When Grandpa died, my mother sat us down and handed out A5-sized papers. With her encouragement, I wrote, “My Memories of Grandpa” at the top. I chewed my pen briefly, then wrote, “Grandpa always said, ‘No girls allowed’ when he saw me coming. Then he said, ‘And if you try to come in, I’ll tickle you!’ Then Grandpa would catch us and tickle us. Then he said if we weren’t careful, he’d throw us off the balcony, or into the Thames from the top of the London Eye, and I ran to get Mr. Leopard to protect myself.” Mr. Leopard was a man-sized stuffed leopard that lay realistically across my grandmother’s bed, his cold green eyes glinting. He’d been bought in 1950 for £50 in Harrods, a gift from Grandpa to Grandma. “Grandpa had a big laugh and a maroon jumper, and he liked leopards very much,” I wrote.

I didn’t know then what my parents did with that little note.

When I was 12, I wrote: “Thank you for my bas mitzvah money,” to Grandma. “And the beautiful card,” though I think my mother encouraged me to add that last bit. My father addressed the envelope and dropped it in the red postbox for me.

When I was 14, I wrote, “Thank you, Grandma, for the newspaper clipping that you sent me, in which the Sunday Times states that the most useless subjects to learn are Touch Typing and Business Studies. From your circling the subjects ‘History’ and ‘English Literature’ in red pen, I understand that those are the tracks that you want me to take in school. Meanwhile, I’m signed up for Touch Typing and Business Studies. Love you.” My father posted the letter on his way out to shul.

When I was 16, I emailed, “Dear Grandma, well done for buying a computer and setting up email! This is a much easier way to communicate. I’m sure you’ll soon get the hang of it and not need Natasha to open it up for you. Does the typing you learnt on a typewriter in the 1940s work for Qwerty keyboards? Maybe I could teach you touchtyping….”

When I was 18, I emailed Grandma weekly from seminary. I told her about discovering a lady called Nitzchiya in Tzfas who was a sculpture artist and invited me in to tea, lamenting her baal teshuvah son. I told Grandma about seeing the “twin peaks of Mount Doom” from Rashbi’s Kever. I told her about our punishing Nachal Darga hike, swimming through pools of blackened water with dead pigeons floating in them. I told Grandma about walking to our seminary’s Shavuos event. I told her about the awe-inspiring desert hikes, my medical clowning chesed job in a hospital, and the Americans, who all went silent in shocked sympathy when I once said, after a long day, “I’m shattered!”

I told her about the Blue Lady in Rechavia who wore a blue sun hat and a thick, painted, wooden blue-beaded necklace, and painted canvases full of Luz bones. I told her about the Yellow Lady who wore long yellow suits and read my aura (I sneaked back a few times, just to double check: She read my aura differently each time. That’s what you call a double-blind piece of research).

I married, wrote a “Thank you for the wedding check” letter to Grandma, and simply assumed that my father had posted it… but would find it years later with my many other thank-you cards, unsent, in my parents’ side table.

I had my first baby and wrote a “Thank you, Grandma, for paying toward our first buggy” letter. I signed it with my name, my husband’s name, and “Baby Yaeli, who loves her new mode of transport.”

I became busy. I never wrote to Grandma after that. We spoke at least twice weekly on the phone. If I forgot to call, I’d get a furious phone call from Grandma’s six-foot Muslim-Sudanese aide, Sa’adu. “You call yo’ Grenma more often, or yo’ Grenma she die! You call more often!” Sa’adu commanded. Then she demanded to know if I fed my children Medjool dates. “Is good for the blood, feed them! An’ you call yo’ Grenma more often!”

I was 28 years old when Grandma caught Covid and died, 24 hours later. I spoke to her in the hospital a few hours before her death. Before her body had even been whisked to the morgue, a second cousin snuck into her apartment and made off with Mr. Leopard.

Sa’adu called, hysterical. “Yo’ Grenma didn’t want to go into da freezer, she say she didn’t want no freezer and now dey put her inna freezer!”

My father went down to London to try and get Grandma’s body released: Remember, this was during Covid, and she’d died at the height of the pandemic. Hospital access was almost impossible.

“I told your father,” my mother said worriedly over the phone. “ ‘This isn’t eighteenth-century Russia,’ I said. ‘You can’t bribe someone to release a body!’ Oh, I hope he doesn’t get into trouble…”

I was still 28 years old when a box arrived at my door.

I signed for the parcel and used my house key to cut open the tape.

The contents of the box spilled to the floor.

There was my Noach’s Flood picture; my painted squares; the Hello Kitty paper; the small A5 “Memories of Grandpa,” all my dutiful thank-you notes — except for the one from our wedding gift, which we found in my parents’ side table when they moved — and a thick file of carefully printed and preserved emails that I’d sent Grandma from seminary.

I sat down on the floor in a papery mess of parts of my past that I’d completely forgotten and wondered who would hold on to these forgotten aspects of myself for me now.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 970)