Rising up between us, between me and the grandmother who loved me, held me, bathed me, tucked me in when I spent the night, the weekend, the week, in her magical universe – suddenly rising up between us is a wall, a larger wall than any I have ever encountered before. A larger wall than the one that rose up when we had our first and only fight a few months before. A massive wall with no windows and no doors – the wall between the living and the dead.

She has me pull out her gray hairs. Doesn’t believe in children’s books; reads to me from whatever she is reading – Zola, Twain, de Maupassant, Dickens. When no one else is around she calls me “My little papa,” because I am named after her father. When no one else is around, I call her “Aniuta,” her Russian birth name. And now she is gone, hidden behind a wall so vast that I cannot see above it, cannot walk around it, find no doorway through it, no windows from which to gaze out.

My next big wall – is ocean. I cross it, for the very first time, ten years later, a University of California junior year abroad student, arriving in Israel for the first time. I remember the smell at the airport, the dust, remember people falling to their knees to kiss the tarmac. Wish I had been so moved myself; wasn’t. I remember the crazy crowded racing bus trip up to Jerusalem. The year was 1971, a very different place and time. The bare terrain, was familiar, from California desert. The sky, was vast, familiar too. But none of that prepared me for the city itself, both new and old, the stone walls, the noise, dust, crowds.

I remember our packed bus screeching round a turn as we entered the bus station. As we turned, my head turned, not wanting to miss a thing, and in the corner of my eye, crossing the street, carrying a string bag swollen with fruits and vegetables – was Aniuta. And my heart leaped up in my chest. The magic of Israel had taken the wall down. There she was, and then we raced past – a woman who bore but the tiniest resemblance to her. A few days later, exploring the old city, in a crowd streaming toward the Damascus Gate, there she was again. And my heart swelled, and my feet began to move toward her – no, toward an old Bedouin woman. A few weeks later I saw her again, in Rechavia, walking down the street. She kept surprising me. Downtown, on Mount Scopus. Sometimes older than she was when she died, and sometimes much younger. She was Ashkenazi and Sephardi, Yemini, Iraqi, Persian, and also Ethiopian, Greek, Scandinavian. Each time, she came to me in a sudden flash, breaking down the wall for an instant.

Till finally I understood, that when old Jewish grandmothers die – they move to Jerusalem.

Read Parts II and III of Andrew Ramer's "Jerusalem Triptych." 

Feature image / Laura Paull