by Elliot Zashin (Merrillville, IN)
In my 50s, I was still receiving birthday cards from my Aunt Lens, one of my father’s sisters. Like clockwork, I knew the card would arrive on time, and although I thought there might be some age when she would decide I was too old for birthday cards, that day never came. I realize now that in some way I was still the little boy she used to babysit or the preadolescent stamp collector who came to visit at her home and talk about stamps with my uncle, who was an expert amateur philatelist. So for her, I’d never be too old to get a birthday card.
I usually saw Aunt Lens (her self-adopted nickname for Lena) once a year in the summer, when I was in NYC to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary. My Uncle Bernard, who lived near Aunt Lens, picked her up and brought her to his home, giving me an opportunity to chat with both Aunt Lens and her sister, my Aunt Mollie. We always went to the same local Chinese restaurant and ordered the same dishes, leaving with the same doggie bags. We weren’t keeping kosher, but it was still a ritual observance.
Aunt Lens was always pleased to see me; never having had any children of her own, she had a special fondness for the daughters and sons of her five siblings. Aunt Lens was a short woman, a little on the plump side, but always neatly attired and coiffed. She had an alert manner but generally didn’t have a lot to say during these visits. In her later years, her life was probably rather routine and even monotonous, so she may not have felt inclined to expand on her daily doings. Twice widowed after being married to demanding husbands, she never had a chance to fulfill her own capabilities, which, I’d heard from my mother, were considerable. My father’s family was very traditional, very patriarchal, and whatever her youthful ambitions might have been, Aunt Lens had loyally fulfilled her role in the family.
Even as her health became more delicate, she never complained in my presence. I knew that my father’s sisters were very close, and throughout their adult years, they called each other every day. This was part of who they were and perhaps gave them a chance to vent a bit. The family didn’t believe in airing its problems openly. When Uncle Bernard called to say Aunt Lens had died, I felt that I should attend the funeral, but despite some pangs of conscience I let the inconvenience of making a quick trip to NYC be my excuse for staying home. The next summer when I visited with him and Aunt Mollie, he described the funeral:
Because Aunt Lens hadn’t been a member of a synagogue for many years, Uncle Bernard had recruited Rabbi Ploni (not his real name, but the term the Talmudists used to describe an anonymous rabbi) to conduct the burial service. He was one of the itinerant rabbis who could be found through the cemetery on short notice. Shortly before the graveside ceremony, my grieving relatives briefed him about who Aunt Lens was and why they loved her. Unbeknownst to them, Rabbi Ploni was juggling a number of services at the same time. Funerals didn’t necessarily occur evenly over the weeks and months, but these gigs were how Rabbi Ploni made his living; he couldn’t afford to pass one up just because scheduling was tight.
The little group of my two aunts, one uncle, and several nieces gathered near the open grave and waited for Rabbi Ploni to arrive. The usual graveside ceremony for a Jewish burial is a rather simple matter: a psalm or two, el mole rachamim, kaddish, and of course the eulogy. Jews are rather matter of fact about death and burial. We don’t make an elaborate ritual of returning “dust to dust.” My relatives weren’t expecting any surprises; they’d been through this before with other members of the family, and Rabbi Ploni seemed to know the drill. But soon after he began his eulogy, my relatives became confused; before long it dawned on them that he wasn’t speaking of Aunt Lens but of some other woman, expatiating on her many virtues. My uncle, as the only male and the arranger of the funeral, had to interrupt and get Rabbi Ploni back on track. The rabbi was very embarrassed and apologetic but managed, after some shuffling, to find the correct remarks, complete the eulogy, and bring the ceremony to a close.
As I mentioned, my father’s family didn’t believe in making a fuss publicly; my grandparents and my aunts and uncles believed in decorum, not chutzpah. Even if it meant swallowing some gall, you did it because it wasn’t right to make a scene and embarrass others or yourself. So my relatives stumbled away from the graveside after saying kaddish and dropping clods of earth on the coffin, mumbling to each other and feeling very humiliated. Even though only members of the immediate family were there and they hadn’t been embarrassed in front of friends and acquaintances—what a shanda. My oldest cousin was furious and demanded that my uncle not give Rabbi Ploni the usual honorarium, but Uncle Bernard didn’t think this proper, despite his own feeling that the rabbi had screwed up badly. After all, this was how the rabbi made his living; you couldn’t deny a man his living.
Hearing my uncle’s story, I felt rather guilty that I hadn’t attended; as the most knowledgeable Jew in my extended family, perhaps I might have done something to stop Rabbi Ploni before he got so far off or at least done something to assuage my relatives’ discomfort and salvage the memory they would have of this event. At the same time, however, I was amused because this tale of the misbegotten eulogy had the wry comic quality of a Sholom Aleichem or Y.L. Peretz story, particularly with its ironic edge: Aunt Lens, a loyal and dedicated daughter to her parents, a wife who catered to her two husbands, a loving sister to her siblings, and a fond aunt to all her nieces and nephews, hadn’t complained that her life had been unfulfilling; she’d done all that was asked of her and more. And yet, as she departed this world, she couldn’t even get a proper eulogy. Why not? Because Rabbi Ploni, an honorable man struggling to make a living helping Jews in mourning, had taken on too much that day and gotten his note cards mixed up in the press of a busy afternoon. Life can play such tricks on us.
Some months later, Uncle Bernard called to tell me it would soon be time for the unveiling at Aunt Lens’s grave. My uncle could now smile a little at the memory of the funeral, but he still wasn’t about to hire another rabbi; one humiliation was enough. Thus he wanted to know what the appropriate prayers and rituals were. My first response was to say that I’d call my own rabbi and get back to him, but then I realized I had a chance to do tshuvah. “Uncle Bernard, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll come to NY and officiate—even for a funeral you don’t really need a rabbi, and certainly not for this kind of ceremony.”
And so my relatives had a second chance to say goodbye to Aunt Lens. As we gathered at the gravesite, I explained the significance of the unveiling ceremony: that Jews returned almost a year later to the scene of the funeral in order to close the formal mourning period as a community. I read a few of the customary unveiling psalms. Instead of a formal eulogy, I spoke of my memories of Aunt Lens and related a couple of humorous anecdotes about babysitting me that she’d enjoyed telling and retelling over the years.
Then I invited my relatives to share their memories—mostly the happy ones—and they responded in kind, almost eagerly. Each had a story or reflection: what a loyal sister she’d been, the daily telephone conversations, her cheerful tone (even when life might not have been), her unusual sense of style and keen eye for detail, her missed career as an interior decorator because of her dedication to being the bookkeeper for the family business. From the younger generation came memories of the birthday cards she never failed to send, her pride in their accomplishments, and her presence at all the family simchas.
Once we’d exhausted, for the time being, the memories that would live on, we said kaddish and grew quiet. As we walked away from the newly placed headstone, I saw smiles on my family’s tear-streaked faces. Aunt Lens had finally gotten her eulogy, and now her memory could be a blessing for us all.
Elliot Zashin was a Hillel director for 13 years at 2 different campuses, after being an academic (political science) for almost 13 years (without tenure). While working for Hillel, he took an MA at the Jewish Theological Seminary during summer breaks. (That is where he learned about the title Rabbi Ploni, and much else.) He comes by his sense of Jewishness through his father, who was a self-taught Bible interpreter, leading sessions at the Jewish Home for the Aged in Tucson after he retired from a business in NYC, and who wrote a lot about current events, political issues, and essays usually imbued with Mosaic ethics.
The Jewish Writing Project 