Not Invited
by Julia M. Klein
JUNE 25, 2008 TAGS:
My mother, who is approaching 80 and doesn’t hear well, prefers e-mail to the phone. So when she calls, I worry that something terrible has happened. This time, it was the news we had all been dreading: My Aunt Sylvia had died.
My aunt, known for her even temperament and her auburn hair, had outlived her two younger brothers, my father and Leon, the baby of the family. She was 87 and had been declining for a while, so her death wasn’t really a shock. Its aftermath was.
“When is the funeral?” I asked my mother, knowing it would have to be soon, as Jewish custom mandated. We already had our plan: My mother would drive into Philadelphia from the suburbs in her new Camry, and then I would take the wheel and pilot us to central New Jersey. We had made this trip before, for my Uncle Moe’s funeral, and, later, for a visit with Sylvia and the cousins.
“We’re not invited,” my mother said. “It’s just a small graveside service for the family.”
But weren’t we family, too?
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I thought my mother had to be mistaken. Had she even heard correctly? Was she leaping to conclusions? Or was my cousin Ellen, Sylvia’s daughter-in-law, simply worried that my mother was too infirm to make the trip? I couldn’t call to find out because my mother said she didn’t have Ellen’s number.
“That’s it,” she said. “We’ll never hear from them again.”
And yet my mother and Sylvia had been close, or at least as close as two such different people could be. Theirs was an inherited bond. Every Sunday morning, at 9:30, without fail, my father and his sister, who was six years older, used to trade phone calls and family gossip. My father always had a weekly phone date with his mother, and when she died, Sylvia had stepped in. When my father died, about five years ago, my mother, in turn, had picked up the baton and continued the calls.
And I decided I needed to know Sylvia better.
Leon, my father’s fun-loving younger brother, was already gone. That was the big surprise: Unlike my father, who’d had two bypass surgeries and a near-fatal pneumonia, Leon had been completely healthy. Then, suddenly, he contracted a mysterious bacterial infection. I returned from a conference in Texas to learn that he was already dead and buried. My parents knew I couldn’t have gotten back in time for the funeral, on Long Island, so they didn’t share the news until I was home.
It felt weird not getting to say goodbye to Leon, in death or in life, and sadder still that I missed my father’s eulogy, his reminiscences of their childhood. Part of my mosaic of their past was now missing. I knew my father and Leon had been playmates as children. But for a while there had been some distance between them, perhaps born of rivalry. For years, they had exchanged their news mainly through Sylvia and seen each other only at weddings, bar mitzvahs and funerals. But, as they grew older, they had somehow reconciled and begun to talk more often.
After Leon’s death, I joined my parents at the wedding of one of Sylvia’s grandchildren, to a disc jockey. The music was fabulous and we all danced. A week after the wedding, my father had a stroke. He died in a rehab center three months later.
Now, Sylvia was the last link I had to their childhood. So, with my younger sister, I planned a visit to see her and Uncle Moe, who was ailing. I brought a tape recorder and a digital camera.
They seemed happy to see us. But what struck me most were their regrets. Neither had gone to college, an unaffordable luxury during the Depression years. “You’re a girl, you’ll get married,” Sylvia remembered her mother saying. Instead of becoming a teacher, Sylvia worked as an administrative assistant at a college. Moe, I learned, was a frustrated historian. He managed a supermarket.
Sylvia had already been married once when she met Moe, at a dance. “She was gorgeous,” Moe said. Sylvia took out her photo albums and showed me pictures of their modest wedding. There had been no honeymoon. They had had two children: Jeffrey, an oncologist, and Meryl, whose romantic escapades supplied grist for our family gossip mill. Their marriage seemed happy. They were both good-natured and seemed to ask little from life.
Sylvia showed us photos of my father, including childhood images that I had never seen. “He was a wonderful guy,” she said. “He was good even when he was young.” My sister borrowed the photos to make copies for us.
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That was the last time I would see Moe, but after the funeral, my mother and I made another pilgrimage to visit Sylvia. We had a convivial dinner afterwards with Meryl and Ellen, Jeffrey’s wife. We vowed that our generation, the cousins, would keep in better touch.
Not that there had ever been hostility -- only lacunae. When my sister and I hosted an intimate 50th anniversary brunch for my parents at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, Jeffrey took sick, and his entire family of five canceled at the last minute. The night before my father’s memorial service there was a minor blizzard, and none of the New Jersey relatives made it to Philadelphia.
A few months before her death, I called Aunt Sylvia, but the conversation was brief. When my mother told me her condition had worsened, I said we needed to make a final visit. My mother told me that Sylvia didn’t want us to come; she was in too much pain and felt she couldn’t host us properly.
Life knocks you around, a friend of mine once said. It also absorbs you, fills your days with trivia. Relatives are constants, not always requiring thought or investment. And relationships that are friendly, but perfunctory, are inertial. They tend not to change. Until they do.
I wanted to know more about Sylvia and her life, the kind of anecdotes you hear at funerals. I wanted to be in a room where other people, those who knew her better, were grieving. I loved her, and I wanted a chance to say goodbye.
I asked my sister how she felt about our exclusion from the funeral. My mother had left the message about Sylvia’s death on her cell phone, and my sister didn’t get it until days later. She was baffled, as I was; hurt; but also relieved: At least missing my mother’s message wasn’t the disaster it might have been.
