One Wake Evokes Six Flashbacks

As of this writing, we have no confirmed news of plans for Michael Jackson’s burial. According to pieces in Digital Spy and the Huffington Post, his brothers still hope he can be buried at Neverland Ranch. Despite earlier reports that his mother was dead set against the idea, the piece in Digital Spy says she might relent if Michael’s children were given ownership of the ranch. The piece in the Huff Post says it’s a terrible indignity for Michael not to be given the closure of cremation or a final resting place, and I agree.

Last week I went to a wake for the wife of a dear friend. As we walked to the car, I mentioned to Dennis that I hadn’t seen the open casket I’d observed at the handful of other wakes I’d attended in my adult life. He told me the decedent had been cremated, and when I looked skeptical, he said he was surprised that I hadn’t seen a container of ashes when we first walked in.

Decisions about the final disposition of a loved one’s remains are deeply personal. Still I couldn’t help thinking of my Aunt France’s outrage that my Aunt Belle had had Uncle Morris cremated after he choked to death on a piece of steak at a nursing home. Aunt Frances worked until well into her 80’s as a legal secretary for a personal injury lawyer, and for all I know the cremation scotched her plans for a coroner’s inquest.

The fact that my family is Jewish, and Jewish custom and religious beliefs discourage cremation play into my aversion to cremation. I asked Dennis if loved ones actually view a cremation, and he rolled his eyes. When I asked him how a family knows the body was actually cremated, he told me in his most lawyerly way that reputable mortuaries have been doing the work for years, and besides, they're subject to inspections.

Admittedly a burial precludes the concept of having one’s ashes scattered in some area special to the decedent, whether that be off the coast of a cherished vacation resort, along a favorite hiking trail, or closer to home on the Charles River. But burial calls to mind six video clips unique to the Wolinsky/Sashin family:

(1) The year I was five, we lived in “Kew Garden Hills,” the fantasy of a developer who probably thought that living in a place called Flushing, Queens would be lacking in appeal. On crisp autumn days when the sun was shining, my mother would take my brother and me for walks through Mount Hebron Cemetery – just off the Horace Harding Expressway. She may have shown us the grave of Grandpa’s brother, Uncle Al, a guy who reportedly squandered the money his hard-working immigrants parents had given him for post secondary education in pool halls.

(2) Shoveling earth on a casket after it’s lowered into the ground is a time-honored Jewish ritual. At my father-in-law’s burial, all of us shoveled in appropriately dignified attire. Except for Cousin Harriet’s husband, Howard, who had the audacity to shovel in a Hawaiian shirt. My first husband, Jerry, thought that Howard should have had the decency to stand back, given what he was wearing.

(3) Before the Jewish high holy days, both my mother and mother-in-law would speak of the obligation to visit a loved one’s grave in the same way one might talk of needing to get to the supermarket before running out of food or the dry cleaners before it closes. Not a particularly welcome task, but something that needs to be scheduled. Once, when I wanted to ingratiate myself to my mother-in-law and tweak Jerry at the same time, I proposed that we go “visit” Grandma and Pa. When we got to the cemetery, I took black and white pics with my trusty Olympus OM-1, and I think my mother-in-law was genuinely touched.

(4) Daphne may not remember this, but on one of our trips to Paris when she was a little girl, we toured Pere Lachaise cemetery, a magnificent park and also the final resting place of music celebs ranging from Edith Piaf to Maria Callas to Jim Morrison. Not to mention notable political and literary figures. For me the real poignancy was seeing tinted photos on the tombstones of those who had died before their time.

(5) The staff at Sharon Memorial Park had set up folding chairs for Jerry’s burial in January 1990. Burial scenes in movies and TV usually show mourners standing – sometimes with golf umbrellas documenting that the angels are shedding tears for the decedent. The cold, grey day precluded umbrellas, but I told the rabbi we would be standing too.

(6) After last week’s discussion with Dennis, I followed up by telling him I think it’s important for family members to be able to visit a grave. My mother used to make a big deal of taking gardening shears along to prune the pachysandra she’d planted on her father’s grave. I think it was her way of expressing her love for a parent.

The truth is that it’s been years since Dennis, Daphne or I have visited the graves of loved ones. Still, it’s comforting to be able to visualize where they are, and to know they are close at hand.