THE POP BRACELET

"It makes me feel like his love is still encircling me...."

Grace Paley was the commencement speaker at Sarah Lawrence the year I graduated. As an aspiring writer, I should have paid closer attention to what she had to say, but I was too distracted by disbelief that I was finishing college on time. I stood on the main lawn anxiously waiting for my name to be called. The same place I'd anxiously waited to register four years earlier when my then-80-year-old grandfather, Pop, moved me onto campus because my mom was too high and my dad was in treatment again.

Pop could be tough. When I was in high school, he'd make me show him my report cards and always urged me to work harder. He was the grammar police, often interjecting mid-sentence to set me straight. I can still hear his anger over my lack of political knowledge and involvement (“You could name the top five rappers right now, but you don't know who's running in the goddamn primaries!”). And his alarm at my college boyfriend’s questionable degree of ambition. 

But he believed in my capabilities, once telling me: “You’re smarter and stronger than you know, kid.” I was love-starved, so I labored to gain his approval. In this way, he helped save me from darker paths I could have trodden. Despite his staunch atheism, he kept the faith for us both.

Pop had to miss my college graduation—his quadruple bypass was scheduled for that same week—so he sent this silver bracelet in his stead. I've worn it every day since. I wore it the day I got married (not to the inadequately ambitious beau). I was wearing it the day Pop died. 

Due to the rampant addiction in my family, I'd never lost someone in a peaceful manner. But it’s important to witness a good death, so I made sure to be there for Pop’s. He died in his home, at 97, gazing at the West Palm Beach sky, whispering, “Isn’t it spectacular?” Teaching me until the very end. The little bracelet makes me feel like his love is still encircling me, and when it sets off metal detectors at airports, I think it’s Pop keeping me on my toes.

—Shoshana Koch

To Pop, education was invaluable and it was never too late to learn—beliefs he modeled by earning a master’s degree from Columbia University when he was 70. He insisted that I go to graduate school, and—making up for the college graduation he’d missed—flew across the country to attend my MSW commencement in 2009

The proud graduate at 70.

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Shoshana Koch is a psychotherapist who focuses on trauma and addiction. She lives in St. Paul, MN, with her husband and son (Pop’s namesake), and is working on a memoir. Her free newsletter, The PTG Monthly Newsletter, covers resilience and creativity. 

Pop was Alan Sagner, a notable civil servant whom The New York Times called a “prodigious fund-raiser for liberal candidates and causes.” Read his Times obituary here.

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