You Saved Me, Too: What a Holocaust Survivor Taught Me about Living, Dying, Fighting, Loving, and Swearing in Yiddish (25 page)

I read the amounts as Carrie wrote them down. The checks ranged from $15 to $500, but added up to thousands. I recognized almost none of the donors. Some attached notes thanking us, blessing us, throwing the word
mitzvah
around. Some wrote to you:

“I know what it is to have no family, as I also came from the immagration [sic].”

“May life be good to you.”

But most of them hadn’t bothered with a note. They just wrote checks and stuck them in business envelopes. Added to the money already donated, we actually had enough. Soon we had too much. As donations continued to arrive throughout the month—$5 in one envelope, a second payment from someone who thought she hadn’t given enough—I had to call people to ask whether they wanted me to destroy their checks or send them back. In total, more than eighty-five people gave money to help you. You were right—the (relatively) poor Jews do stick together.

I called The Enforcer with the news.

He told the social worker that we officially had enough money to cover your denial period. Then the strangest thing happened: They found a bed for you. Two hours after calling The Enforcer, I received this e-mail from the social worker:

The cynical part of me was sure they’d been denying you entry until the cash arrived. But maybe the filled coffers had nothing to do with the acceptance letter. It could have been that the favor my button-pushing acquaintance requested a week earlier had come through. He called on that same Hanukkah day to ask if I’d heard anything yet. He wasn’t surprised when I told him that you’d just been accepted.

“I told you it would be immediately,” he said.

His contact insisted on remaining anonymous, so I could never confirm whether she’d had any influence.

But most likely, neither the money nor the favor made the difference. It may have been Fishel Owide, the man you replaced. He’d lived in your room and slept in your bed. He was, like you, a concentration camp survivor who had lost everyone except one brother, and who had a wife but no children. He had worked in Boston’s Jewish heartland, too. He was a barber. I bet he cut your hair. I bet you served him a sandwich.

He’d died the previous day at age ninety-six. He must have known you needed a turn.

I had less than a week to get you ready for the rest of your life. Among my chores:

I also had to get you prepared mentally. The good news threw you into a minor tizzy. First you wanted to go to your apartment to supervise the packing. Then you felt too sick. Then you started to obsess about the burial papers again. At least you weren’t crying much. The big flood would come a few weeks later, when it hit you that you’d reached your final destination. You missed your old life, your days with Vera, your independence. You wept for an afternoon, then carried on, like a good survivor.

On moving day, I parked in front of the main doors to unpack your belongings. There wasn’t much. Everything you needed to live in half a room fit into three plastic boxes and two suitcases. The bigger one was old and had no wheels, so when I carried it down the hall from your apartment, I listed to one side, like the people who carried their lives with them to trains.

Once a staffer helped me pile your stuff onto one of those rolling carts that bellhops use, I got back into my car to move it to the visitor lot. As I turned the key, guess who walked right in front of my car like a black cat? The headest of head Honchos, that’s who. I was but one reflex away from giving him judgmental and self-righteous with my gas pedal.

But if I had, I would have missed all the sweetness that was happening inside.

“You’re on so many medications!” a doctor said as she examined you. “Is it okay if I get you off some of them?”

“You’re the doctor,” you said. “You do whatever you want.”

That meant you trusted her. You can tell instantly whether people are trustworthy.

She rebandaged your bad foot and ordered a dermatology consult. She made a plan to wean you off your toxic dosages of Extra Strength Tylenol. She took your blood pressure, still your favorite activity.

I was probably beaming. Finally, you were being looked after.

It continued at lunch. The young guy who ran the kitchen went Jewish-mother on you because you didn’t like your hamburger and would only eat canned fruit and applesauce.

“He has to eat!” he said.

I wanted to laugh. Compared to the rice and pills repast you’d been eating at home, fruits were fine. But I loved that the cook was worrying about you already.

Everyone we met seemed to know us. We were Bonnie and Clyde. We were Natasha and Boris. Legends.

“Oh,
you’re
Sue Resnick,” several people said.

Your new social worker seemed afraid of me, as if she’d been warned that I could detonate at any time. She kept saying things like, “We’re not perfect, but we do our best,” and, “You can call me for anything and I will
always
call you back.”

I, in turn, behaved like the most docile and appreciative client she’d ever had, which must have been confusing to her, though quite amusing to me.

I left feeling great. The odyssey was over. You were safe to die in your sleep.

You were free to live happily ever after.

But of course, you didn’t.

_____________

1
Crazy.

2
Idiot.

3
Kucker
.

4
Shvantz
.

5
American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
, August 2005, 13(8):701–4. Increased risk of attempted suicide among aging Holocaust survivors. Barak, Y.; Aizenberg, D.; Szor, H.; Swartz, M.; Maor, R.; Knobler, H. Y. Abarbanel Mental Health Center, 15 KKL Street, Bat-Yam, 59100, Israel.

At first it was great. Two days after arriving, you turned eighty-eight. I gave you a sweater, shirt, and hat from L.L. Bean. You rewarded me with a big hug and multiple kisses on my cheek.