I worried about my mother, who had been closer to Sylvia than either of us had. But she seemed to be taking the strange denouement in stride. “Sylvia,” she said, “is in my prayers.” She had finally laid down the baton.
My aunt, known for her even temperament and her auburn hair, had outlived her two younger brothers, my father and Leon, the baby of the family. She was 87 and had been declining for a while, so her death wasn’t really a shock. Its aftermath was.
“When is the funeral?” I asked my mother, knowing it would have to be soon, as Jewish custom mandated. We already had our plan: My mother would drive into Philadelphia from the suburbs in her new Camry, and then I would take the wheel and pilot us to central New Jersey. We had made this trip before, for my Uncle Moe’s funeral, and, later, for a visit with Sylvia and the cousins.
“We’re not invited,” my mother said. “It’s just a small graveside service for the family.”
But weren’t we family, too?
I thought my mother had to be mistaken. Had she even heard correctly? Was she leaping to conclusions? Or was my cousin Ellen, Sylvia’s daughter-in-law, simply worried that my mother was too infirm to make the trip? I couldn’t call to find out because my mother said she didn’t have Ellen’s number.
“That’s it,” she said. “We’ll never hear from them again.”
And yet my mother and Sylvia had been close, or at least as close as two such different people could be. Theirs was an inherited bond. Every Sunday morning, at 9:30, without fail, my father and his sister, who was six years older, used to trade phone calls and family gossip. My father always had a weekly phone date with his mother, and when she died, Sylvia had stepped in. When my father died, about five years ago, my mother, in turn, had picked up the baton and continued the calls.
And I decided I needed to know Sylvia better.
Leon, my father’s fun-loving younger brother, was already gone. That was the big surprise: Unlike my father, who’d had two bypass surgeries and a near-fatal pneumonia, Leon had been completely healthy. Then, suddenly, he contracted a mysterious bacterial infection. I returned from a conference in Texas to learn that he was already dead and buried. My parents knew I couldn’t have gotten back in time for the funeral, on Long Island, so they didn’t share the news until I was home.
It felt weird not getting to say goodbye to Leon, in death or in life, and sadder still that I missed my father’s eulogy, his reminiscences of their childhood. Part of my mosaic of their past was now missing. I knew my father and Leon had been playmates as children. But for a while there had been some distance between them, perhaps born of rivalry. For years, they had exchanged their news mainly through Sylvia and seen each other only at weddings, bar mitzvahs and funerals. But, as they grew older, they had somehow reconciled and begun to talk more often.
After Leon’s death, I joined my parents at the wedding of one of Sylvia’s grandchildren, to a disc jockey. The music was fabulous and we all danced. A week after the wedding, my father had a stroke. He died in a rehab center three months later.
Now, Sylvia was the last link I had to their childhood. So, with my younger sister, I planned a visit to see her and Uncle Moe, who was ailing. I brought a tape recorder and a digital camera.
They seemed happy to see us. But what struck me most were their regrets. Neither had gone to college, an unaffordable luxury during the Depression years. “You’re a girl, you’ll get married,” Sylvia remembered her mother saying. Instead of becoming a teacher, Sylvia worked as an administrative assistant at a college. Moe, I learned, was a frustrated historian. He managed a supermarket.
Sylvia had already been married once when she met Moe, at a dance. “She was gorgeous,” Moe said. Sylvia took out her photo albums and showed me pictures of their modest wedding. There had been no honeymoon. They had had two children: Jeffrey, an oncologist, and Meryl, whose romantic escapades supplied grist for our family gossip mill. Their marriage seemed happy. They were both good-natured and seemed to ask little from life.
Sylvia showed us photos of my father, including childhood images that I had never seen. “He was a wonderful guy,” she said. “He was good even when he was young.” My sister borrowed the photos to make copies for us.
That was the last time I would see Moe, but after the funeral, my mother and I made another pilgrimage to visit Sylvia. We had a convivial dinner afterwards with Meryl and Ellen, Jeffrey’s wife. We vowed that our generation, the cousins, would keep in better touch.
Not that there had ever been hostility -- only lacunae. When my sister and I hosted an intimate 50th anniversary brunch for my parents at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, Jeffrey took sick, and his entire family of five canceled at the last minute. The night before my father’s memorial service there was a minor blizzard, and none of the New Jersey relatives made it to Philadelphia.
A few months before her death, I called Aunt Sylvia, but the conversation was brief. When my mother told me her condition had worsened, I said we needed to make a final visit. My mother told me that Sylvia didn’t want us to come; she was in too much pain and felt she couldn’t host us properly.
Life knocks you around, a friend of mine once said. It also absorbs you, fills your days with trivia. Relatives are constants, not always requiring thought or investment. And relationships that are friendly, but perfunctory, are inertial. They tend not to change. Until they do.
I wanted to know more about Sylvia and her life, the kind of anecdotes you hear at funerals. I wanted to be in a room where other people, those who knew her better, were grieving. I loved her, and I wanted a chance to say goodbye.
I asked my sister how she felt about our exclusion from the funeral. My mother had left the message about Sylvia’s death on her cell phone, and my sister didn’t get it until days later. She was baffled, as I was; hurt; but also relieved: At least missing my mother’s message wasn’t the disaster it might have been.
I worried about my mother, who had been closer to Sylvia than either of us had. But she seemed to be taking the strange denouement in stride. “Sylvia,” she said, “is in my prayers.” She had finally laid down the baton.
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