L'CHAIM
1.
"I tried calling Mommy," Kayley said through the phone. It was 8:22 AM on Monday morning.
"Is everything okay?" I asked.
"No…Pop Pop Joe is dead…" I woke up Caryn, my girlfriend, and gave her the phone while I made sure that Kayley, her daughter, was okay. I ran through the things in my head that I had to accomplish. I would have to make sure that people knew I was going away for a couple of days. What time would the funeral be tomorrow? Would it be Wednesday? Jewish funerals happen so fast. Catholic funerals had more preparation and you could give people notice. It was the morning, so they could have it the next day. There was no question as to whether I was going or not: I was. Caryn hung up the phone and started to cry. I held her close.
"You need a suit," she managed to say.
"I’ll get dressed. We’ll get one today."
2.
Joseph Kaufmann was a World War II veteran living in Queens, New York with his wife. The last year before his death, he was in and out of the hospital with heart and liver trouble. His wife held up well until the last few months before his death, when her Alzheimer’s worsened. Between that and their diminished health, they had to move into an assisted living facility. The family had hoped for more hands-on care, but he would not have it. He was still independent enough despite his health problems, he thought. Caryn moved things around at work so she could visit him one last time. When she arrived, she found that Joe would not take anything, not even oxygen to help him breathe.
"Pop Pop," Caryn said, "this is going to help you breathe."
"I can breathe just fine," Joe replied.
"Have you been taking your morphine for the pain?"
"I don’t need morphine."
"This is going to make you more comfortable," she said. He put on the mask for the oxygen, but it wasn’t fitting right.
"I’ll get better, I don’t need the morphine."
"You’re in a lot of pain. Here, let me fix the mask."
"I don’t need the oxygen."
"Please, I’m a nurse. Let me help you."
"…Alright…" She adjusted the mask on his face so the flow of oxygen was better.
"How’s your breathing?"
"Better."
"Good. I’m going to give you something for the pain, okay?"
"…Okay…" He relented. He relaxed. He closed his eyes. Caryn walked into the other room to see her Grandma Flo. Her thinning grey hair fell short of her shoulders. Caryn comforted her as she asked why Joe was holding on.
"He wants to make sure you’ll be okay," Caryn said.
"I was supposed to go first," Flo said between whimpers. It broke her heart even more knowing that by tomorrow, it would have to be explained to Flo that her husband was dying again.
3.
The drive from the hotel to the cemetery was quiet for the most part. We had on our funeral garb as we made the trek from Elmsford to New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, New York. It is a town in Long Island with an entire economy based around cemeteries. There are gravestones as far as the eye can see, with competing florists and marker hawkers along the main drag of macadam. There is, however, a deli with "Family Fun" emblazoned in pop art lettering with The Flintstones fighting over a sentient large order of fries.
"I don’t get it," Caryn continued, "You say ‘our daughter’ but 'my girlfriend’s family.'"
"She’s family, you’re family, I never met these people."
"We’re all family. You’re part of it."
"I just view family different from you. There’s people I’m related to I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw ‘em." There was close knit ties in my family, but they stayed within the household. We took care of our own and everyone else were not much more than occasional company. If someone wanted to catch up, it more often than not meant they needed money. Helping to raise a child with her made me realize that there was more to family than I thought, despite how much I have fought it with my attitude sometimes. It can be hard to get close.
We arrived at New Montefiore and passed through its imposing gates and down the main roadway to the synagogue and office, which sat at the very center of the grounds. We parked and slowly entered the building. The imposing clouds had whispers of rain and promises of cold gusts. Inside the central office, the temperature was cool paired with a pressing silence. It was not long before Flo and Jean, Caryn’s mother, entered as well.
What was surprising was Jean’s lack of formal apparel. She wore her purple windbreaker, black workout pants, and some running shoes. Meeting Flo for the first time reminded me of my own grandmother, Gam. They had the same mannerisms, same laugh, even looked very similar.
"You look just like my husband did," Flo said to me with a smile in her eyes. "I’m Grandma Flo in case you were wondering who everyone was talking about. You are?"
"Pete," I replied. "It’s a pleasure to meet you, despite the circumstances." It was a canned line I had a habit of saying at funerals that bled into this one. It also was the unfortunate byproduct of my upbringing, being that both sides of my family are in business and appearances needed to be kept up. Whether I liked it or not, the subconscious voice of my mother was chanting her grief mantra in the background noise of my mind: act like a Kennedy, keep your face straight till it’s over.
