At a Funeral...

My Uncle’s Funeral
By Howie Copywriter

I ended up going to the funeral of my uncle, John Doe. John actually is my aunt's second husband, and not the father of my three cousins. He seems to have been a nice guy, though my recollection of him is more as a phantom, then someone concrete. Oddly enough, I remember his son more (from his first marriage). That is probably because his son Steven was at the funeral and alive to remind me of him. Perhaps I saw Uncle John dancing at some parties, or smiling in a family photograph. Too bad, you don’t get to be at your own funeral, at least consciously.

The funeral was at a large cemetery in New Jersey, with a neo-classical domed building in the center, which vaguely reminded me of an airport lounge. You take off, but you don’t come back. This was the mausoleum, where families had a service for their departed loved ones, and then the departed was quickly put into one of the hundreds of compartments along the wall. To me it was a new practice. I'm used to having a big service in a funeral home and then making a long trek to a cemetery, where a 6-foot hole is dug and there is a sensuous feeling of digging the earth, and putting the body in the ground. We go from ashes to ashes and dust to dust. But in this place, after our service, another group of mourners could be ushered in under the dome to have another burial.

The service was brief, with the high point being the eulogy by John's son Steven. He told the story of John's early life. John had been born in Poland and after the initial attack on Poland during World War II, he and his mother and father ended up in Siberia someplace, like unwanted nomads. John was sent to an orphanage in the city of Tehran by his parents, who wanted to have him escape their desperate conditions. Later his father and mother also escaped to Tehran, in Iran. His father soon after died and it took years for his mother, Elsa, to find John in the orphanage, where he was under an assumed name. Later Elsa and her son John moved to America, where she found a job as a bookkeeper in a small business in New York City. Elsa and John were comfortable, except for the fact that her boss Stanley was very temperamental, always yelling at Elsa and giving her a hard time. Once, after a long day, Elsa asked Stanley, “Why do you yell at me, and make my life miserable”? “Because I love you”, was the answer. Soon after they married, and that is how John, who was adopted by his new father, got the last name Doe. When John was in the US Armed Forces in the early 1950s, he wasn’t even a citizen yet.

Later, John went on to become a legendary successful businessman and a leading player in the department store business. He and my aunt retired to a posh resort in Southern California. And yet, when my aunt came back East, with the body of her husband, there seems to be something missing. There were only about 35 mourners, small for such an illustrious businessman. This happens when you retire, people forget about you so fast.
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