Connect the dots

Every conversation…. no, it’s not the conversation. It is I. I am the one who pulls memories out of every and all conversation. I connect to something I hear so I can probe my memories of Burt more deeply. I seek a deeper remembrance.

He’s connected to everything I hear and everything I speak of or do or see. I guess that connects me to Burt in these moments of grieving.

Tell me of your daughter’s bat mitzvah, and I remember that Burt read in Hebrew at a Seder we attended. I was surprised and impressed. Burt went through a bar mitzvah, of course; his mother would have seen to that. I first went to a synagogue while in college when a friend took me to Yom Kippur services; so, yeah, I didn’t get a bat mitzvah. Or any religious training.

I remember that Burt spoke Yiddish so he could communicate with his grandfather. [The Hebrew, he learned studying for his bar mitzvah]. His mother’s father lived with them. He had 6 children and sometimes would stay with his youngest daughter as well.

Both grandfathers were named Max. The maternal lived to the end of his 90s. By then, I guess Burt had married. This grandfather had been a Mason, a bricklayer. Burt told me he was always very active, walking every day, but retired by the time Burt knew him. He had come to America through Ellis Island.

One of Burt’s daughters and I had found the record of their entry. Burt’s mom was 4 when her family arrived. She, too, lived a long life; we buried her from the nursing home she chose for her last years at 98.

Burt’s dad had died at 68. Three of the men on the paternal side each died at that young an age. It always struck me as strange because they suffered different causes of death.

Burt’s father had a heart attack. His uncle, a serious gastro-intestinal issue. His grandfather, the other Max, died of an aneurysm while swimming. My mother, coincidentally, was 68 when she died.

Burt was 85. He broke the pattern of the men in his family, a pattern of just three. He didn’t match his maternal longevity, but her sisters and brothers didn’t live to 98, 99, either. I mean to say, it wasn’t a pattern, a heredity. I know my mother-in-law didn’t suffer dementia as her son surely did. Each generation was unique in its way.

Burt and I were both only children. Burt has four children. I have none, but count his two daughters as my own. There are estranged and strained relations with the sons.

One of the gifts of our marriage, my first and his second, were our friendship with the eldest son’s 3 girls. This was while they were little and into early teenhood.

We enjoyed time with them for many years, and the rift saddened us. I am glad we had those early years with the little girls. Sorry that Burt and I never met their children.

I can say that, technically, Burt was a great grandfather.

Burt was just 8 when his grandfather on his dad’s side died. This Max had a farm in Patchogue. He had been a haberdasher, but Burt only knew him as a farmer. He was proud that they had planted cucumbers together.

There was the children’s story about the man who sold hats piled on his head. I had mentioned it to the grandchildren when we spoke of their father’s family. I should have found the book to read to them. I didn’t, but I guess it wasn’t my heritage to pass along. Their grandfather’s father had been a cab driver.

He drove six days a week. Burt adored him. On Saturdays, his father would stop at home, bearing breakfast and tickets. On Sundays, they would go to a ballgame together. “Don’t tell mom about the hot dogs” became a tiny little joke that Burt and I made from his memories of Sunday with dad.

Tickets were a lifelong joy to Burt. We were sure that he liked buying tickets better than going to the show. As I have reminisced before, he too came home with tickets. Lots of them. And we did go to many many shows. And ballgames.

We all talk of being busy, but while we are in the midst of that busyness, I am not sure we know what keeps us so busy. Looking back, as I am, it begins to come clear. We always had a lot to do. Gives me so many digressions to treasure!

Grieving, as I told a friend this morning, as I just discovered today, is a process.