Dear Aba:

Your funeral went well. As you'd asked, it was a combination of a religious and a military ceremony. I understand that you were buried in your tallit and army jacket (though, since your plain pine casket was closed, I didn't see you for myself). The weather was perfect. I don't know if any day could be a good day for a funeral, but this was as close as it gets.



My brother and I had come to your house the previous day, leaving our mother's house as soon as I arrived from the airport. Your wife was off at the cemetery, making arrangements. Since messages got scrambled while we were there, we left before she returned, heading back to our mothers'. We stopped for a while for dinner before we got there. Remembering that you had introduced us to sushi, we went to the sushi buffet not far from you for a sort of dinner in your memory.

The next morning, we made the long drive from the Jersey shore to the cemetery on Long Island. Since we had allowed for plenty of "getting lost time," we got there quite early, stopping off at a diner a few miles past the site for a sandwich and some coffee before we went to the cemetery itself.

When we arrived at the cemetery, we parked at the main building and went in to see what to do next. We had been told that, as your sons, my brother and I would have to identify your body officially before the ceremony could begin. No one at the desk knew what that might have been about, and we were told to "just hang out in front" until someone official arrived.

There were several funeral parties shuffling in and out, and it was twenty minutes or so before we recognized anyone: first our cousin Elliott on your side, then our other cousin Elliott on your wife's side, then his father, and then the Rabbi. The Rabbi wasn't quite sure where to go either, but he said that the funeral director would answer all questions when he arrived.

After a brief delay, the hearse pulled up on the main road. It had taken a detour from where your body had been (a funeral home? the hospital?) to the cemetery: your wife had promised you that you would come home from the hospital, so she asked that the hearse drive you past your house one last time.

Those of us who were out front of the main building piled back into our cars and followed the hearse to the grave site. When the chain of traffic stopped, we all parked, got out, and walked the rest of the way. At the entrance to the family plot, a man in uniform stood perfectly still, eyes focused straight ahead, clutching a bugle.

We gathered at the grave site, where your casket rested on braces above the deep grave that had already been dug and neatened up. An American flag was draped over the casket, perfectly arrayed. Canvas straps extended out from under the casket to its left and right. (I understand that you had wanted an Israeli flag too, but that American military protocol had prevented it.) A tall mound of dirt rested nearby, with a shovel sticking up into the air.

The crowd of several dozen arrayed itself on the grass facing the casket as the funeral director handed out kippot. Your wife, of course, stood front and center, with her children and grandchildren arrayed around her. My brother and I made our way to the front, off to their right. The others (most of whom I didn't recognize) fanned out behind us.

Two more soldiers stood in front of the mound. At a signal from the funeral director, one barked an order that I didn't understand, and the other came to his side as they snapped to attention.

From far behind us, where the other soldier stood, came the sound of Taps, played slowly and clearly on his bugle. A few notes in, the sound of an approaching plane began, starting a couple of steps under the tonic of the key in which the bugle played, and steadily sliding up in pitch, passing overhead and finally fading out, just as Taps ended, about a fifth about the note on which it began.

In the following silence, the two soldiers in front of us moved to the ends of the casket, lifted the flag, and, in precise, mechanical movements, folded the flag into a triangle, almost perfect. (The soundscape was a symphony of sniffles from the many people surrounding us who were crying.) The one who had given the order at the beginning lifted it up, tucked in some edges to finish the exact maneuver, then walked forward, stopping in front of your wife.

He bent down to look her directly in the eyes. With a gaze and voice of infinite gentleness and kindness, he said something like "On behalf of the President of the United States and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."  (Your wife later admitted that, in any other circumstance, she would have said something biting at the mention of our current President.)

That's when I finally started crying, quietly, as, I think, did my brother. Whether or not the soldier's demeanor was genuine or merely perfectly rehearsed, it had brought the first moment of emotion to an abstract event.

The Rabbi took over at that point, saying the appropriate prayers, and delivering a moving remembrance of you. (At one point in the eulogy, his cell phone went off, but he silenced it with good humor and continued.) He spoke of your long friendship, first down in South Jersey when you were married to our mother, then up in North Jersey, where he was at your latter wife's synagogue when you joined her there. He spoke of your activity in the congregation, participating in your joint sermon/debates, taking and helping with the Torah courses, and being a fountain of knowledge on demand. He did allude to the clash that drove you apart for much of your last few years, but spoke of being with you again on your final day.

But mostly, he spoke of the experiences that you had of which you were the most proud: the work in the military in World War II, both on the Stars and Stripes newspaper and as a navigator with the Air Force (and here I had thought, for some reason, that you were in the Army and stationed on the ground), your efforts in Machal working to pull together an army for Israel just before the state began, and your never-ending task of educating later generations about the Holocaust. (A prominent Rabbi who visited our sister in Israel as she was sitting shiva last week said that for these activities, you have certainly been accepted directly into heaven.)

