Grandma E.

My father's mother died last Thursday, and I went to New York for the funeral. She had been getting worse and worse for a long time, and had really severe dementia. So it wasn't unexpected, and it really was for the best. I don't think I'd describe it as sad. I will say that I learned a huge amount about my ancestry while sitting shiva. It was really interesting to hear a lot of stories about my relatives that come from Hungary. They left just before WWII. Although, not all of them got out. My was one of 10 brothers and sisters. She left in 1939 and came to America. One brother went to Israel (before it was Israel), and the other 8 died in Auschwitz. That I knew, but I learned a lot more about what life was like in Hungary (actually it was Romania, but they always refer to it as Hungary; the border kept changing). Also, there were cool stories about the bakery that my grandfather used to run. When it first opened on 87th street, an Irish woman came in at 6:30am, demanding to know what this place was. After tasting some of the pastries, she ran out into the street, yelling at the top of her lungs that everyone had to wake up, because she had just tasted the most incredible cake ever. She woke up half the Upper West Side at 6:30 in the morning, and some people came into the bakery, saying that they had gotten woken up, and might as well see what all the fuss was about. And that's how the bakery's reputation first spread. Apparently that woman never came into the store again, and my grandfather never found out who she was, but he always wanted to thank her.