I wondered what it would be like, what I would think, what I would feel when I visited my grandfather for the first time. I had never met him, never spoken with him, never heard his voice or seen his handwriting. There was just a single picture of him, a small headshot, formally posed, displayed in an oval frame just a few inches tall. The photograph is of a man in his twenties, perhaps his thirties, well dressed in coat and tie, his moustache trimmed and tidy. I suppose he would be considered somewhat handsome.
I knew little about him. He had emigrated from Lithuania, in America he worked for a time as a laborer on the railroad, then, in partnership with his brother had a small shop that sold inexpensive merchandise. I was told he was very proud of the youngest of his four children – the only girl – and carried her about the neighborhood when she was an infant just to show her off.
That infant girl was my mom. She told me all that but there was no more she could tell me; she had been not yet two years old when he died of pneumonia in 1922. Strange though, I think now, that he was never, at least in my presence, spoken of. Surely Nat, my mom’s oldest brother, who had been thirteen or nearly so when their father died had memories of him. Likely the next son, Meyer – who was called Dick by his siblings – had at least some recollections of my grandfather. Meyer/Dick had been nine years old when their father died. Jack was the third son and my favorite uncle. At a dinner with extended family once (by then Nat and Meyer/Dick had moved far away) he answered a question posed by my mom as to any memories of their father. I do not recall why she asked him that, it was so out of what was ordinary. Jack – not quite five years old back then – related that his sole memory was a vague one of their dad being taken away on a stretcher to the local hospital where he eventually died.
Now I wish I had asked about Grandpa. What was he like? Did he smile and tell jokes, did he pick up and hug his children, was he patient and kind? My grandmother, his widow, could have told me; she lived with us during the years I was growing up. She spoke only Yiddish but I understood it well enough then to have been able to get most of what she said. But it never occurred to me to ask.
Perhaps they never spoke of him because of the tragedy of his death and its effects. My grandmother could not support four children so the three boys spent some time in the “Jewish Home for Aged and Orphans.” How difficult that must have been for them and for her. When Jack died at age 87 – the last of the brothers to die – my mom mentioned at the gathering following his funeral that not having a father growing up must have affected him; perhaps that was the reason he ignored her advice and never married. Then she surprised me and said that without a father she had always felt like a bastard. A bastard, growing up and all her life. It was a lifelong pain I had not known she carried.
My mom had told me her father was buried in the “Hebrew Cemetery” in Leicester, a small town next to Worcester, Massachusetts, where the four siblings and their families lived. I had never been there and did not know where it was. As far as I knew all the Jewish folk in Worcester were buried at the “B’nai B’rith” cemetery in the city. I had been there a few times for funerals for Nat and Meyer/Dick and Jack, for my aunts, my grandmother, a cousin. It was and is a well-kept cemetery with quickly disappearing open space. I imagined the Leicester location to be someplace back a century ago where Jewish people were interred, out of town, a place with overgrown grass and weeds, with leaning or toppled gravestones made of slate with faded writing.
Not long ago my brother, ten years my junior, decided to prepay his funeral and burial expenses. Our mom had done that for our dad and for herself, a couple of years before their deaths. When the inevitable that awaits us all came for our folks it was a bit easier for us. The funeral director who was dealing with my brother’s planning had access to a detailed layout of that Leicester cemetery; my brother learned the location of our grandfather’s grave.
One day in late summer he and I drove to the Hebrew Cemetery. My brother knew the way as his best friend, who had died a decade before at age forty-nine, was buried there. I was surprised when he told me that – the cemetery which I thought long closed and nearly forgotten was instead still being used. Rather than the desolate place I had imagined we arrived at a quite large and well-kept expanse, the grass cut, the bushes trimmed, the paths groomed. There were gravestones of various ages, simple slate ones I had imagined, substantial ones with deeply cut letters.
After a bit we found our grandfather’s. It was a large headstone of attractive granite. There was Hebrew writing on it which I could not understand but at the bottom, in large letters, was written, “In Memory of Our Dear Father.” Beneath that, his name, “Hyman M. Cohen.”
Clearly this was not the original stone. It must have been placed sometime after our grandmother’s death in 1971 as it made no mention of husband. I guessed that Nat, the most affluent of the siblings, the oldest, a surrogate father for our mom, had arranged this. Perhaps all four had gone there after it was placed, said prayers, grieved. Mom never mentioned it.
My brother placed a small rock atop the headstone in the Jewish tradition that signifies that somebody has visited. He had planned to say the mourner’s prayer but had forgotten his prayer book. We took photos of each of us standing next the monument. And I felt…nothing.
No sorrow, no grief. No satisfaction for having made the effort to visit. No job well done, no imaging my mom’s approval and gratitude for visiting her father’s grave. No emotion at all.
Feelings – emotions – differ from thoughts. I wondered what Hyman would have thought of me, his namesake. My children, my grandchildren. Would he have been proud of me, a successful professional, or disappointed in me for not practicing Judaism or raising my kids in the religion? Or both? I considered the unfairness of his premature death, his never seeing his children grown, never enjoying the delight of grandchildren, never growing old with his wife. The mystery of life and of death.
Finally I thought of my other grandfather, Abie, a quiet, gentle, reticent man. A man for whom I had real affection, somebody I loved. I wondered if I would have felt the same about Hyman.
First appeared in Avalon Literary Review.
11/30/2024
10:34:18 AM