June 2022
Cemeteries are not places I frequent. Rarely, if ever, do I visit the people who live there. Well, actually, I often visit the cemetery two blocks from my house on my daily walks. I simply am not there to visit with the residents.
Until today. It was time to say goodbye to Mom. Buried a year and a half ago, I am finally venturing to the COVID-saturated, politically abhorrent state of Florida, where Mom enjoyed the last 40 years of her life.
It is time to unveil the stone and to say goodbye one last time. Lisa accompanies me.
On the telephone with the person who answers at the cemetery: “I’m on my way to see my mom. Can you give me the location of her grave,” and then I give her Mom’s name.
“I don’t know that, sir” she says. “I’ll have to look it up.”
The Star of David Memorial Chapel Inc has approximately 5280 people in their ground. I’m not surprised the office person doesn’t know Mom’s location off hand.
“I’m, like, super new to this job so give me a minute. N’wait, I can’t find it. Why don’t you just come in and I’ll have a map ready by the time you get here. Have a nice day.”
I think people who work in funeral homes should never say, “Have a nice day.”
Just like always, I brush my teeth, make sure my T-shirt is pressed, and now I’m ready to visit with Mom.
We are here, in the cemetery office. The folks are ingratiatingly pleasant, hands held together in front of their abdomens in a posture, I suppose, of supplication. They are helpful only in that they trace a line in marker pen on a map, a map with approximately 5280 boxes, each representing a deceased person’s burial plot.
And yet, it is surprisingly easy to find Mom’s marker, even though it is at surface level with its neighbors. I can see by their names that this is a Jewish neighborhood.
Here is the cemetery, or part of the cemetery. 5280 covers a lot of ground.
This is how the gravesite looks when we find it.
The stone, when we first came upon it, is simple. Family name in large letters on top, Dad’s first name and his dates on the right and Mom’s, newly chiseled, on the left.
When we talk about unveiling, I always have an image in my mind of an upright stone with some sort of cloth shroud covering the stone, to be whipped off in the style of Dracula. In this case, I wonder if “unveiling” means something different, rather something marked by a little sign.
Pearl ________
Interred: October 7, 2020
[something] Star of David, Lot 398, Space 04
Interment: 47760
Mom always liked it when Lisa and I showed up with flowers.
Among the flowers of the bouquet, I placed a Frappachino bottle, representing my request to Mom to forgive me for all the times I told her that she should stop drinking this stuff, that it wasn’t good for her health. I clearly did not know what I was talking about given that Mom lived until the age of 103.
Also, something for Dad, something he liked, something that gave him a rare pleasure, and something he introduced me to so that I might share his pleasure.
It is a Joyva Chocolate Covered Halvah Bar, a Middle Eastern confection made of a sesame paste and honey, and if you’re lucky, someone coated it with a layer of chocolate.
Unfortunately, when we present it to him and step back to admire our work, it resembles, slightly, a turd. I swear, there is no hidden message here. Remember, this is a guy whose grand-dog was named Dingleberry.
I read my eulogy for Mom, Lisa says a few words, I stumble through a transliteration of the Hebrew Kaddish — Lisa says, “I don’t know the language, but I think you carried it off.” — and we both said a few more words.
Meanwhile, the whole time we are graveside, a flock of crows clamor in a tree behind us. The flock thins until two are left. Lisa points out that it is Ralph and Pearl still with each other. They live on.
