Life is For the Living

Another quotation that I like is one that my grandmother used to say: "Life is for the living."
We called her Grossmutter, which is German for "grandmother".
(Which is a little strange: how many people use the formal name "grandmother", instead of a nickname like "grandma", "grammy" or "maw-maw"?)

Grossmutter came from Germany to the United States in the early 1930s. She was following Grossvater, who had come to New York in the late 1920s. They married and had three children: my father, my aunt, and my uncle Johnny.

Grossmutter lived through her fair share of tragedy. She grew up in central Germany during World War I. She lost a number of relatives in Germany during World War II, including her younger brother, who was a soldier in the German military. He was run over by a German tank in a road-side accident in northern Italy. He was everyone's favorite in the family.

What was probably her biggest loss was when Johnny was killed at age 12, after being run over by a truck in their town in Long Island. He was riding his bicycle; heard the truck behind him; swerved to his right; bounced off a parked car; and fell under the back wheels of the truck.

The tragedy was terrible: in the weeks before his death, my father spoke to us for the first time about how Grossvater had dealt with Johnny's death. My father told us of a family get-together soon after Johnny died, where his father ripped open the front door, and called out: "Johnny, come home!"

But, as family, they never spoke about Johnny. My aunt was suprised to hear that my father had talked at all about Johnny: in the 53 years between Johnny's and my father's deaths, my father and his sister never talked about Johnny, or about his dying.

My father died suddenly - his COPD robbed him of his breath in his sleep. Maybe he felt his end was near, and decided to tell us about Johnny and some stories about him and his passing.

"Life is for the living." - the quote becomes more profound when you understand that Grossmutter buried her youngest child; her baby.
But Grossmutter chose not to dwell on the dead - she thought that life is to be lived, and not spent on thinking of those who have gone before us.

It can be seen as a strange way of thinking about happiness, but Grossmutter lived through the tragedies, had a happy life, and lived well into her 90s. She was tired toward the end, but spoke about looking forward to seeing loved ones again.

"Life is for the living" - People die, but we are alive, and we must live our lives, and be happy.