Other family members started filing inside. Each handshake was a new face, a new name, and my scripted dialogue continued. Kayley held onto my hand tight while her mother talked with Grandma Flo.
"He wasn’t supposed to go first…" she said with a whimper. Then, with a flash of realization, "When did you come in? How long have you been here?" Kayley continued to play with my hand as she looked around.
"It’s a pleasure to meet you," I said to an uncle, "despite the circumstances." I saw Jean walk outside with Caryn and Flo, among others in the family. I cut the conversation short I was having with someone and told Kayley to follow Mommy. Jean motioned me to stay back, but Caryn and Kayley looked at me. I jogged to catch up to them before they reached the hearse. His casket was draped in the American flag. The mortician folded the flag back to reveal a plain casket ordained with a Star of David, where the head lied in the casket. He opened it to reveal Joe. Flo caressed his face and kissed his forehead. Jean held her mother tight as the other children commented on how thin his lips were and how cold he was. They had known each other since she was eight and he was ten and were married for over sixty years. They shared their first kiss underneath the water in a swimming pool so no one could see. Caryn walked up and looked. I saw her fist clench and her shoulders shiver.
"Let me see," Kayley kept repeating. Caryn lifted Kayley up the best she could with her injured foot. A six year old cannot know how to react to a dead body for the first time. She had known Joe, but the feelings everyone was feeling just do not exist yet for her. I knew the questions would come later; they would not be today. I took her from her mother and we walked to the car.
4.
I held Kayley up when the first volley fired. Three older army officers fired two more shots at the sky with their World War II era rifles. They are used for every military funeral, but it seemed more poignant for a veteran of the Big One. Across the way, another officer played Taps on the trumpet. Two more officers, who stood at a standing salute to the casket, folded the American flag into a tight, crisp trifold and presented it to Flo. She stood crying next to the casket.
"On behalf of the President of the United States and the United States Army," one of the officers said, "we would like to present to you this flag commemorating your husband’s service to this great nation." Flo accepted the flag. Jean held her mother close. She stood out amongst the black in her purple windbreaker. Murmurs had broken out amongst the crowd.
"She couldn't have sprung a few bucks for dress shoes?" someone asked.
"I can see how people think that’s disrespectful," I mentioned to Caryn.
"That’s my mom, that’s how she is."
"It’s a funeral."
"Stop." I did. Another officer came up with three casings wrapped with a card in plastic. He leaned in close as he spoke with a deliberate and enunciated tone.
"These casing are from the volleys we fired today. They symbolize that one of our own is on their way to God. On behalf of the President and the United States Army, I am honored to give these to you in memory of your husband’s heroic sacrifices he endured for our country. This card contains instructions on how to attain a personal thank you from the president." He took his gloves off and held her shivering hands between his own. "I am truly sorry for your loss, Ma’am. God bless you." Rehearsed or over performed as it may have been for him, it did not seem like mere ceremony to me. The officers carried the casket over to the grave and lied it upon the lowering device for the grave.
"I wanna see!" Kayley exclaimed loudly.
"Kay," I said quietly in her ear, "We can’t talk that loud right now."
"I wanna see," she whispered.
"Why?"
"I just wanna."
"Okay, let’s try around the side." We moved around to the far side and Jean pointed down and waved towards her. "Go to G’," I said and she snaked through the crowd to stand next to Grandma Flo, her great-grandmother. Flo smiled and quickly grabbed her hand. Kayley looked back at me with a blank stare. I smiled. She did a quick smile and looked forward again, as if realizing what she accidentally volunteered for. Caryn lied her head against my shoulder and held a box of tissues.
The view outside of the graveyard caught me off guard. I found myself staring off to the horizon. This cemetery was in the middle of the rust belt. Abandoned industrial buildings were off in the distance, a train zoomed through a beat up, open air station, a pile of black dirt rested upon a large hill covered in brown grass. The clouds, which sunk further, made it all the more claustrophobic, as if the surrounding decay was going to encroach into this sacred ground. I felt the tension the fence must feel every day keeping these forces at bay to protect the dead.
The more the rabbi spoke in Hebrew, the more of an outsider I felt like. I was raised secular with dashes of Catholicism and was a recovering Atheist turned "spiritual seeker." Despite my misgivings on previous faiths I was taught, my instinct in a graveyard was always to make the sign of the cross, and it took everything in me not to do it. The rabbi said the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew before saying it in English. I was able to follow then. He let the family speak next. An uncle read a poem about vomiting sadness and bleeding despair. A cousin read an open letter for her side of the family. Next, Jean stepped forward. More whispers of her wardrobe echoed through the crowd.
