks. She stayed stable though Christmas,
probably knowing somehow that she wanted to preserve the holiday, and passed away
quietly a few days after New Years.
She never woke up and was never in any pain.
John still talks about her all the time. He looks a little
lost now, and he hearing has gotten worse, which makes it even more difficult
to talk to him. It almost seems
like he doesn’t want to talk to anyone anymore. He has aged about a decade as well, and it not only makes my
heart heavy, it makes me miss her even more.
I’m not even sure why I felt compelled to write this down,
celebrating my real grandmother’s 93rd birthday this weekend, and
having Thanksgiving coming up, and kind of dreading a Christmas without her, has put it in the forefront of my mind. I wish I could do more justice to Jean
Yunger’s memory, and could recount more of the wonderful things she has done
for me throughout my life, but I always took them, and her for granted. She had
always been there, I just assumed, naively, she always would be. But the love that Jean and John had for
each other has always left a big impression on me, in an era where people think
so capriciously about it, they truly had love and faith in each other. I feel
very lucky to have had them as such a wonderful influence in my life, purely by
the luck of my Uncle’s marriage.
She was such a wonderful woman, and I loved her very very much.