White Hot Grief Parade Read online

  By the time I came to the end, I had stunned everyone—even myself.

  “I think I see what is going on here,” Rabbi Syme said after a long, considered pause. He unfolded his fingers and took a deep breath. “I am so sorry for your loss. All of you, I mean that. I am not aware of what your true beliefs are, or what you prescribe to in a holy way.” He clutched at the sides of his chair and sat forward. “But I do know what I believe—I like to think that I have a special relationship with God, one I nurture and cultivate and deeply respect. And every once in a while, he gives me a crystal clear message that I feel obliged to listen to. And right now? He is telling me that this girl is supposed to give this eulogy in the temple on Friday. So, I am going to go with God on this one.” He looked at me.

  I was out of words. I simply nodded my acceptance.

  My mother’s eyes widened and looked from the rabbi to me, to my grandparents and back again. Albert was still boring a hole in the space directly before him, seething. Edna was a different matter altogether. She jumped up as if she had been Tasered, beside herself with anger and panic.

  “She can’t give the eulogy!” she exclaimed. “That ungrateful little shiksa12 barely even knew him!” The air around her practically shook with her fury.

  “Now,” said the rabbi gently. “I am certain you don’t mean that, Mrs. Silber.”

  The Rabbi was correct. Edna didn’t actually mean that. Not exactly. What she really meant was that I would not perpetuate their version of the story, and if Albert had to endure his son’s funeral not being about Albert, then the world might explode. It was clear that Edna had been instructed to keep things on track and things were going so far off-track—farther than anyone imagined—and this was about to be Family Politics Armageddon Twenty-first Century style because the fury of my love had pulled this lie-fest right out from under them. I had been given a gift by this unknown but very perceptive rabbi, and I had not only stolen the eulogy, I had stolen their thunder, and that made my thunder grow stronger. (Because, that’s how it works, right? Like Highlander? There can be only one?)

  “She is going to ruin everything!” my grandmother screeched, tearing at her hair in desperation.

  Everything? I thought to myself, rolling my eyes. Also, I’m going to need that “World’s Best Grandma” mug back.

  But what I actually said was, “I think you’ve made your point, Grandma.”

  I had won.

  Now I just needed to write a eulogy.

  11 Almost as much as I hate yellow dessert.

  12 “Shiksa” is a derogatory Yiddish term for a non-Jewish girl or woman.

  Kinko’s

  (At rise: Kent and Lilly enter a local twenty-four-hour Kinko’s on Detroit’s legendary eight-laned promenade dotted nowadays by steak houses, furniture warehouses, and vintage ice-cream joints, Woodward Avenue. It is 1 a.m. The funeral is tomorrow. No one has slept in over a day. The funeral program must be printed. When, lo! The typical middle-of-the-night college-aged functionary approaches.)

  KINKO’S GUY: Hi

  LILLY: Hi there we w—

  KG: Hey.

  (There is a very awkward pause.)

  LILLY: Heeeey—

  KG: Welcome to Kinko’s.

  LILLY: Thanks?

  KG: How can I help you?

  LILLY: We need some copies.

  KG: Yeah.

  (Lilly looks to Kent. He smiles. She looks back at the Kinko’s Guy who is cleaning out some scum from under his fingernail.)

  LILLY: Is there any world in which I could go back there and do this myself?

  KG: No.

  LILLY: Right. So . . . (she digs into her bag for the funeral program) we would like this (she presents it) to be printed on this (she presents it) stone-colored card stock. Two programs per sheet. Centered.

  (The Kinko’s Guy stares at her.)

  KG: Centered?

  LILLY: Yes. Centered.

  KG: Like, in the middle?

  LILLY: Yes.

  (The Kinko’s Guy stares at her.)

  LILLY: Please?

  (The Kinko’s Guy takes the sheet.)

  KG: OK. How many do you want?

  LILLY: One hundred sheets.

  KG: Cool. Gimme a sec.

  (Kent and Lilly take a seat. It is 1:12 a.m. and clearly this poor local kid is only there to vaguely prevent the copy machines from being stolen, the vandals of Metro Detroit from Xeroxing their ass, their face, or, God forbid, copyrighted material.)