“You say I never kiss you,” you said.

I wasn’t the only beneficiary of your affection. You called me in a frenzy during that first week.

“Zoo! I need the blue thing in the closet by the door.”

Come again?

You’d been hounding me to bring you a suit and razor blades, none of which are blue. But David figured it out—you wanted your blue blazer to wear to dinner. Also, $500 in cash.

Because, by golly, there were chicks here. Granted, most of them wore bibs or didn’t have teeth, but you found the hottest chick on the floor. She was only sixty-five and seemed to have all her mental faculties. You were already sitting with her at every meal and hanging out with her in the hallways. Now you wanted to impress her with a bankroll or buy her something from the gift shop, which I don’t think sells anything that costs more than $10. I could tell you were in serious crush mode when you dragged me to her room for introductions, then sulked because she’d been yawning as you told our story.

“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “It was naptime. And you should slow down. Girls don’t like when guys come on too strong.”

Now I had to be your romantic advisor? I guess it was better than coaxing you away from the pill bottle.

You didn’t take my advice, anyway. Instead, you took off your pants in her room.

“He went into her room and, well, he undid his pants and …,” the social worker told me.

“
What?
”

“It was fine—these things happen. But she got upset. She just isn’t interested in anything like that.”

Dude, what were you thinking? After what we went through to get you into this Harvard of nursing homes, you go acting like a state
college frat boy? At least the woman forgave you. She continued to be your constant companion for the next two years.

Your penis almost made another appearance in those early days.

“He got angry at someone who was sitting in his chair,” the social worker said, “so he started to take off his belt and yell.”

Were you fucking kidding me?

I don’t know if you were threatening someone with sexual violence or trying to prove your dominance over the seating area by producing your schlong or simply attempting to clear the hallway by standing pantsless until you got your chair back. In any case, I repeat: Were you fucking kidding me?

I was terrified that they’d kick you out. The next time I visited, I heard your voice before I could see what you were up to. It was loud. Oh, please don’t let him be making trouble, I prayed. Then I saw that you were with a nurse and both of you were cracking up. She told me that you enchanted everyone. I’d hear that a lot: that you could make the emotional shut-ins speak, that you could get tables of silent ladies to laugh. You even looked appealing with your red flannel shirt tucked into khakis, a clean shave, and a smile. You were back.

While you were settling into your new environment, I was shoveling out your old one.

You weren’t a hoarder, but there was still a lot of shit to get rid of. I didn’t need or want any of it except for your record collection. One of your neighbors came by while I was sorting through your kitchen drawers. The only thing of value, I told her, was your TV. Hey—she needed a TV. I helped her carry it to her apartment.

That was stupid. Without the TV, I had no soundtrack for the undertaking. I continued to go through your stuff in silence. You owned so many clothes. I mean, how many sweater vests could you wear? I understood the healthy collection of winter and summer pajamas because, surprise, I have one, too. But all those sweater vests—I
guess that’s what happens after you spend years with no clothes of your own.

I found a few other items to distribute: photo albums of Bibi’s family, which I eventually sent to her sister; many boxes of Old Spice aftershave, which still sit in your nightstand; a set of china that I gave to a friend. The rest had to go.

I posted an ad:

I scheduled it for a Sunday, thinking junk pickers from miles around would show up, but hardly anyone did. An old man swindled us out of the three-pronged cane by telling me it was for someone poor and crippled that he wanted to help.

“Oh, take it for free then,” I said.

Then he walked away using it for himself. Why did he have to lie? I would have given it to him if he’d been honest.

An old Russian lady with an elegant apartment in your building bought the rug and a lamp. A few parties looked but bought nothing.

I ended up paying a junk company almost $300 to take most of it. Even the charity that supplied homeless vets with furniture only wanted the couch and the dresser.

They sent two guys to pick them up. I was in a victimy kind of mood.

“This isn’t even my apartment,” I complained. “I’m just trying to help a guy in a nursing home.”

I felt put upon. I was getting nothing for my troubles except a bill from the junk company. But those guys, whose mission was “to bring the Love and Hope of Jesus Christ to those we serve,” they gave me something.

“Yeah,” one said with empathy in his voice. “It’s a round world.”

A round world. What comes around goes around.

God, I hope so.

Your lover-boy period was short-lived. The anxiety returned. After many tries, your doctor came up with a cocktail of drugs that helped. But until she did, you drove everyone crazy.

It wasn’t just the constant requests for blood pressure checks, though that was a big part of it. You required attention so often that your nurse tried to get you transferred to the super-crazy floor.

“He’s too demanding,” she said. “He needs more attention than we can give.”

You’d started arguing with your doctor, which led to me being called to the principal’s office to discuss your behavior. That was helpful because I realized that your doctor’s sensitivity was as problematic as your attitude. She was taking your defiance as an attack on her skills.

“Stop making this about you, honey,” I wanted to say. But I didn’t. The new me.

Thank goodness for your nurse practitioner. Katie is pretty, blonde, short, and wears a white coat. You call her the Little Doctor.

