Barbara Josselsohn

I was driving with my family to my grandparents’ apartment to take them with us to dinner. My father was driving, my sister and I were in the front seat (this was back before seatbelt laws), and my mother was in the backseat, where my grandparents would join her. My dad pulled to the curb and my mother slid over to make room. My grandfather climbed in first and slid to the middle spot, and then my grandmother started to enter.

For some reason, my father thought everyone was safely inside the car, so he started to pull away—before my grandmother had gotten all the way inside.

She was a tiny woman, but somehow she mustered the strength to lift herself and hang onto the open door, her legs dangling in the air—until our screams alerted my father to slam on the brake.

Thankfully, my grandmother was fine. But the real horror started a few seconds after she was safely seated and my dad started driving again. Suddenly my grandfather convulsed with tears. He hunched his back and gripped my grandmother’s elbow and sobbed. Evidently seeing my grandmother in that situation terrified him to no end.

What ensued was chaos. My grandmother scolded my grandfather to pull himself together, not wanting to believe, I think, that she’d been in real danger. My mother screamed, also frightened by what had happened. My sister started yelling at my mother to stop screaming, and my father—wracked with guilt—shook violently as he mopped the heavy sweat accumulating on his forehead.

And I took it all in.

A few minutes later, everyone had calmed down and we were back on the road. But boy, did those few moments make an impression on me. It was mostly my grandfather’s reaction that was so stunning. This jovial man had been overcome with emotion at the sight of the love of his life in danger.

Many years later, my grandfather was diagnosed with bone cancer and died in the hospital. My grandmother called our house to tell us, and I was the only one home at the time. “Grandpa passed away,” she told me calmly over the phone. “I’m going back to the apartment. Tell Mom she can call me there when she gets home.”

My grandfather sobbing hysterically. My grandmother resolutely facing her loss. A marriage that had lasted more than 50 years. These are the moments of love—so various, so similar—that I will never forget.

The moments that inspire me to write books.

Sending out my deepest wishes for an end to suffering and peace for all.

Barbara