Last year, on Memorial Day, we went to a family gathering in New Jersey -- the last Bar Mitzvah of this generation. These are relatives on Jon's mother's side of the family and they have a long tradition of getting together for picnics and parties, in addition to the life cycle celebrations that are much grander. Jon's mother came from Boston with Dena, Jon's uncle Peter came from Columbus, it was a real reunion. Jon's aunt Alice was there too (the grandmother of the Bar Mitzvah boy), although she was much less there than anyone would have wished.
I can't remember the details, but Alice was diagnosed a few years ago with a degenerative neurological condition -- something in her frontal lobe. Dire and incurable. She was young and healthy enough to stay at home with her husband and various caregivers, so she quietly went into a decline. She had been an artist and a teacher, and had become an art teacher for children with special needs. Their cozy house was filled with her bright and colorful paintings. By last May, she had lost her capacity to speak but she was still present. She knew her family and she made it clear she wanted to be near them, especially her two sons and her two grandsons. She enjoyed eating, which made me happy.
Alice had been an observant Jew for her whole life, and even with her compromised brain the rituals seemed familiar and comfortable to her. She had a role in the Torah service that day, and her eyes were bright. While it would have been wonderful to have her there as the gracious and attentive hostess and grandmother she once was, it felt so lucky to have her there.
A year later, Alice's brain was worse, and she couldn't even eat anymore. The family considered their options and David, her husband of 57 years, decided to bring her back home after a hospital stay, and to continue to give her nutrients. She stayed alive longer than anyone expected, but she was no longer in charge of her destiny, as she had been for her whole married life. We all waited to hear that she was nearing her last days, expecting the news any time.
Weeks passed, then months. Finally the doctors told her husband that she might only live for a few more days, or perhaps even just one more day. Alice's son in Israel started the long trip home, praying that she would wait until he got back before she died. She died early on Wednesday, they planned the funeral for Thursday. Her son arrived at dawn on Thursday, heartbroken that he had missed the chance to say goodbye.
As we have seen so many times before, a skilled group organized everything, invisibly. The local son and his wife undoubtedly had everything to do with the planning and execution of all that had to happen within a very short amount of time. The rabbi who led the service is so familiar to us, he is the rabbi who presided over the Bar Mitzvahs. The cantor had known Alice and David for 25 years, and he chanted the 22 verses about the "woman of valor" with incredible, gorgeous voice control (so quietly and clearly, so hard to do).
Jewish funerals are rather free-form, without a set structure. So they are often heart-wrenchingly full of stories told by family and friends. The first speaker was a niece who had been very close to her aunt, and she was eloquent and tearful. Second was Alice's twin sister who spoke without notes, briefly and to the point -- her husband followed up with some comments of his own, making very warm mention of his long relationship with David. The last to speak was the youngest son, just off the plane. He said that as he tried to think of what he would say, he had two main thoughts: first that he prayed fervently that someone would get up at the funeral and speak better than he could (and he thanked his cousin profusely for being that person) and the second was that this would be the first time he had ever arrived home without his mother there. The light was out.now and that was impossible to comprehend. She had been a devoted mother, always weeping when he left home to go back to his international adventures. Without notes, he fully expressed his sense of loss and his gratitude to all those who had taken care of everything so well.
The little sanctuary was fuller than I would have expected, given Alice's long retreat from daily life. I wished someone had spoken about her life as a teacher and an artist. We got a full picture of her as a wife and mother and sister and aunt and grandmother -- the powerful, loving matriarch who presided over her family and home. No one mentioned how tiny she was, something I always noticed as I towered over her during a welcome or farewell hug.
It surprised me how very sad everyone was. I would have thought they would have gone through so much grief already, having lost the real Alice. But no, this was new grief, knowing they wouldn't see her anymore. Having her in the room for all those months was comforting, I guess, even though it was also tragic.
It is always traumatic to throw dirt onto the top of the coffin. That sound just breaks hearts. But after a while, the box gets covered and the sound is softer and it is less devastating. At Leon's and my own father's burial, we filled the entire grave, finishing the job. But that is not standard behavior. So we covered the top of Alice's plain pine box with a layer of clumpy clay and we left her there. This was really hard for her small family. They wept. It is a family who can cry, and that reassures me.
There was a huge amount of food at the house, and many comfortable places to sit and talk and look at photos. The afternoon slid by. We spent a good amount of time talking about Broadway shows with a lively woman whose name I did not catch. She goes to a lot of shows.
Jon and I left before the evening service, heading back home. The trip was easy and we rolled in at 10 PM. We had never doubted that we would go, when the time came, and it was nice that it was so easy to extricate ourselves at a moment's notice during the most busy time of year. Life went on at the farm, smoothly, while we took the day to be with family. It was a good day, and Alice will be remembered by everyone who loved her. As the rabbi reminded them, death ends a life but it doesn't end a relationship. How well we know that.
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