I bet you can find the new year's resolution hidden in this story

Christmas is not a good time for funerals. It’s cold and often rainy plus people are working hard to inflate their holiday spirit and then clunk, someone dies. It’s a bummer, really. My husband and I stood beside not one but two of our good friends who had the unfortunate inconvenience of losing their elderly mothers the week before Christmas. The fact that one was Jewish made no difference because my husband remembers fondly sitting around her Hanukkah tree as a teenager. He shared that memory with her the last time we saw her alive. The giggle and the grin she flashed at the recollection made her look 40 years younger than her almost 90 years.

We stood milling around in the foyer of the funeral home with a remarkable cross section of humanity, all ages, races and creeds. It struck me as a very large and diverse crowd given the time of year, the awful weather, and the age of the lady whose earthly remains rested in a plain pine box covered with a black velvet drape. The cantor had an awkward pace when speaking, but when he performed as shaliach tzibbur, emissary of the congregation, he voice rang strong and true. It made me wish for his life to be a musical so he could always sing his thoughts with flawless ease. Regardless of his hesitation, the words he spoke, both in Hebrew and in English, reached out and touched the assembled mourners. He told her life like a song, how she loved to dance, her generosity with her family and friends, her prepetually youthful attitude. Then he turned the service over to the audience, allowing sons and daughters, inlaws and friends to share their stories. When it was all said and done we had laughed and cried and rejoiced that this woman had lived, really lived, and made her own distinctive pattern on the fabric of all our lives.

Our friend thanked us again and again as we stood in a freezing rain, under a drippy tent, watching the box that held his mother lowered into the earth. In unison my husband and I replied, “Where else would we be?” Usually he is not a practicing Jew, having married a shikse, a protestant girl, and now teaching at a Methodist University far away in the mid-west. Today however he wears the Yamacha and clings to the tradition of his people. Our friend whispered that his mom hated the custom of putting a shovel of dirt into the open grave, yet when it is his turn, he adds his bit of earth and places the spade down into the loose pile for the next person. I feel the thousands of years of tradition as each man and woman takes their place in the line to find closure and consolation in the ritual act. After we were invited to stop by his mother’s home for the meal of condolance and to share in the first day of shiva. I did not check to see if mirrors were covered, but I did enjoy the lox, reminissing with our friends, and being surrounded by the books and pictures of this remarkable woman. I am smiling as I tell our friend how happy we are that we could be with him today, and how lucky we all are to have been blessed by his mother.

A few days later my husband and I headed to yet another funeral home to console another grieving son. On the way he told me the only story he knew about this friend’s mother, an event that occurred a few years before we met. Both of the men were in their mid twenties, working professionals, but my husband owned a home of his own while his friend lived with his mom. His door bell rang on a Sunday morning and his friend stood there with a worried look on his face. Seems like he had spent the night with his girlfriend, later his wife, and he wanted my man to cover for him with his mother. “Can you tell her I spent the night at your house, please?” said the fully grown man standing at his door. Of course, my husband agreed to provide the excuse and I shook my head in amazement at the recollection.

When we arrived at the mortuary the deceased rested in an open casket at one end of the room and the living gathered at the other end. After expressing our sympathy and signing the book, we all stood around and chatted about anything else we could thing of except the corpse. The company consisted of a few coworkers of our friend, his sister and brother in law, and a girl who had been the decease’s caretaker. The state personnel system where they work was brought up in review, and stories shared about conferences and meetings. Our friend talked longingly of traveling to England as well as other places he had never been. I think I heard a resolution in his voice to go, now that his duty to his mother is done, but I wonder if after all the years of allowing her to hold his spirit, the will to start living fully has grown too weak to reanimate. Someone asked about the service and our friend said it would be held the next morning, graveside only, and he was sure that even if it rained the mausoleum could hold all the mourners. I have no doubt that there will be room for all who wish to attend.