The Funeral

My mother's parents died before she came to America. Actually, that's not right; I think her mother died right after she came to America, and there was no way for a poor Irish immigrant to hop back to Dublin for the funeral.

When my father's parents died, my father went back East alone--my sister and I didn't really know our grandparents, and my mother and my grandparents didn't get along particularly well. A story my mother loves telling: at the wedding, my grandmother said, "I give that blonde six months with my son!" (Mind you, her son was 33 at the time.)

When I was 15 and looking at colleges (yes, I was but a tot when I headed off to college), my parents took me back East to look at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, both colleges my father attended. While we were in Philadelphia we visited my grandparents in their nursing home. I hadn't seen them in 8 or more years. All during dinner, my grandfather ranted about "niggers" and "kikes." (He would have loved Darin, I'm sure.)

Dad was really upset at seeing his father so senile. I never saw either of my grandparents again: I think my grandfather died not too long after that, and my grandmother went to live in a nursing home near my father's sister in Boston, and she died a couple of years ago.

Henry Adler, Darin's grandfather, was not senile when he died. He had been, however, very, very sick. While everyone missed him very much, there was general agreement that dying was a preferable alternative than continuing to live the way that he had.

In the morning we got dressed, had breakfast at the hotel with Scott and Lauren (the only other family staying in the hotel), and headed over to the Adlers' house. I wore a black angora sweater over a t-shirt and jeans over some longjohns and a big black leather coat with a furry lining over everything. It wasn't snowing in Traverse City, but it was cold.

Lauren kept telling me the key to winter dressing is "tights." She wore a skirt.

We met at the house and divvied everyone up among however many cars it took to handle the entire family. We headed over to the lone synagogue in Traverse City, a historical building that has a marker out front explaining when the land was donated and by whom, and so on.

Another first for this trip: I'd never been in a synagogue before. This one, at any rate, looked a lot like the inside of a church. Well, a spartan church, like the Calvinists, although there was stained glass. Darin explained the various symbols to me as we waited for the congregation room to fill. And it did fill: the Adlers have many, many friends left in Traverse City.

The rabbi gave a beautiful eulogy. A lot of the stuff he mentioned came from the meeting the previous night, where everyone said something they remembered about Henry and what he was like. As someone said later on, it was the first eulogy they'd ever heard that was true.

The rabbi talked about how how generous Henry was, and how he could forgive anybody anything--later on, Darin said, "Almost anybody--he never forgave the Germans and Austrians." Henry had a gruff demeanor, but inside he was a real sweetie. And he worked very hard to start at the age of 31 in a new land where he didn't know the language. All of his relatives had been taken from him, except for Ilse and baby Steve--he had no support system. He did okay.

Before the service Carole had handed out packets of tissues to everyone, just in case. During the service they came in very handy, because it seemed that everyone was crying. Well, except me. I don't cry, even when I'm as sad as I was during that rabbi's speaking. Darin took a tissue though.

After the rabbi spoke Darin's Uncle Bob went up and said a eulogy for his father. He was the only family member to speak--he said he'd been working on the eulogy for weeks. (While waiting for Henry to die, was the unspoken part.) He said many loving things about his father and how much he appreciated having known Henry.

Everybody cried some more.

Then en masse we left the synagogue and headed back to our cars (parked in the parking lot of the church across the street). From there we drove to the cemetery. Within the cemetery is the Jewish section, where Henry was buried. There was snow on the ground and I didn't envy the guy who had had to dig the hole, even though it was a small hole, as burial plots go.

When everyone was gathered around, sheets with a Hebrew prayer were passed out--I let Darin do the speaking for both of us--and a man placed the box with Henry's cremated remains in the hole. Then, one by one, starting with Ilse, the mourners tossed a spadeful of dirt onto the box.

In the afternoon the family split up for various activities (I went to write and work out), and then in the evening we gathered back at the house, along with some friends of the family, to sit shiva. Shiva is a formal mourning process that takes 3 nights. Everyone was handed prayerbooks that contained prayers in English and Hebrew. Facing east was important for some reason, but I forgot to ask why. A man from the synagogue--not the rabbi; Traverse City doesn't have its own rabbi and I think Rabbi Joseph had headed back to the city he'd come from--led the prayers. The 23rd psalm was repeated twice, I noticed.

At the end of the prayers Ilse finally broke down crying. Bob said, "Here it comes." I guess Ilse had been relatively stoic up until that point. She had lost her husband of 62 years. I don't know how she managed.

Later on that evening the "kids"--Darin, me, Scott, Lauren, Mitch, Matthew, and Jody--went out to the cineplex. Darin and I saw The Jackal (totally forgettable, although better than the script I read last year) and everyone else went to see The Devil's Advocate. Our film ended first, so we went into The Devil's Advocate to see the big finale, my favorite part of the film.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

I wrote 10 pages.

Worked out at the hotel gym a bit. The treadmill was broken--at least, I couldn't get it going. One of the stationary bikes was messed up. The other one worked, but I couldn't adjust the seat, so I don't think the seat was at its optimal height for me. I did the bike for 30 minutes. Then I did stairs for 15 minutes.

I felt incredibly pleased with myself for going to work out instead of taking a nap. Not that I felt any more energized afterwards.