She has no trouble handling you, then or now. When you asked her to check on you too often, she made appointments with you instead. When you acted out, she sympathized with you instead of scolding you. She knew you didn’t need a transfer to the loony floor.

You were lonely, that’s all. You’d bonded with a few other residents, but all of them soon moved to the fancy new facility. Your whole wing of the nursing home suddenly seemed primed for tumbleweeds. Rooms were empty. You sat by yourself in the hallway. Of course you
got needy. Once again, you had to start over. How many times had you done it already, usually alone? In Auschwitz. In the DP camps. In America. When the deli closed. When your wife died. When Vera had her first stroke and couldn’t speak. When she had her second stroke, then moved out. When you left home.

That’s a lot of rebuilding on top of four years of torment. I don’t think I could handle it.

I’d gotten a job, so I could only keep you company on weekends. I tried to find substitutes. I asked a local group whose aim is to keep Yiddish alive if they could find a volunteer to come chat with you in your native tongue. I never heard back from them. The Jewish service agency sent a volunteer visitor, but you refused to speak to him because he was a man. Who knew you hated men so much?

Then the Nazis gave you a present. I’d finally paid off both nursing home bills and all your old medical expenses, so your reparations were building up again. I started looking to hire someone to visit you, and when word got around to the aides and kitchen staff, a woman volunteered. I’d never met her before and didn’t trust her one bit. What if she was out to swindle you? What if she mistreated you? But you trusted her. You were already friendly with Gloria. I think you two cooked up the plan to get her the job.

You’d always used your Nazi payout to be good to others. Now, by spending it on her salary, you were finally using it to be good to yourself.

“The people here are so old—
oy vey es mer!
” you’d commented as we walked the lanes of your new home and read the biographies of residents that hung outside their doors. The oldest one made it to 109.

Every year on her birthday, someone hung a diagonal banner over her door, announcing the achievement. This year, they displayed a poster on an easel in the main lobby. It had a photo of her in her wheelchair, the words
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
and the number 109, printed big
and bold. Whoever had set up the public wishes had been quite excited about the lady’s achievement, which was sweet, but I couldn’t help thinking it was also a PR move:
See how good our care is!

She didn’t look 109, whatever that’s supposed to look like. She had thick white hair, and though she sat very low in her wheelchair, she seemed only as aged as the women in their eighties. But she acted older.

For the more than three years that I observed her, I never heard her say anything but “Hello?” in a voice that was low and pleading.

“Helloww?” she growled. No one answered.

“Hell
oww!
” she growled again, angrier each time.

I didn’t know what she wanted and the staff rarely responded to her, which really bugged me. The only other noise she made was a deep vibrato of a cough that sounded like the worst smoker you’ve ever met suffering from with the worst case of TB that’s ever been diagnosed.

That lady freaked me out. I know I should have found it inspiring that she’d lived so long, but instead I found it disturbing. If I can’t understand why you’ve been around for so long, what was I supposed to make of her? What was the purpose of her longevity? I hope she was a happy, beloved person for most of her life, but in her second century she seemed miserable. She looked to be suffering. I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want that to be celebrated with posters and jolly birthday greetings.

One week I left your side and headed down the hall to put Gloria’s check in your room. We’d agreed that I would leave it under the TV you never watch, transforming it into a TV-shaped paperweight. As I walked back, I noticed that the old lady’s room was bare. The hospital bed was stripped, the shelves were empty, and the dresser was cockeyed, as if the movers had been in a big rush to get out. This didn’t necessarily mean she had died. They were renovating the floor and people were continually being relocated. I peeked into the open doors as I walked back to you. A young woman with an old couple. A woman sitting on her bed, bent over her lap with her head in her hands. A frail form sleeping in a fetal position. But no old lady. Deaths are usually
posted on a piece of printer paper taped to the wall, but I didn’t see any notices.

I asked the nurse who was tapping pills into cups.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “She died.”

That’s it? No sentimentality? No poster in the lobby announcing her passing? After 109 years, not even the printer-paper obit on the wall?

The absence of any mention of her death seemed incongruous with the hubbub that had surrounded her life. I couldn’t figure it out. Was she that easily forgotten?

Hello?

Helloow?

The nurse called. You had fallen again.

No you hadn’t. You’d placed yourself on the floor. Again. Because you’re like a puppy that ransacks the trash when he hasn’t been walked enough.

Here’s how it played out. You waited until you thought no one was watching, then you slid your butt to the end of the chair and somehow lowered yourself onto the floor. No one knew exactly how you did this without plunking down hard and actually bruising your tailbone or cracking your pelvis, because no one had seen the lowering in action. The nurses had, however, seen you sitting quietly in the chair, then sitting quietly on the floor just seconds later. Never with an injury or an outcry. Just sitting.

You claimed you lost your balance, though how one does that in a chair is perplexing. It could have happened as you tried to stand, but I doubt it. Such a fall would have been far messier. Your walker would have rolled across the room. You would probably have been found on your back. And frightened. But none of that occurred.