The Saddest Sound

It’s a Jewish practice for mourners to shovel some dirt onto the coffin of the departed, carrying the dirt on the back of the shovel to show reluctance for the task.   The sound of dirt striking a coffin is the saddest sound in the world.  It is also the most final.  It brings home to the mourners the unassailable fact that their loved one is gone.

I heard that sound Wednesday.  It was at the funeral of my first cousin, Malcolm Fritz, a year and a half younger than me.  As children we never lived more than a ten minute walk from each other’s homes and I used to play with him.  I remember our climbing a tree in his back yard.  For the past thirteen years he had been battling prostate cancer until at last he had no more strength to fight and the cancer killed him at last.

After the gravesite ceremony, I wandered over to my parents’ graves.  The first two American generations of my mother’s family are buried in this beautifully maintained cemetery in Wakefield, Massachusetts, a small town about twelve and half miles from downtown Boston.  There lie my grandparents, my parents, my two uncles, my three aunts, and my aunts’ and uncles’ spouses.  Malcolm was not the first of my maternal grandparents’ sixteen grandchildren to die – his older sister and a younger cousin preceded him, but neither is buried at this cemetery.  Malcolm is the first of the third generation, our generation, to be buried next to his parents.  You can read about it from another point of view, that of my niece, who kindly drove me up and back: lazygal.blogspot.com/2012/05/circle-of-life.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FNqJH+%28Killin%27+time+being+lazy%29

After the ceremony I wondered if my wife and I were doing the right thing to leave our bodies to a medical school.  I worried that that the death of the other would not seem as real as it would if the thud of dirt on the coffin were heard.  My wife assured me that nothing would make the death of the other seem real.  “Even if you’ve shoveled dirt on my coffin,” she said, “you will still look for me; you will see me walking down the street; you will find me everywhere and nowhere.  Only with time will you realize I’m gone for good, but even that won’t stop you from holding imaginary conversations with me.”  She convinced me that leaving our bodies to a medical school would not cause the other to suffer additional pain.

Once the medical students have learned what there is to be learned from our ancient cadavers, our instructions are that our remains be cremated.  My wife asked me if I’d like my ashes to buried in our family’s plot.  There’s room for several more corpses.  I asked her if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition for her, our children and grandchildren, my siblings and their children to travel all the way to Wakefield just to deposit  my ashes.  For  most of the people who would come to the burial, Wakefield is relatively inaccessible.  "We won’t visit your grave afterwards, no matter where it is," she said, "so after the burial it won’t matter. We’ll have plenty of time to arrange the funeral.”  She said she wouldn’t mind her ashes being placed there as well.  The idea of my being buried not only near my wife but also near my parents is pleasing to me.  Before we change our instructions I’ll have to check it out with our children and my siblings, but if they don’t object, we’ll probably be buried there. 

In the meantime, I remain the senior cousin, from the point of view of age, a position I hope to maintain for many more years.

2010-2012 Anchises - An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved