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"We all invent ourselves
and, uh, you know me"
-r.e.m.

when my grandfather died two weeks ago, i got put in the unenviable position 
of being the one to wait with the body for the undertaker. of course, as all 
things go, the undertaker took three hours, and me being who i am, it never 
occurred to me to cover the body. so for hours, my grandmother and i sat with 
my grandfather's dead body between us, like a coffee table.  she kept crying 
and saying "he just looks like he's sleeping" and i still think about it, at 
night or on my walks, about how that was such a cry for me to cover him up. 
how many movies have i seen? why did i not know this? how stupid am i? 

the subway ride to the hospital was so strange. no, i should start before 
that. i should start with how well planned my day was.  my days are all well 
planned these days. but this one was perfect. it was more carefully 
orchestrated than martha stewart's birthday party, and it was about to be 
ruined. breakfast. a show (jesus christ superstar).  dinner with carolyn and 
kelly. another show (the waverly gallery, which, ironically, is about a 
grandmother with alzheimer's). and so, i'm in jesus christ superstar, feeling 
pretty great because i never go to theatre anymore, and the show just plain 
sucks, i mean, it's so busy and so empty at the same time and i actually know 
some people in it and i'm so close to the stage and it's just like being so 
bored that you spend your entire road trip looking for a hawaii license 
plate. anyway, we get out, and i turn my phone on, and there it is. the call. 
the message. four messages, in fact. mom, mom, aunt shelly, mom. everyone's 
on their way to the hospital.  i make the calls : what's going on? what's 
really happening? i am acutely aware that my family is a family of urban 
jews, therefore we are genetically predisposed to being alarmist. is this 
really the end i ask, and of course, the answer differs. shelly is so shaken 
that to her, it is. to my mother it "might be". but in any event, "get on the 
subway and get out to queens".  "but ma, i've been waiting to see the waverly 
gallery since the summer..." which of course, i don't voice, but i DO sound 
displeased at this rupture in my very well-planned day. i debate about 
whether or not this is real for minutes, long enough to make it to carolyn's 
hotel room with her and kelly and their friend adam. as i pace the bedroom, 
they talk in the living room and are generally jovial, and i wonder if in 
some way their apathy makes me feel it isn't real. no, they are not 
apathetic, i know - it's just they are trying to underreact to keep me calm. 
this kid adam barely knows me, kelly doesn't even know what's going on, maybe 
adam doesn't either. only carolyn really heard me talking to my mother, or 
maybe i told her on the walk, and her calm is definitely comforting. what is 
this? what are these feelings?

i bid goodbye to carolyn and kelly and go on my way to the subway. i'm 
thinking is this really happening? he's been sick for years, and he was 
supposed to be released today, and nobody really knows because all anyone's 
going on is a freak phone call from my grandmother that said "he is having 
trouble breathing" and nothing else. the phone in his room isn't working or 
she isn't picking it up so nobody knows any more. to make matters worse, 
nobody even knows where the hospital really is, what subway it's closest to, 
so i'm just going blindly to the N/R in hopes that will take me to flushing.

i don't think this is really happening. i doubt everything. i am the cynic, 
remember? heather decker, david in london, i doubt everything.  well, almost 
everything.  so i'm thinking this isn't really happening, i'll get to the 
hospital and when i'm there he'll be fine, it'll just be another ministroke, 
and he's always recovered from those fine, or even better, it'll be nothing, 
just pneumonia and he's had that twice and been fine. and i become aware, 
sickly aware, that it feels like i'm in a movie. that we've seen so many 
representations of people rushing to the hospital to be with sick loved ones 
that every move i make feels like i'm in some movie, or a tv show. i call 
ally because i want to know if this is common or because i am having a sexual 
relationship with my new cellphone. she tells me it's understandable, and 
tells me a calming story about when her father was really ill, and tells me 
to just GO, get through it, go to it, don't think about it too much and just 
propel. of course, i stop for starbucks. ultimately, it is this stop that 
makes me miss his actual death. in turn, i can't help but think of this every 
time i go to starbucks. 

