My grandmother passed away on February 4, 2022. She was 96 years old. You can say she lived as long as she lived. But when you live a long time, the memories are quite a lot. From this point of view, the pain is even greater. I wrote him a letter some time after he passed away to comfort him. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I felt sad. I was undecided whether to publish this letter or not. But I wanted you to get to know her, even if it was too late. This Eid, I saw my grandmother in my dream. Just like in the old days, she brought stuffed cabbage and some dishes. As usual, she put the food in the large steel bowl she liked to use. She reminded me of herself and asked for my prayers. When he died, his only wish was to be prayed for. I would appreciate it if anyone who reads, whoever believes in whatever they believe in, would pray for my grandmother and send good wishes. Good readings…
Dear Grandma
I am writing this letter five weeks after you left this world. As your favorite grandson – you made me feel that way for years – perhaps you will be hurt. For not being able to attend your funeral and fulfill the mission you gave me for the funeral you had been planning for nearly twenty years. But you should know very well that my psychology was in no condition to bear your departure. You understand and tolerate me very well as you understand everyone.
Every year when I went to Giresun, my hometown, you told me that you might die next year and that you would never see us again. This went on like this for years. We even joked about it with my siblings and cousins. My grandmother was making a totem again, saying that she would live next year too. You lived with this totem for more than twenty years. “My daughter, I won’t see your wedding, I won’t see the birth of your child, maybe I won’t see you grow up. Maybe I won’t see you grow up.” Thank God, you were with us at each of our weddings, at each of our births, and we no longer believed that you could die.
You were different from other grandmothers. You would occasionally straighten your back, which was bent from carrying loads at a young age, to relieve it, and you moved like a mechanical robot. With your dry, wrinkled skin and the strange sounds you made with your mouth, you didn’t look like a grandmother. Your veins looked like bulging pipes in your weak hands. Your joints moved as if they were screwed together, not like other biological creatures. I think it was because there was too little fluid in your joints, which there normally should be. Of course, we couldn’t assess this so accurately in the past. Since I had seen you as my grandmother since I opened my eyes, grandmother meant you to me. Black and dry, bent at the waist… That’s why you were not repulsive to us. Later on, you used to keep candies in your bosom to look cute for our children – they were scared because they didn’t know you very well.
Sometimes you are so full of emotion, so full of memories that you cannot explain. You are a huge history for us, for our family. A 96-year history that is embedded in the walls of our veins and cells…
First of all, I’ve never known anyone else who put so much thought and planning into their funeral. Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was planned and yours was planned. Every year when we came to see you, you always talked about your funeral and what you wanted to happen. The thing that would have made you most proud was a large crowd and lots of prayers. You wanted your favorite green needlework circle to be placed on your coffin, and you wanted lots of refreshments. You would talk about it with excitement, as if you were a participant going to your own funeral. You liked to live your funeral without planning it. Every year, your totem, telling about events that you would not see in the next year, was actually a sign of your desire to see them.
In recent years you had become very lonely. Your friends, as you called them, had passed away. It was as if we were no longer in the same time as you. Your fate had turned into the fate in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Of course, there were those who took care of you, but psychologically you were alone. In a way, it started to hurt you to live. Because you couldn’t adapt to current life. You couldn’t hear very well, you couldn’t understand your surroundings, you couldn’t stand up and walk around comfortably. Your movements were restricted. This was a natural consequence of your age. While life was painful for you in this respect, a part of you was trying in every way to hold on to life. You were putting more energy into communicating with us. Now that I think about it, you were a real fighter who remained unpretentious. You were still worried that something would happen to your 76-year-old son, that your 72-year-old daughter’s illness would get better, that another granddaughter would find good fortune. Because you were still a mother and a grandmother. You did not give up this mission until the last moment.
A few years ago you said to me, “I don’t wish a long life to anyone anymore. It’s very difficult to live a long life.” At that moment it dawned on me that you were desperate and I understood you better. Times had changed and you felt like an extra in this time. Despite everything, your brain worked very well. Your memory was surprisingly excellent. You were still learning and showing changes in behavior. One of your grandchildren told you that it was not good to live too long, and you found this statement to be true when you thought about your own life. So you could adopt what you learned from someone and still change your thinking. I think that was the most unique thing about you. Normally old people are not open to new ideas and are stubborn, but you were not like that.
