a very long poem

[holli]

This didn't work at all as a short story, so: poem. Needs a title, though.




At my grandfather's funeral
we had an Orthodox rabbi,
a traditionalist,
not like us, but he had been
my grandfather's friend--
he told us, all the mourners
gathered around the grave
(and there were a lot of
mourners; grandpa had
a lot of friends--
i heard my grandmother say
to my mother
she had never seen so many people
at a funeral--
fifty cars in the procession!
she had never seen more than fifteen or twenty)
anyway, this rabbi,
Orthodox, devout and shabby,
he wouldn't let us start the service
or say the prayers
untill the grave was filled in.
We shouldn't let others bury our dead, he said,
like a reprimand,
this man, with his dog-eared prayerbook
and scruffy beard, looking down
on our unobservant, bacon-eating ways.
Never mind that Grandpa loved shellfish.
So everyone took a turn,
all the mourners, or nearly,
each adding a shovelful of dirt,
getting mud on their good shoes.
It took a long time.
My cousin took a turn, and my aunt,
but I just sat there, dry-eyed,
between my mother, in her dark glasses
that made her look like Jackie O.
and my little sister
(who, I thought,
didn't deserve to start off high school
with a thing like this).
The grave wasn't half full before she started crying.
I rubbed her back, gave her a Kleenx,
and we watched the old men
shovel dirt in their good suits.
By the end, only the youngest cousins
were still going,
the old men having long since given up.
I heard my dad say to my mother, sotto voce,
that we were lucky no one had a heart attack
and keeled over to join Grandpa--
I almost laughed, but managed
to keep it in.
When the grave was finally full, the rabbi
said the prayers with the Sephardic accent,
esses instead of t's.
The rest of us sad it the Ashkenazi way,
same as my grandpa.
I didn't cry once, though I came close
when my sister cried, and when
I heard my grandmother
fall apart, quietly,
in the funeral parlor bathroom.
It was only a week ago,
less than that, even, but it seems
like it happened years ago, millenia,
or to someone else entirely,
I don't know. I think, mostly,
I wish we had gotten a different rabbi.

Comments

[jameydee.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly a lurker for your stories, but this was wonderful and different, very evocative. I felt as if I were there at the graveside with your family.

This...

[debg.livejournal.com]

We shouldn't let others bury our dead, he said,
like a reprimand,
this man, with his dog-eared prayerbook
and scruffy beard, looking down
on our unobservant, bacon-eating ways.
Never mind that Grandpa loved shellfish.


lovely, lovely, lovely. That made me laugh and also cry; my mother began life as a nice Church of England girl, converted to Judaism because my father was Jewish, became completely fanatic. She was not the world's warmest or most likable woman.

At her funeral, the rabbi was a total stranger; he had to ask us names so he could fill them in. It felt like a huge farce. And when he asked us for "something about Sally he could praise, that her family would miss", we looked at each other and the best we could come up with was "well, she was, er, brutally honest."

To not quote my mum - who never did get yiddish down properly, poor Anglican woman - oy vey.

But such a lovely poem, sweetie. You can so very much write.