i get on the subway with my grande nonfat vanilla latte. i have my pocket 
journal so i write. the subway is crowded because there is something wrong 
with the 7. i ride the N to queens plaza and transfer there.  the cellphone 
works on the subway out in queens. stacy calls, and she is very helpful. but 
i feel like some sort of reject talking on the phone in this crowded subway 
car, because everyone is listening to me. when i hang up, the girls across 
the way, legal secretaries if ever i saw any, with their perms and their 
sweatshirts emblazoned with the GAP  logo yet (painfully) obviously not from 
the Gap, smile at me, to comfort me, but they only seem condescending at 
best, and at worst, as if they're extras that got camera eye. this is my 
movie, okay? stacy's in it, and the korean woman next to me who is minding 
her own business, but YOU AREN'T. i'm callous already and nobody's died yet. 
i'm callous anyway and nobody has to die.  i think, of course, about my 
previous experience with grief, and suddenly am aware of just how much i did 
and did not do. this is a thought that will keep me up many nights.

i arrive in flushing, and everything is in some form of the chinese language. 
i ask someone where i can find the hospital, and they tell me to take a bus. 
i ask how long of a walk it is and they say 20 minutes. i decide to walk, 
because a woman at the bus stop says it's faster.  on my walk i pass donut 
shops and chinese restaurants and a lot of people who look like they live in 
queens. i wonder about if dogs start to resemble their owners, do people who 
live in queens start to resemble people who live in queens, or do they look 
like people who live in queens first?  this is a stupid thought but i think 
about it for blocks anyway, if only to block the belle and sebastian song 
that plagues me from running through my head (the state i am in).

i see the hospital ahead, past a football field-sized area of marshland.  it 
looks like a howard johnsons, squat and drab, concrete and impenetrable. as i 
approach the hospital, i get this sense of dread. i take out my phone to call 
my stepfather mark, to find out what the room number is. he tells me it's 
over. my grandfather has died.  my grandfather and i were close, years ago. 
he was my only grandfather, my father's father having died when i was four.  
but poppy got alzheimer's about eight years ago, and as of about four years 
ago was not himself.  the past year he hadn't even spoken at all. and stopped 
recognizing everyone but my grandmother and mother and aunt (and even then, 
only occasionally).  so i was surprised to find that as soon as i hung up the 
phone, i started to cry. i don't know why. i still don't. and i called ally 
and told her i couldn't go inside. i was standing outside the front of the 
hospital, i stood there for i don't know how long. five minutes? fifteen? i 
couldn't go in. i just couldn't. and i cried, and i thought about how much i 
had cried lately, and how much more was i going to have to cry this year.  
ally calmed me down and talked me inside. 

i went upstairs, and everyone was there. aunt shelly, uncle steve, my 
cousins, my grandmother, my mother, my stepfather. and there was my 
grandfather. and, like the movie i was predicting, or self-fufillingly 
prophesizing, the sun was setting, and the room was filled with this orange 
light, and it pooled right on his face. it was so sick how perfect it was and 
i felt it was perfect and felt sick for feeling anything other than sad. but 
he looked so empty, so shallow, so small. his face was pinched and he was 
turning yellow as you watched - literally turning yellow. he was dead, and he 
was the first dead body i had ever seen. the room had the hospital floor, 
linoleum, and the fluorescent lights, and the smell, that antiseptic smell 
mixed with urine. my grandfather's teeth were missing, and he had less hair, 
and i immediately laughed because everyone was in this room, acting as if 
they'd been well-rehearsed, as if this was a rerun of last week's Once and 
Again where Sela Ward's father died and everyone cried in that pretty-tv way, 
with the blue glow and the styrofoam cups of coffee and the camraderie. there 
was shelly, overwrought with grief. there was my grandmother, sitting by the 
window, as if recieving visitors. there was my mother, and my first thought 
was how stylish she looked in her leather jacket and her hair was in place 
and then we hugged and she told me she loved me, and it was the first time 
i'd heard her say that in i don't know how long when i didn't cringe or wish 
she hadn't said it. and there was lizzie and andrew, my cousins, with whom i 
shared conspiratorial mock-grief faces, just to cut the air a little, all 
that tension. and mark and uncle steve, already on the phone, making 
arrangements. my grandmother had been in the hospital all week. she never 
left, and it looked that way. she looked ill-designed, as if her features 
were in different places. she looked ragged and hurt and wrecked, and i felt 
genuine love for her.  as i bent down to kiss her i wondered if everyone felt 
like the lead in their own film or if it was just me. and then i remembered, 
i always felt this way, as the secretly gay grandson. i always felt i left 
behind a more interesting life because i was the only one who had to lie when 
i saw my grandparents. i always felt like a spy.  