  KG: Here you go.

  LILLY: Wow, that was fast!

  (Lilly and Kent look down and behold the Guy’s handiwork. It is not in the center.)

  LILLY: I am so sorry, but you see, it is not actually centered.

  KG: Oh, wait—you wanted it like in the very center?

  LILLY: (Tensely) Yes.

  KG: Do you want me to do it again?

  LILLY: Yes, please.

  KG: OK, gimme a sec.

  (Lilly looks to Kent who looks back with a similar look of disbelief and despair.)

  KG: (returning) OK, here we go!

  LILLY: (looking at the page) No.

  KG: No?

  LILLY: No. You see, now it is indeed, in the center, but the text is on an angle. It is not straight.

  KG: But it is centered?

  LILLY: Yes.

  (And it occurs to her: This youth does not care about their deadline. This youth does not understand that someone is dead. This youth cares more about smoking weed and hanging out in the many illustrious parking lots of Birmingham, Royal Oak, and Troy, of driving from 7-Eleven to A&W and back again with some Midwestern Christmas-Trees-and-Corn Queen.)

  KG: I thought you wanted it in the center.

  LILLY: Yes.

  KG: And it is in the center. I don’t—

  KENT: I think what we are trying to express—

  (Kent interrupts what is certain to be Lilly’s moment of self-combustion with what we shall later learn to be his signature tone of patient, polite condescension that he utilizes in moments such as these: when dealing with imbeciles, unfair people, and when ordering food from a menu that has ridiculous names. Here that voice is—at what was now approaching 1:43 a.m.)

  — is that we would like the text to be both straight as well as in the center of the sheet. Do you see? Our concern here is that this copy is straight, but not in the center. This one is centered, but not straight. We would like the next one to come out of your copy machine both in the center and straight. Does that make sense?

  KG: Totally.

  KENT: Great. Let’s give this one more try.

  (The Kinko’s Guy returns again. Lilly cannot even look. She keeps her eyes held on Kent who looks down and keeps a cool demeanor as he realizes that it is still wrong. All wrong. He takes a breath and places his hand over it, eyes intent on Lilly.)

  LILLY: Skip the part that is going to make me nuts.

  KENT: That would be all of it. (He looks at Kinko’s Guy again) Try again please.

  (The Kinko’s Guy walks away, and does. When he returns? Victory. Well, minor victory— it still looks pretty bad but it is both centered as well as straight and, at 2 a.m., they will take it.)

  KENT: One hundred sheets of that, please.

  (Lilly and Kent glide back down a desolate Woodward Avenue toward 1367. In Xerox harmony, they pray that Al has written a brilliant eulogy in their absence, and that sleep is in their future. They are silent—the first silence they’ve had since the chaos began, and the last until it is over.)

  Writing the Eulogy

  I was holding an apple. There is a very specific way my father always went about eating apples. The steps taken were as follows:

  1. Select the apple (preferably a Fuji, Red Delicious, or Braeburn)

  2. Remove the insidious fruit sticker

  3. Curl that stupid sticker into a ball and either:

  a. dispose of it properly,

  b. flick it into the ether, or

  c. stick it somewhere else eq
ually, if not entirely more inappropriately, irritating for the sake of both comic irony and convenience.

  4. Carefully select the perfect first bite, preferably in the top “breast” of the apple. (Beginning well is key.)

  5. Break the skin with your teeth, biting with full force while sucking the juice and assessing the quality of this apple experience based on overall flavor, sweetness, juiciness, texture, mealiness and, above all, crispness and “crack.”

  6. Continue to eat from the top to the bottom of the apple in large bites until nothing remains but the core.

  7. Lick fingers, switch hands, repeat.

  8. Eat bottom of the apple including bottom stem and half of the core, then the core itself, then the top of the apple.

  9. Then, holding the stem, clean it off like meat from a bone in an old cartoon.

  10. Contemplate the apple stem you are left holding in your hand.

  11. Finish the procedure by placing the remaining stem in an inappropriate or annoying place that is not the garbage.

  I had not realized it until that very moment, but that was exactly how I also eat an apple.

