Observances & Rituals:
'Beloved mother, grandmother...'

By Lauren Matthew
The Jewish State

There are certain things that take great effort to put down on paper, and certain things that are easy. This takes effort. Bear with me.

In early March of 2006, I visited my great-grandmother's grave. I went alone, and I took the day off from work to do it.

She's buried in the Bronx, in a Catholic cemetery -- St. Raymond's (don't get me started). The place is huge, and actually has two separate, non-contiguous sections. Had I not had a receipt from my mother for the numbered plot of land, I would never have found the grave.

It was very windy. The sky was so gray it was almost white. I had a scarf and I had gloves, and I remember being quite happy I'd worn jeans and not a skirt. I remember being astounded by how quiet it was, and by how many trees there weren't. I remember feeling very alone.

The whole way to the cemetery (which constituted a train ride and a subway route), I was fine.

My hands didn't start to shake until I saw the headstone. The simplicity of it was startling: her name, birth and death dates, and that was it. Nothing about who she was -- a mother, a grandmother, a wife.

A Jew.

I remember taking a deep breath, and I remember it stinging. I remember my hair blowing in my face. I remember smiling, just a small smile.

"You and I have a lot to talk about," I said.

I'd had it all planned out, everything I wanted to ask. 'Why?' was at the top of the list. Why did you give up on this? Instead, when I opened my mouth, history came out. No questions.

I told her about her children, and her grandchildren. I took out a little Tupperware container full of pictures, and I set it down on the headstone. Inside, there were pictures of my grandmother and grandfather, of my mother and my uncle, of my mother's wedding, of my mother holding me when I was a baby, of my sister and me, of my sister's wedding. I remember trying to find pictures of all of this, and putting them inside, and hoping it'd be enough.

I told her about how beautiful her daughter and granddaughter had turned out, how strong. I told her about the sound of my sister's laugh -- something that ranks, for me, among the most infectious sounds in the world.

Then I started to tell her about me. About how I'd learned about our family history, about what I was trying to do (at that point, I was still looking for a rabbi to work with, and I was just beginning to keep Shabbos).

I remember my voice catching, more than once. I remember my eyes feeling so cold suddenly, and it taking a good few minutes for me to realize it was because they were wet.

I told her I wished I'd known her, known her reasons, and I wished I could understand better -- though I think I have a good idea why things turned out the way they did.

I had asked a friend of mine to write something for me, in Hebrew, so I could leave it with the pictures. It was something so simple for him to do, but something I could not, at that time, even begin to write myself: "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God."

I took the piece of paper with that written on it out of my coat pocket and put it in the Tupperware, and that's about when I realized I was not the only person in the cemetery.

There was someone else. Someone else standing right near me, watching me. A man in a dark suit, a dark coat … and a kippah.

At that point in my life, I already knew that there were some Jews who wouldn't enter a Christian cemetery. I already understood that. I just figured that this man had a reason to be here, the same way I did.

"She's yours?" he asked me, looking at the dates on the tombstone.

I nodded. "Great-grandmother."

I don't remember the specifics of the conversation (when I'm emotional, I get hazy; when I'm crying, I get quite hazy), but I remember being told that she'd be glad I was there, and being asked if 'Mary' (which is the name on her headstone) was her real name.

"It's complicated," I said.

"Usually is."

I remember thinking that I wished I knew exactly what to say. I wished I knew all of Kaddish, so I could say it, because I was sure no one ever had, not for her.

Almost exactly at the same time as the thought ran through my head, the man next to me started speaking: "Yis'ga'dal v'yis'kadash sh'may ra'bbo..."

I've been told that I can look as though I'm not listening, even if I am. And while my memory of the exact chain of events that day may not be 100 percent accurate, I know my mouth dropped open. I managed 'Amen' at the appropriate points, but I was utterly shocked.

I haven't really told anyone about this trip, aside from a few friends. Some of them told me they were amazed, too. Some of them told me that maybe the man I met was Elijah the Prophet. Maybe. If I've learned nothing else in the past two years, I've learned that God does indeed move in mysterious ways.

As I left that day, before walking away, I did two things that, no matter how fuzzy the day's details get in my memory, I will never forget. I took a rock from near my great-grandmother's headstone, and I put it in my coat pocket. I still have it, and it sits in my apartment.

As for the second thing… one benefit of being a writer is that I always, always, have a pen on me. I took a piece of paper out of my purse, and I scribbled a few words on it before I placed that inside the Tupperware, too.

I wrote my great-grandmother's name, including maiden name (Horovitz), birth and death dates, and the following: Beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

I thought it was only right.