everyone is calling people to tell them and i wonder who i should call. i 
know who i want to call but that isn't necessarily who i should call. i call 
carolyn and dan and susan and ally again, and leave messages for stacy and 
adam. i want to call chris in london but i don't have his number with me.  
all that keeps going through my mind is, for some strange reason, the first 
verse of losing my religion. "oh life, it's bigger, bigger than you and you 
are not me..." i have no idea why this is and am also aware of the double 
meaning. i go outside for what would be a cigarette if i still smoked, in 
hopes of standing near the smokers.  there are no smokers because visiting 
hours are over. i guess we're allowed to stay because he's dead. the sky is 
nearly dark blue, the stars are out, and it's all somehow more vivid and 
beautiful and i pace the parking lot thinking about what the year 2000 means 
to me, what cycles are, and how is it i've never seen a dead body before. i 
then try to find the cafeteria, but it's closed. i settle for some wheat 
thins and a juice and head back to the room, where everyone else has gone but 
mark. everyone else has gone ahead: the kids to their other grandparents, the 
others to make the funeral arrangements at the funeral home. we've been 
instructed to wait for the undertaker. he should only be an hour. it takes 
several.  i spend a lot of time in the room writing in my journal. an excerpt:

6:52 we are sitting near his body waiting for the undertaker to pick him up. 
his mouth is open and he has no teeth. did he swallow them? he's yellow and 
empty and nana is telling these amazing stories about how they were marreid 
twice - my mother was a bastard child!  there is a phone call -- she's come 
back from the phone and has said she is so tired, trying to remember his 
parents name for the funeral home. i learn his parents names for the first 
time: Zelig and Tserl. they sound sciencefictiony to me, like the names of 
planets in a david goyer screenplay. she was so lucid a moment ago and is now 
so fixed and tired.
8:02 they are supposed to be here to pick him up and they still haven't come. 
she keeps looking at him crying and saying "he just looks like he's 
sleeping". do i hold her hand? 
8:12 nana surprised me with new thoughts about shiva, how she doesn't want it 
to be the whole day. she'd rather just five hours a day, with more for the 
family before and after. i of course start thinking of plot ideas: 'hey, 
shiva's announced int he new york times! maybe some college kids with no 
money can scour the papers every day and go from shiva to shiva to eat!' i am 
aware of how even having this thought is debasing.
8:50 so they're still not here to pick up the body. some man in an 
off-the-cheapest-of-cheap-racks-at-century-21 blue suit with a floral tie and 
a big diamond district hat has come in. he walked in and was silent and no 
one said anything. at first i thought he fit for a haunted funeral home 
director. huge beard. sunken eyes. he's the one that just walked in looked at 
poppy and covered him up. i felt shamed by his eyes - was i supposed to do 
that? who was this man? why hasn't nana even acknowledged him? am i the only 
one who can see him? poppy looks more dead with the sheet over him: nana was 
right, he did look like he was sleeping before. i'm glad he's covered, he was 
starting to scare me, getting yellower and yellower and his skin was getting 
looser and looser and his hand was poking out of the sheet adn the holes 
where the ivs were are just gaping and no longer moist. this hospital is full 
of asians. the nurses are all asian. one nurse with braces so large it makes 
it hard to understand her. her name is amy and she has an italian surname. 
here comes the undertaker, like a leprechaun. no, closer he looks like dan 
ackroyd - the now fat, coke-addicted ackroyd - wearing a huge black fedora 
with a blue feather. is that meant to be comforting? what is this man doing 
in this jewish/asian hospital? he seems nothing like the idea of an 
undertaker i was positioned by the media to expect. except he has a shaved 
head. his suit is gray with a black lining, like a country singing texan on 
his way to vegas. the stretcher the bodybag is on is old, looks like 
something restoration hardware would turn into a coffeetable, or a hutch, or 
an entertainment unit. old chrome, wheels, the bag itself looks like a velvet 
drape, or carpet, the straps look like they hold a bathrobe closed. the 
undertaker is at the nurses station. there is something on his starched 
collar, blood? carrot juice? a lipstick stain from someone very long island? 
no one can find the death certificate - was it misplaced? never written? the 
undertaker won't take the body without one. this is a nightmare. i don't know 
if i can take any more time with this dead body. it has already imprinted on 
my brain that this is no longer my grandfather, and the body has begun to 
smell. the bed moves on a pattern, looks like he's breathing for a minute. 
oh, the man with the tie is the rabbi - rabbi ginsberg. he even looks like 
allen ginsberg. 

i close my journal and go into the hallway with my grandmother as the rabbi 
and the undertaker and mark put poppy's body onto the stretcher. they hit his 
head on the door and i can't help but laugh. then they cover him in the 
velvet bodybag, and wheel him out into the hallway. my grandmother bursts 
into tears, and kisses her hand, touches where his head is. i wonder why i'm 
the one left with her, can i give her what she needs? can i be a good enough 
shoulder right now?  he is wheeled off, and that's that. 

on the ride home, my grandmother makes a few jokes, and i am proud at her 
focus. that night i go back into the city with my aunt and uncle and cousins. 
i help my aunt compose the obituary. she is shaking, and i know she is the 
most hurt by his passing. i think of how selfish i am, and start thinking 
about my own mortality.  in the intervening days, what affects me most, what 
makes me cry, is not that i lost my grandfather, but that i understand so 
much more my own mortality, my own drive, my own selfishness. i watch my 
mother handle her grief with true grace and my aunt deal with her grief with 
hurt at first that gives way to understanding. it is a strange process, 
shiva. i go every day, for seven days (six, because the sabbath is a day 
"off").  i learn more about my grandfather in these days than i ever did 
alive. i learn more about my grandmother, too. but i learn the most about 
myself, and who i am. i make jokes, pilfer through photo albums and run 
around the house misbehaving, but making sure no one really notices but my 
cousins and my brother, who has flown in from hawaii for only three days. it 
is tough to see him. he breaks down giving his eulogy at the funeral. i have 
to follow him and wonder if i should break down too. it is a sick thought 
luckily not given enough time as it is shortly my turn. i get through my 
eulogy and get back to my seat. of course, all i can think about is the last 
memorial service i've been to before this one, how the tree outside the 
window of the schwartz bros funeral home in forest hills compares not at all 
to the trees previous, about how i feel less here than i did there.

on the drive to the cemetary, lizzie, andrew, jeremy and i get our own limo. 
jeremy, of course, engages the driver in a conversation. jeremy talks. and 
talks. and talks. by the time we get to the cemetary, jeremy has planned a 
whole new health regime for the driver, replete with vitamin supplements and 
yoga positions. lizzie and i make fun of everyone. we are vicious, and we 
welcome the laughs. at the gravesite, we all shovel some dirt. we have to 
sign a waiver before we can, however. modern burial requires a contract, it 
seems. i take a rock from the site, and we pile back into the car.  on the 
way back, i wonder why my brother broke down into shudders, huge 
body-wracking sobs on that podium. did he love my grandfather that much? did 
he manufacture it? is there more to him that i don't know? do i even care to 
know? he and i have tenuous conversations at best over the next days. i 
barely speak to him in private. i am afraid of his energy in this time. i am 
afraid of my own embarrassment at his being my brother in front of all these 
relatives i barely know.  he does a kung fu demonstration in the basement for 
jason pomerance. lizzie and i are held captive and can't supress our 
laughter. even jason is embarassed for us. does my brother not understand how 
ridiculous he is? he carries with him a photo album of fruit pies he's made, 
shows them off as if they were his children to everyone.  he leaves on 
Wednesday without saying goodbye. our last interaction is him telling me to 
be quiet while everyone is praying. of course, he says this in full volume, 
and is shushed himself by a strange man.

oh, the strange men: at ten minutes before sundown every night, the front 
door opens. rabbi ginsberg comes in, followed by "the minyan". the minyan are 
men from the synagogue who come specifically to pray, to doven as it is 
called, which is a prayer to send poppy's soul to the jewish version of 
heaven. they file in and never say anything to anyone, just go to the back 
room and start to pray. i start to become afraid of them - who are they? is 
this their life? do they even exist outside these twenty minutes? they look 
like the aliens from dark city as if tailored by moshe from modell's, and 
they float out just as they come in, without a word to anyone. i wonder if as 
soon as they reach the air outside they disappear into vapor. on the last 
day, one man steals a piece of watermelon on his way out. it is this human 
gesture that makes me no longer scared. rabbi ginsberg winks at me. every 
day. he tells strange jewish jokes. he knew my grandfather well, and i 
suddenly wish i could sit with him and ask him all about what he thinks my 
grandfather would have thought about my being gay.  of course this never 
happens, and on the last day, i even miss saying goodbye to him. i get 
thoughts of doing a documentary on him and all this tradition dying out. like 
most of my thoughts, it is a good one but forgotten instantly.

