Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

83 Air. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

"So that is what happens when you can read and write," she said. "If that nurse had read what was written on those packets, she would have given me the 'right' powder, and you know where I would be now? In my grave."

Yes, my Yiddishe grandma Gittel lived to ninety-three, nearly as old as her own mother, who would still be alive if she had not fallen down the stairs.

In her last years Grandma could not walk so well any more, but her brain remained clear. She would sit at the window in the front room and watch the vendors on the street below loading their pushcarts with produce in the morning. She was at the window again when they came home in the evening, counting how many apples they had left.

"One, two and three is five, and three more is eight..."she would count with them. "He sold 230 apples today. I counted them too when he loaded his cart this morning," she would say.

They say Grandma Gittel died because of a collapse of her physical strength. But I have my doubts. I believe she just did not want to live any longer. I was the last one who saw her alive in the hospital. She was alone in a little room. Quiet, at rest, and perfectly at peace with herself and everything. She looked at me with her bright grey eyes.

Her mouth said, "I am going to die. I will be glad to get some rest. I sold all my apples. Now I am going to bring my pushcart home forever. I have finished what I had to do."

The nurse came into the room. It was plain Grandmother didn't like her, she did not like nurses, period... When the girl left, Grandmother said to me,