  I had procured the apple in my hands from the my family’s storage of food that had been in the fridge before he was dead. This apple was not a part of the donations, the deli platters, the tiny, soldiered sticks of vegetables that came with dips and spreads and soup, and enough bagels to stuff a mattress. It had been there before he died, and now I was about to eat his apple—or an apple that could have been his, had he lived.

  The apple was old and the skin wrinkled when I pinched it. As I took the first bite, I discovered the sweetness to be gone, the fruit mealy. Oh well. Nothing can be fresh forever.

  But I kept eating the not-fresh apple—breaking the skin, sucking the juice, passing judgments, licking fingers, following the steps. I concentrated on eating the apple because I could not do what needed to be done.

  When they had gotten back from Kinko’s, Kent and Lilly had sat me down on the bed in my childhood bedroom. I had changed back into the same pajamas I was wearing when he died. They opened Kent’s laptop, a Mac from the late nineties that was the same teal color as my pajamas.

  I sat on the bed, my hands resting limply on top of my crossed legs. I made bad jokes to put them at ease, but they were not laughing. There was not time. It was well after midnight and the funeral was in less than ten hours, and there was no eulogy because I had not, would not, could not write it.

  So Kent and Lilly almost held me down. Their faces were tired; their hands extended toward me as if to press the magnitude upon me through their gestures, as if their hands might keep me from toppling like a crumbling tower. They made it clear that this was it—there was no more procrastinating to do.

  They opened the laptop, they handed me the apple, and they closed the door.

  Whether or not I wanted to write it, the eulogy had to be written.

  Thirty minutes went by. I did not move. I stared at the closed door, and I ate the apple. It took me biting the outside of my hand to jolt me from the trance and look down into the palm: just the stem.

  I closed my eyes and began.

  I am at Mackinac Island—a tiny island off the coast of Northern Michigan between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas. Idyllic. Iconic. A summer haven for migrating travelers. We had just convinced ourselves to permanently set roots down in Michigan after spending the entire summer there with my grandparents in 1993. It is all settled; we will move the following December, pack our entire Californian life up in boxes, and the Silber family will cross the country and live. Such decisions are harrowing, but so are entire summers spent with your strange grandparents, thus we are exhausted and in need of a drive. A long one. We took the I-75 up the west coast of Michigan, through Traverse City and up toward the Mackinac Bridge, then over it onto the Island. It is magical—a dot of land that time has forgotten. No cars, only horses, bicycles, and carriages. The sun is blaring, the lake water is glistening, and all of us are so happy. We take the tour, behold the grandeur; we waltz in and out of the quaint little shops and taste the local specialties, Mackinac Island Fudge and its ice cream. We sit on a bench and take photos and I note, as I nestle next to my father, that I fit perfectly in the crook of his strong and effortlessly elegant arm that is curled around me. I hold an ice cream cone. My face hurts from smiling. This will be the final family memory I have of the three of us before Dad’s illness began. I am eight years old and completely in love with my family, with being alive and in the world. An entire day is spent together. Without worry. Joyfully.

  I am on the Opera Field with Kent. It is late; only half an hour remains before we are both supposed to sign in at our dorms, but the stars are so bright and we are hiding in a shed curled around one another, unable to get close enough, in the desperate, swollen manner that only two seventeen-year-olds in the first flushes of true love in the springtime can possess.

  I am in Los Angeles and I am four years old. We are still at Century Hill, just outside Studio City, living in my first home. A giant box of Barbie dolls lies beside me, and my dad is there, looking dapper in his business suit, fully engaged in playing with me. He is dressing the dolls and organizing the clothing and asking me a thousand questions, all of which he appears to be genuinely interested in. This would be a quality I would come to recognize as uniquely his, and not at all unusual, in the years to come. We have hit an impasse at clothing organization because the Barbie clothing hangers have gone missing. Now we are both pawing the bottom of the box in an attempt to retrieve them—all attempts, thus far, in vain. At long last, my tiny hand clutches one and lifts it triumphantly to the surface. I am beaming and my dad raises both hands in the air as if I had scored a goal. “Perseverance!” he exclaims, and I raise my hands up too, wanting to be just like him. “Perseverance!” I repeat, not knowing what it means, but knowing it is good.