i spend a lot of time with my mother. i ride with them except for two days, 
one when i take a car service with my cousins and the other when i take a cab 
from (a hospital i can't name here) after helping kids with HIV learn how to 
write about their experiences (both inspiring and overwhelmingly 
context-putting - i am (gladly) due back this thursday).   my mother is 
really a wonderful person. i know we got off the tracks at some point, but i 
feel every day is a day finding the right way to be mother and son. i also 
feel very close to my stepfather.  we talk often of what it feels like to be 
a survivor, both of the holocaust, and of other things, like grief.  i also 
spend hours with my friend ally on the phone, talking about her experiences 
with her father's passing. i talk with ally every single day. i wish my 
mother could talk to her. by the end of the week, this will actually happen, 
and i watch as it brings my mother some peace.

the night before the day off, a man shows up to shiva that both lizzie (my 13 
year old cousin) and i think is gay. so does chris, shelly's gay best friend. 
as soon as the guy starts talking to me (for an hour!) i know he's gay. i 
wonder why i always thought i was the only gay member of this family. i am 
happy to find another gay relative, but as soon as his 
t-shirted-and-stylish-trainer-wearing neurologist boyfriend comes to pick him 
up (and they offer to take me to a future dinner) i find out the family hates 
him. they make it painfully clear that i should not take him and his 
boyfriend up on the dinner invitation. i promptly lose his number, and then 
wonder why.  

the day off is spent packing. lizzie and i are eager to not lose the momentum 
of being together every single day, so she comes down to help me pack up both 
apartments. we have a blast, play a lot of breaktime nintendo, get food from 
stepmama's, dance a lot and make fun of all the relatives we know and wish we 
didn't.  we make fun of my grandmother boasting "last night there was 100 
people!" as of shiva was a race she won. but lizzie has to go around 5, and 
i'm up packing until three am. it, of course, gets to me. this week of so 
much. how weak it's made me. i feel broken but not defeated. the next day i 
wake up at 7 and, with susan and dan, move out of two apartments, five years 
of my life boxed and gone. it takes us hours. we have to go in shifts because 
they are painting the tenth street hallways - just my luck. we finally get to 
manhattan ministorage at sundown. i am late to shiva. susan and dan move 
everything while i do the paperwork. they are amazing people. they do this 
all only expecting dinner in return, susan in the middle of getting her 
portfolio together, dan in the middle of shooting his movie - they stop both 
of these things for me. i feel a deep, rich warmth between the three of us. 
two weeks later, i feel this deepness resonating in all my friendships, 
spreading out, forcing me to branch out, open up more, allow myself to be 
caught and teased.

saturday. this is the last night of shiva, and i have been up most of the day 
moving. dan and ally are due to come to shiva, and i am uncomforable. but we 
are so late, we don't have time to take the truck back so we have to drive 
the huge ryder truck to queens.  dan and i are suited, ally in a dress, all 
crammed into the front of this huge truck. we pull into the driveway at 
nana's.  dan and ally will be the first friends of mine my grandmother has 
met since my bar mitzvah. i am a nervous nelly and i immediately turn into 
uberjew. "you want i should make you a plate?" i ask both of them, the 
european cadence coming preternaturally, as i pile heaps of fruit and fish 
and bread and cups of wine for them. i attend to their every need (and even 
invent some of my own) and dote on them to the point of suffocation, and 
worry about what my grandmother thinks, does she think ally is my shiksa 
girlfriend? i've told dan to pretend to be ally's boyfriend but that isn't 
working, as their body langauge is all wrong. my grandmother is the only 
member of my family that i deal with at all that doesn't know about me now. 
we are all worried of her finding out. i wonder why i am, and if she already 
knows. dan and ally acquit themselves wonderfully, and i feel as if the last 
layer of my onion has been peeled off. it's like all my separate lives have 
come together. we say our goodbyes and we drive the big truck back to the 
dropoff place midtown and the three of us walk home, talking of death, 
religion, family, and all the other big issues that plague overanalytical 
twentysomethings.  when i return home, i survey the empty apartment, turn on 
some chet and sit down for a much needed therapy session with emma.  oh life. 
it's bigger.  

*****

a note:  hey, i'm going to move this site soon. put up a just-josh one. if 
anyone is interested in the link for it, please email judeschall@aol.com and 
i'll put you on a notify list. but please, only email if you are seriously 
interested. don't come to mock, cajole, or be cruel.  those of you who came 
back each time for me, thank you for your patronage here, it's meant  a lot 
to me.

last update  judeschall@aol.com