After the eulogy, the Rabbi read more prayers and psalms (and when he hit the line about the "table before my enemies" in Psalm 23, I couldn't help but picture a comic-strip thought balloon appearing above your casket saying, as you always insisted, "That line's a mistake -- there's a typo in the Hebrew.") He then attached small black ribbons to your wife's, my brother's, and my lapels, and ripped each, the sound of the tearing of the ribbons said to symbolize the tearing of our hearts at your passing.  We said Kaddish with him; even though I have never had occasion before to speak the Mourner's Kaddish, I found that I had the words, cadences, and rhythms already memorized.

The gravediggers, who had been standing by reverently throughout the service, came forward and, lifting the canvas straps that lay under the casket. lowered it evenly to the bottom of the grave. The Rabbi then stepped over to the mound of earth, removed the shovel, and dropped several scoops of the dry dirt onto your casket. My brother and I did likewise; I only dropped a single shovelful down (the grains and clumps sounding a chaotic snare-roll on the resonant pine), but my brother dropped several, standing, as he said, for his children and for our sister and her children who could not be there themselves.

Looking around as the crowd dispersed, I looked at the gravestones of your wife's family, including the newest, that of her sister who passed away almost exactly a year before you. I visualized your grave as it would come to be, filled in, covered with lush grass, the gravestone bearing your full Hebrew name (if Tzvi Hirsch ben Micha Yosef would fit). I wondered if they'll put on it the epitaph that you had said that you wanted: "I have a book about that..."

And then we went back to our cars, leaving in the order in which we had parked.  Most of us headed back to your house, though the caravan quickly became scattered, and we had to find our way back without following anyone. The directions that we had printed out from one of the Internet map sites were pretty good, though one turn faked us out and led us to a dead end. Once nearer your house, I was able to remember some of the way there ("turn right at this Dunkin' Donuts, follow this road as it squiggles around, and take the first left after this other Dunkin' Donuts"), and we made it to the house without too much hassle.

We were somewhat nervous about what we were supposed to be doing, on our first experience as mourners to whom people were making a shiva call. But the Rabbi had said that there is no "supposed to," only what would feel right for us. Outside the front door there was, as traditional, a container of water and a basin into which we could pour the water over our hands, ceremonially washing them. We did so, and went in.

The house was full of people, some of whom we knew, some of whom we didn't, and some whose identities we figured out after not having seen them in many years. My brother, his friend who came to the funeral with us, and I mostly hovered on the periphery. Occasionally people came up to us to express brief condolences, and we got to talk to a few people we recognized or thought that we did. I spent a while talking with a cousin's son, sharing our tales of each trying to set up your computers.

Much of what people told us consisted of stories about how great you were with the second family's kids, as step-grandfather or more remotely related family elder. It seems that you were a wonderful grandfather, even to family members whom I didn't even know existed. My brother (whose image of you is, of course, flavored by having grown up living with my mother, with you relatively far away) bristled with ever-increasing resentment at how you were there for them when you were not there for him.

The Rabbi returned in the evening, assembled a minyan of us, and led an evening service (from a prayer book that, among other things, made the conceptual organization of the eighteen prayers in the Amidah clearer than I had ever seen before). He, your wife, my brother and I said Kaddish again, and the Rabbi directed some comforting comments directly to us.

My mother did make an effort to let me sit shiva somewhat traditionally at her house, offering to cover the mirrors and to invite her synagogue's standing minyan over so that I could say Kaddish for you, and digging out the one yahrzeit candle that she had in the house. But it didn't feel right, since she wasn't mourning, and her living room was in continual use as her teaching studio, so I declined.

I wish I could have slowed down some that week, but my mother and brother were in the midst of their own crises, and kept calling on me to help them with various tasks. I feel like I spent the bulk of the week packing up much of my stuff and my mother's from the basement (aka The Drone Bunker) where I used to live, running around to help my mother with notating and organizing music for her orchestra, and dealing with whatever my brother came up with as a sudden urgent crisis that moment.

(I did finally get around to dealing with the CDs that had been down there for several years. I went through and did some triage, leaving about 500 behind, to be sold off either by a friend of a friend who is an eBay broker, or perhaps via one of the better CD stores in the area. The remaining 700 or so I sent to my home in California. Media Mail turned out to be quite a deal: each of the six cubic-foot boxes held about 120 CDs in jewel cases, weighed about 31 pounds, cost about $11.50 to ship, and got cross country in well under a week.)

I got to spend some good time with my niece and nephew. My brother had been worried about how to tell them that you had passed away, but they seemed to take it well. The last time I saw them was Passover of last year, long enough ago for his daughter not to remember me, though I used to see them several times a week some years ago.

(Writing this, I suddenly flashed on my first memory of you. Sometime in 1963, when I was four or five, we had moved from Winnipeg to New Jersey, with you going on ahead of us to start work. I was sitting watching TV in my grandmother's living room when you walked in. I don't remember your face from back then, but I do recall your shape, silhouetted in the afternoon sun coming through the front bay windows, and your white t-shirt and black trousers. I asked who you were, and you said you were my father. I think I nodded and went back to watching TV.)