"I’ll make this quick," Jean said through the tears she tried desperately to swallow. "My father was a good man, a caring man, and he did what he needed to do. He didn’t fight in the war for the medals he got or any heroic thing. He did it because it was his duty to serve his country. That’s how he lived. It was his duty to take care of his family, it was what he was supposed to do, not for appearances. He had a big heart and I love him and I miss him. But I’ll do what I have to do just like he did. That’s it." She hurried back to her mother, who cried more and asked why he did not wait for her to go first. The rabbi stepped in.
"I’d like to add something, not to discourage any sharing. But I want to ask a question. What is left when a hero dies?"
"Stories," one man said.
"Loss," Jean said.
"Emptiness," another said.
"Legacy," Caryn said.
"Family," the rabbi said. "When they start a story in the Torah of a fallen hero, the original Hebrew translates to both, ‘these are the stories of so-and-so’ and ‘these are the generations of so-and-so.’ God wants us to have generations of people on this Earth. And when the subsequent generations, maybe even the next two, are set in place, that is when most people are called back to God. Generations keep us connected to each other. The Jewish are an interconnected family with ancestors stretching back thousands of years, our tribesman live on through us, their family.
"You know what we tell those who want to convert?"
When they ask what is Judaism, what is the main teaching, we say love your neighbor, love yourselves, and everything else is commentary. You want this hero to live on? Love your neighbors, love each other, love yourselves like he loved you, and everything else in this life is commentary." Caryn cried into my chest. Kayley ran up between us and held us tightly, shoving her face into her mommy’s leg. I kept my eyes on the rabbi. Act like a Kennedy, keep your face straight till it’s over.
We lined up in two rows and took turns shoveling dirt into the grave to help bury Joe. His Torah was wrapped up with him for the next life. Each thud of dirt against the casket reverberated in my body. It jarred me into the moment with a pure sense of awareness and appreciation for the now. I felt as though I had no place with something so sacred as burying a body. They allowed me the privilege all the same. To them, I was family. I saw the uncle who spoke as he rubbed a tear from his eye.
"Your poem was very touching," I said, "and I appreciated how you opened up in front of everyone like that. It’s a hard thing to do."
"Thank you."
"I’m Peter. It’s a pleasure to meet you, despite the circumstances." For the first time, I felt my insides cringe when I said it. It felt so hollow after what we had just both shared. It felt distant. I did not want to be a Kennedy anymore.
5.
Caryn, Kayley, and I walked back to the car and drove to a diner down the street from Grandma Flo’s assisted living facility with other members of the family. Caryn had moments of tears, but Kayley and I did our best to joke around and try to make her laugh. We walked into the diner and sat down with the rest of the family. Two of Caryn’s cousins, who are twins, sat in front of me while Kayley played with the watch on my wrist and Caryn spoke with her mother and brother, who she had not seen in almost a year. One of the twins bragged about working on a student horror film up in Massachusetts.
"I used to do that," I said.
"Really?" he asked with a scoff. "And what made you stop."
"I just did." The story was much longer than that and could take up an entire evening if needed.
"And now you want to be a Librarian?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"It’s quiet."
"But you were on sets?"
"Yeah, I was in a TV pilot. Didn’t go anywhere though. I was on another show on the Food Network. I was in a couple of film festivals. Did some editing and wrote some stuff for people’s reels. A lot of us went for it. Who’s at CNN, who’s globe trotting working for Nat Geo, a few people in LA working on shows for Netflix, Fox, shit like that."
"Shit like that? That’s not shit, that’s success."
"It’s 16 hour days man, sometimes 20. No sick time, no vacations. It’s nut up or shut up. Sometimes I miss it, that break neck pace, no sleep, everything on the line, down to the wire 24-7, but I couldn't live like that anymore." I looked over at Caryn and she smiled at me. It was that loving smile she always gave me that made me never want to look away. Kayley pulled at my hand and whispered in my ear for me to tell him that she was trying to write a book like I was; she was already on chapter three. I glanced back at him and took a bite of my tomato basil omelette. "It’s not worth it. There’s more important things than that."
Peter Yarnall is a senior at Cabrini University. His major is English with a concentration in Film and Media Studies. He enjoys reading, writing, and throwing game nights with family and friends.