I have an unforgettable memory about this. When I was 9 or 10 years old, in the village, I loved cats, you know. You didn’t really like cats. When you saw them, you used to throw them away because they would come in the milk, yogurt, food and you would shout, “Damned cats”. One day I warned you when you were throwing a cat again. “Grandma, don’t hit them, they have lives too. It’s a sin…” You stopped for a moment and said, “My daughter, you are right. I won’t hit them anymore.” I was surprised that you answered like that, thinking that you were going to snap at me. I really didn’t see you mistreating the cats after that day. You weren’t much of a cat lover either. There was still a little growl coming out of your mouth, but at least you weren’t hostile. For many years you said, “My daughter told me not to be mean to cats. And I don’t mistreat them.” You were always praising me. You emphasized my compassion. But what you had was the ability to see and correct your mistakes, which not every person has. And when you were in a good mood, you had a short and unique laugh, “Huh”. I don’t remember you ever laughing with laughter, you always laughed with ‘Huh’. You laughed like that when you reminded me of cats.
Few really love their mother-in-law. Especially those who look up to her and idolize her. You spoke of our great-grandmother with such reverence and love. I think you learned a lot from her. Our grandmother was a Black Sea woman who fought alone in life. When our great grandfather was martyred in the Balkan War, she raised her children alone during those difficult years. She was one of the elders of the village. You always compared some aspects of me, my physical characteristics to her. That’s why I thought I was different for you than your other grandchildren. When I went away to school, you would tell me how much you were looking for me, how much you missed me, how smart I was like my great-grandmother, and you would make me feel very good. I always thought that you did this only for me, that we had a different bond than your other grandchildren. Now that I was far away and couldn’t see the big picture, I realized that she did more or less the same things to all her grandchildren when my sister warned me, “Sis, grandma does the same thing to everyone.” Even though I was a little disappointed when I heard that, nothing changed between you and me. After all, you made me feel special. It didn’t matter if I treated someone else the same.
Then my father made a remark about you that put the big picture in my head. According to my father, you were a good communicator, a good politician. If you had studied, you could have been a diplomat or an international relations expert. You had good relations with each of your children, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law and grandchildren; you never got on bad terms with anyone. In doing so, you acted in accordance with everyone’s personality and character. So everyone thought they were special to you. Most importantly, no one’s tail was touching anyone else, no one was jealous of anyone else. That’s how you did it, Grandma! I am still amazed.
What I remember about my childhood is that in the summer, when all the grandchildren would gather around and giggle, you would get angry at us saying, “Don’t plum!” “Plummet” is a term used by the old people in our neighborhood. It means don’t get horny, don’t make noise. You would also yell at us with not very endearing words like “tummy aches (stomach pains), let the davun come out (davun means poison, used in unpleasant situations). We would shut up for a while, and after a while we would resume the noise. But we didn’t take offense at your words and shouting. These were natural, natural processes for us. We would laugh at your breasts, which were now hanging on both sides, as we took a bath and came out, and you would say, “What a laugh!” as if you didn’t know what we were laughing at. Then you would comb your graying henna hair with an old, wide, black comb, always braiding it and gathering it behind your back. Despite the years, your hair was very strong, it wouldn’t fall out. You cut off a piece of this braid and kept it for your funeral.
And you always had a headache. We thought it was the whim of old women. That’s why you couldn’t stand noise. You always tied a scarf tightly around your forehead. Sometimes you would wrap the famous collard greens of our region to relieve the pain. When the pain would flare up, you would hit your head with what you called zumbuks (punches). Of course, this was funny to us as children. We used to laugh at your behavior. Later it was discovered that you had a tumor in your brain. Fortunately, it was benign, but it was quite big. Since you were already old and the tumor was benign, you didn’t have surgery. But despite the tumor, your brain and memory worked very well.
You were very fond of wool quilts and pillows. One of the things that old women were most proud of was the abundance of wool quilts and mattresses and how well they were cleaned. If a woman could wash her wool well and sheer her quilts (sew the quilt), she was the best. That’s why you would wonder about the number of wool quilts in our dowry, and even though we, the new generation, couldn’t make them, you would ask, “Did you glaze your wool quilts?” In village houses, it was the fluffy wool quilts stacked on top of each other that interested you. When you were older, your favorite activity was to go and chat with whichever woman in the village was shepherding her wool. “I wish I was young so I could make wool…” you would say, and you would long to make wool. It was good for you to watch others doing this work that you could no longer do, that you longed for.
