The family lived in a Georgian mansion in the '20's.

They had a chauffeur, a gardener, maids, all of that.

My grandmother grew up this way.

I don't know how her father made his fortune.

Then the Great Depression hit.

The family lost almost everything.

Then the father moved his family Upstate.

The family narrative was always that they imigrated from Russia, came through Ellis Island, lived in tenements, and bought the Upstate homestead with money from illegal import/ export during WWI and bootlegging in the '20's.

I was told this story. It made perfect sense to me. I had no reason to question it

In actual fact, the family narrative was an inverse mirror of the truth.

Upstate was not the plateau. It was the bottom.

It gets worse.

The father made a bad investment in a small business he knew little about, not enough apparently, and then almost immediately became lame.

So, my grandmother's sister was able to stay in school because she was too young to work, but my grandmother, still a child, had to drop out of school and go to work.

She went to work for institution for the developmentally disabled, in the next county. This was was a group of NYS institutions that ran in parallel to the NYS mental asylums.

It was the same institution where my mother worked.

My grandmother was already traumatized as a person would be, and then she went to work at the institution, where the working conditions were deplorable, and where the residents would beat her up. That was always known to happen- it didn't stop until well into the '70's.

So, she had married, and finally, she was able to quit working. Her husband bought the homestead, and they raised their family, my father, uncle, and aunt.

My uncle bought the homestead in a backroom deal among my grandmother and her two sons, in which she received an amount of money to be paid in payments by my uncle (he never paid them- that's who he was), she had an attached apartment built (and it was) with an entry door to the main house, and finally the agreement that if my aunt in California were to become sick, the brothers would bring her home to die (and that happened). In addition the brothers agreed to buy her a Buick and cover its costs (they did that).

Looking back on it now, some things make sense that even at the time didn't seem "normal".

My grandmother commissioned bespoke furniture made in NY. Everything made to measure for the living room, an entire suite of furniture make for the master bedroom from the same company, extraordinary furniture was the formal dining room, the porcelain lamps, the cabinets with objets d'art, the tapestries, and in general, every aspect of the house was formal, and the interior design was nothing I had seen or will see again in a middle class house.

Now I can see all of this was a reflection of her childhood.

What gets me about this story is the stone cold secrecy.

I think my father must have known. He was the eldest. Knowing him as I did, I'm almost certain he knew all of it. I'm not sure my uncle knew it. I wouldn't be surprised if my aunt didn't know it.

I have no reason at all to think my mother or my aunt, my uncle's wife knew it.

I still miss her. They say you get over grief.

I don't believe it. I think the way you process it certainly evolves, but I think the grief stays with you.

RIP, Nanny.