  I am in the car three months ago—three months before my father’s death. It is just after my birthday in July. My parents have come up to Interlochen to visit and I am driving alone in the car with Dad, who is incoherent. He coughs, and large chunks of bloody tissue fly from within him into a handkerchief he has handy for this express purpose. The handkerchief is dark black with blood. I am filled with horror as I continue to drive, eyes not on the road, but on the handkerchief. He draws my gaze up as he comes up for air. The moment is very still, and we make a silent agreement not to talk about it.

  It is a Sunday morning in the past. I only know it is Sunday because the house is full of the aroma of bagels from Elaine’s on Rochester Road. We’re gathered around them, so fluffy and full there is not even a hole in the center.

  It is Shabbat, and at Temple Isaiah (my Jewish preschool in Los Angeles) every Shabbat they select an “Aba” and an “Ima” (“father” and “mother” in Hebrew) for that week’s celebration to teach the young children about leading services. This week I am the Ima, and Dad and I have gone downtown to the Jewish bakery and bought two fluffy challah breads for the occasion— one for me (to hold on top of my head during the preschool ceremony that will take place at tiny desks above a sea of blocks and dress-up clothes and colorful plastic chairs) and an extra for later that evening. Dad is smartly dressed in a suit and overcoat to accompany me to preschool Shabbat, and, as we approach the school hand-in-hand, we stop at the abandoned cinema a few addresses down from the school. Dad spots the same homeless man that has sat upon the honey-colored steps every day for as long as I can recall. Dad stops before him and says, “Hello,” my little hand clutched in his. He hands the man the second challah bread, smiles and says, “Have a great weekend, OK?” The homeless man looks up at my dad and grins, smelling the loaf and laughing out loud with utter joy. I look over my shoulder as we walk away to watch him take his first bite.

  I am fifteen and A, S, and K—three seemingly innocuous older girls who at one time I thought to be my friends—are making my life very difficult. They are all two years older, each killing me in their own wa
ys, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Silence. Rumors. I don’t know what I have done to upset them other than receive leading roles in the school play before what they deemed to be “my time.” Perhaps they felt it was unfair. Perhaps it was. It didn’t feel unfair; I was as talented and as hardworking as anyone, but perhaps it was unfair to get the lead so young. I am wearing a dark-gray peacoat as I do at all times. I cannot move. I am curled in my bed. I have been sleepwalking through my life for months, unable to smile, or laugh or focus on schoolwork. All of this, and Dad is sick—so sick—and no one is talking about it, therefore I feel I have no right to talk about it either. The truth is I do not feel safe anywhere. All I ever feel is the worst kind of fear—cold, quiet, invisible, and unmentioned. The safest place is inside this gray peacoat that I will not take off for a year.

  I am upstairs doing homework on the weekend, and the University of Michigan has just scored and the entire house is shaking from the volume on the downstairs television being turned up full blast as the Michigan fight song blares. “Hail to the Victors.” Mom and I make our way downstairs and observe Dad as he marches around in sharp turns (the way one might in a marching band), stone faced, and holding an invisible cat in his hands as he does so. To anyone else this would be an odd sight, but not to Mom and I who are used to it. This old tradition used to contain a real cat, a cat my parents owned just before I was born named Pounce, who was always ready and willing to march whenever Michigan scored. Now he is only there in spirit.

  I am in the Traverse City Emergency Room an hour after Dad has collapsed during the final few days of performances (known as Festival) at Interlochen. It is two days before my high school graduation. Kent kissed me goodbye at the school infirmary where I heard the news before I left for the hospital. He held me close and watched with a different kind of love than I had ever seen in his face as I drove away. When I arrive, our family friends David and Robin are already here. They both stand by his bedside and Robin holds my hand. “Things are different now,” she whispers in her soothing voice as she strokes my back. I stare at her hard because I don’t understand what she means. I understand it now. Dad is doing that thing where he sings everything subtly off-key until someone notices. He is doing this to be funny.