My grandmother would have turned 83 today.

I think this is the first time in a very long time that I feel more blessed by her memory than sad that she’s gone. She passed away in November 2006 when I was a freshman in college, and losing her devastated me. It was a solid decade, probably more, before I could talk about her at all without crying. It isn’t enough to say that I was very close with her. With the benefit of hindsight, I can say with certainty that her presence in my life as a child saved my character. I wouldn’t be who I am today without her. She was the kindest, most open and welcoming and loving person I have ever known. She gave her love to everyone. Everyone.

As an excellent example, though a difficult one for me nowadays: she was in the hospital at one point when I was a teenager, and we (myself, my mother, my brother, and my then-stepfather) had come to visit her. A nurse came in to check her vitals, and my grandmother cheerfully introduced us all to her as her grandkids, her daughter, and her son-in-law. The latter two titles were completely incorrect – this was my paternal grandmother. My mother wasn’t her daughter, but her daughter-in-law, or ex-daughter-in-law actually, since my father had long since left and they’d gotten divorced. As such, the man my mother ended up with after him was even less than a son-in-law to her. But that was simply how she saw things. There was more than enough love to go around, and drama never entered the equation for her. The nitty gritty didn’t matter.

(I’m glad she never really knew about the nitty gritty in the end, honestly. Whole beach full of grit I’ve been walking on for a long time; it’s best she didn’t know, I think.)

I’ve sometimes wondered how I turned out the way I did, which is to say, extremely unlike the woman who birthed me. With everything I’ve been through, I could easily have grown up to become a miserable, dispassionate wretch of a human being. But I didn’t. And I’m convinced that it’s because I had the great privilege of spending so much time with my grandmother. Her love kept my heart from turning to stone, I’m sure of it. My mother likes to insist that she “did a good job” – that was her cringeworthy toast at my wedding, after all – but she didn’t. My grandmother did.

My grandmother taught me how to play solitaire, and how to say the candlelighting blessings on Shabbat and holidays. She taught me how to care for animals of all kinds, and how to make the simplest of foods taste good (and I don’t know how, but Lay’s potato chips always tasted better at her house!). In an increasingly complicated world, she taught me how to find inner simplicity and peace. She taught me to be kind to everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from or what they look like. To love all.

Over fifteen years after she passed away, she’s still teaching me that “love all” includes myself.

In Judaism, when someone passes away, we have a phrase we offer to mourners: baruch dayan ha’emet, which directly translates to, “Blessed is the true judge.” It denotes that G-d is a part of everything, even in death, and acknowledges that such things are beyond our own mortal understanding. Another honorific, one I find more accessible personally, that we use when offering comfort to mourners is, “May their memory be a blessing.” (The Hebrew transliteration for that would be zichrono livracha (masculine)/ zichrona livracha (feminine), in case that interests anyone.) When we refer to a person who has passed, we say their name and add “of blessed memory” or even abbreviate it to OBM. The focus overall here is not so much on what has been lost, but on the precious memories we can still hold close in our hearts and minds.

My mind is getting flooded with unbidden, half-forgotten, wonderful memories coming to the surface today. And I feel utterly blessed for it. If you know me in real life, or if you’ve simply been reading my blog here for the last six (seven?) months, and you happen to like anything about me at all – you have my grandmother to thank for it.

Zichrona livracha.