I’m going to miss your cornbread, Grandma! I think you made the best cornbread in the world. In fact, when I was a child, you made a dish with cornbread, sugar and butter that I have never seen anywhere else in the village. You called it “Övmeç”. I think it was a dish that was invented for children when ingredients were not available, but derived from the root ‘övmek’ so that it wouldn’t look simple. We devoured it with great appetite and excitement, even though it was doubtful that it was a meal at all. And you laughed under your mustache with the joy of both feeding us and fooling us. You used to wrap them in white cheesecloth and hang them to dry. There was always a pungent smell of cottage cheese in the house. Your hands always smelled of cottage cheese. Even though the smell was strong, your cottage cheese was delicious. You always saved some for me because you knew I liked them the most. When you took care of the cows, you would always bring yogurt and milk in a large steel bowl that you used a lot. It was like a public duty or a sacred duty. But you didn’t have to. We grew up with your yogurt, milk and cottage cheese, Grandma! You have contributed a lot and we cannot repay you…
In a way, you were my childhood friend. In my elementary school years, when summer was over, everyone would leave and I would stay with your grandchildren. You would visit me every time I came home from school, you didn’t wait for me to come to you. You treated me not like a grandmother but like a friend trying to make me happy. You would have a small conversation and leave. This was good for you. You would take me by the hand, take me to mawlids, feed me the best food.
If a table was set somewhere and there were pickles, you would say, “Madam (my appetite) is gone. Let me eat a little.” You really ate a little bit of everything. I think you owed your fitness to that. Even if you ate a little pickle, your stomach would ache and you would take stomach pills that were common among your family. If someone else was satisfied with a medicine, you wanted to take it too.” “Is this good for you, I’ll take it too.
You couldn’t memorize the prayers. You would ask for help from all your grandchildren one by one. “Look, I’m reciting Fatiha, correct me if I’m wrong,” you would say. I can’t forget your anxiety of misreading the prayers in your old age and still correcting yourself.
Also, old women used to use the word haççak (pleasant, beautiful). You would say “What a hachchak!” to something or someone you liked. You thought I was weak when I was single. You didn’t think I was a hachchak. When I gave birth and gained weight, I fit your standards. In our villages, they don’t like people who are too thin, but if you are a little overweight and tall, they don’t like you. So Grandma, unlike modern people, you found overweight people beautiful.
The last time I saw you last summer, it had become even more difficult for you to stand up and take care of your needs. It had already been like this in recent years, but it was impossible for you to live your life without help. I admired your memory, your consciousness, your logic despite your 96 years. Your concerns about your 76-year-old son (my father) were no different from my concerns about my 16-year-old son. At that moment, we were two mothers worried about our child. You made an assessment of everyone in the family. You told me your worries, your concerns, your needs. As I listened to you, I thought about how smart you were, whereas for years you always said I was smart and praised me. For you, your children and grandchildren were smart, resourceful and compassionate. You never put yourself forward and unfortunately we never gave you the compliments you deserved.
For the last couple of years you were no longer making totems and saying, “I won’t see you next year.” This was making me uneasy. The last time we met, you said, “My daughter, make sure you come next summer, come during the hazelnut season. ” made me say “I wonder” inside. You said goodbye to me for the last time by sitting with your legs outstretched at the door you could barely get out of. I looked at you for a long time until you disappeared from sight. Ah, now I think, Grandma, for almost 25 years you have always seen me off outside. You always asked me when I was leaving and waited for me. You always waved to me from behind. I can’t remember a time when you didn’t see me off. You did it for all your grandchildren too. How can we forget you?
The coronavirus found you this winter. when the outbreak was widespread and precautions were relaxed. You were in the village for most of the outbreak. You were more protected and never got sick. This winter, when you came to the city and there were so many people coming and going, you caught the virus. You actually wanted this virus. When it was said that it kills in a week, you were afraid of being bedridden, so you said, “If that disease finds me… .” Oh Grandma, I wish you had prayed to God that my hearing would be better and I would be able to stand up more easily. While part of you wanted to get out of this life, part of you wanted to live. Your daughter in Germany, whom you had not seen for a long time, was coming. You were looking forward to her. But your wish to get out of this life soon came true. You became a Kovid. Unlike everyone else, you had good lungs. The virus had hit your kidneys. Because you couldn’t stand up much anymore, you drank less water. In your last days, you wanted to go to the toilet without needing anyone, and you drank little water because you could hardly get up. You drank very little water anyway. That’s why your skin was always dry. Maybe if you hadn’t done that, the virus wouldn’t have overcome you, Grandma…
I’m not saying goodbye to you now, Grandma! Because saying goodbye to you means saying goodbye to all that I have experienced, most of all to my childhood. You are a history that is embedded in our veins. That’s why I know you will continue to exist in our hearts. If I were to read these lines to you, “My daughter wrote me a ketap. “She wrote me a ketap.” Huh,” you’d laugh and show that you were in a good mood. I love you so much, Grandma! Our best prayers are with you…