On Saturday afternoon, we went to see the new Harry Potter movie, despite my mother's worries that it would be too violent for them. Before the movie, the boy had to go to the bathroom, so I stood outside with the girl while my brother and he went in.

After a moment, the girl looked up at me and asked me, for the third or fourth time that day, who I was. I explained to her once again that I was her uncle, that I was visiting from far away, that she used to know me very well, and that she should stay with me rather than run off into the crowd. Then I grew a bit paranoid, realizing how suspicious people might get about a man attempting to tell a little girl that he was her long-lost uncle and that she shouldn't run away from near him.

The next day, as we all headed to a nearby skating rink, the girl looked up at me quizzically again and asked, "Are you my uncle?"

"Yes," I said again.

"Are you Uncle Jack?"

"No, but I have an Uncle Jack."

"Yeah," the boy chimed in, "but he's old. like ninety."

"Uncle Jack is 95," my mother said.

"That's old," he said again.

"Pop-pop's old, too," the girl said, speaking of you.

"Yeah," said the boy. "But he's dead."

"He's dead," the girl repeated. "So he's everywhere now, like God."

"Yeah, like God."

When my brother and I were digging through the Drone Bunker, he ran across the photo album from your marriage to my mother, over 50 years ago. It's amazing to see how young you looked then, in your late 20s, your eyes and face echoing those of all the men on your side of the family. I scanned in some of the pictures, and emailed them to myself for safekeeping.

Back in California, I have found a tape that you made for your granddaughter, some twenty years ago, when she was seven years old. On the tape, you spoke for about half an hour about your experiences as an American soldier and correspondent liberating the Nazi death camps during and after World War II. As I dubbed the tape to the computer, cleaned up the sound, and uploaded it the Internet Archive where anyone can now hear it, I was struck by the clarity and power of your voice.

The voice that I mostly have in my memory of you is that of your final three years, when your stroke in the hospital (after the heart failure, before they found the cancer) audibly changed your speech patterns, making your voice less clear and much higher in pitch. Since I wasn't around much, I didn't really realize how much the stroke had affected you until the Rabbi talked about it at and after the funeral. It's good to recall that you didn't always sound lost, frightened, and overwhelmed. And it was good to hear you speak of things other than that which was almost our sole topic of conversation in those closing years: your novel, which I had agreed to publish, but which was hit by unpredictable delays, technical difficulties, legal conundrums, and financial shortages to such an extent that, sadly, I wasn't able to get it into print and into stores before you passed away. (I'm told, though, that in your final days, your wife brought to the hospital the most recent printer's proof of the book, produced and bound as the final version will be, and that you got to see it and hold it in your hands for a moment before exhaustion claimed you once again.)

But on this tape, you speak clearly, directly, and effectively, telling of your perceptions and experiences with the cadences of a skilled speaker and teacher. And the passion comes through in your voice, insisting that no one ever again must forget or deny the horrors that you saw and the evil that created them. And you offered hope that your granddaughter, in growing up, would understand more and more of what you said on the tape, and carry your legacy forward. (As it turns out, she had lost her copy of the tape years ago, and was overjoyed when she learned that I had made and kept a backup and uploaded it where it should stay be available in perpetuity.)

It's several weeks later now, and I'm back to work as usual (if anything in retail in December can be called "usual"). I've gotten a lot of support and condolences from friends and coworkers, verbally, in cards, by email, and by responses to my post about your passing in my blog. I haven't been back to synagogue to say Kaddish for you (though I understand that my Orthodox brother-in-law is doing so consistently) or followed much of the other traditions, which feel somewhat out of context.

I did buy a set of yahrzeit candles (finding them at the local Safeway supermarket, hidden behind boxes of latke mix), and have been burning them in my room. They're supposed to burn for 24 hours each, but (especially in light of the menorah fire last Chanukah) it isn't safe to leave anything burning unattended around here, so I'm lighting them when I'm awake and in my room for an extended time.

And I do think of you several times each day, reminded by small things. And I did have an odd moment at work a few days ago, when doing my holiday shopping. Spotting a wonderful book on synagogue architecture, I took it off the shelf and put it in my basket, thinking that it would be a great Chanukah present for you. But then I remembered that I won't be able to give objects to you ever again, sighed, and put it back.

I don't particularly believe in an afterlife, though I like how my niece described you as being "everywhere." Yet I still find myself writing this as if you might read it, and engaging in other tiny fictions to keep myself and others going in your absence. But I'm told that my brother and sister, their children, those who you influenced in your second family, and I are your legacy, as are your words that are now online, and your novel (which I will get into print somehow soon).

So sleep well, drift about amiably, or dissipate in peace. We'll remember you.

Love,

Joe

(or, as you used to call me, J. Throgmorton Flapdoodle. Or Butch.)