by Marra B. Gad
If Nette could have seen herself, she would have been devastated to look so horrible. I almost wanted to fix her hair and put some lipstick on her. But I could barely stand to look at her body. The thought of touching her was more than I could stand.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief when the realization set in that she was finally gone. The suffering, for both of us, was now at an end. And she did suffer, I think, before and after Alzheimer’s took residence inside her. But I would also be lying if I didn’t acknowledge a part of me that was sad that, in the end, she was left like this. After everything that had been said and done, we had found a place where we finally connected, and even if it was driven by her dementia, I had finally found a place of peace, comfort, and, at times, even joy in her company. And that, too, was now gone.
“You should go to New York, Marra,” my mother urged me. “Your sister is here. We will handle this.” She knew I had a big meeting at Deutsche Bank for which I had been preparing for a few weeks. And, ever practical, she did not want me to miss it.
“If you’re sure, Mama …” My voice trailed off. I did not argue with her. I wanted to go. Still, I stood in the room a few moments longer, debating whether or not I wanted to kiss Nette’s cheek as I had kissed my father and Bubbie when they died. In the end, I decided against it.
“I love you,” I said. “And I’ll call you when I get to the city. If you need me to come back, I’ll be on the next plane. I love you.” I hugged my mother and my sister as fully as my arms and heart would stretch. And I left.
I am not embarrassed to say I was relieved to be leaving and grateful to have some time in a city that has always left me feeling fully alive. I took my place in the conference room on Wall Street and did my best to focus on the deal that was on the table. It was a deal I had orchestrated, and I was really proud to have this moment in an arena I had never dreamed I would enter. But I was not wholly there. Not in the conference room. Not at the gorgeous dinner my investors hosted to celebrate the deal. And so I wrapped up my business quickly and returned to Chicago.
As personal as things were when Nette was alive—painful, enlightening, and maddening—the immediate business of death can be decidedly impersonal.
There were papers to sign, arrangements to be made, and deep breaths to be taken. I knew what this looked like; when we lost my father, I was intricately involved in managing the process, even at only nineteen years old. That said, I felt only slightly guilty that I was not helping now.
When I arrived in New York, it had struck me that even with the uncomfortable combination of being both busy and distracted, I was sitting still and breathing deeply in a way I had not since my grand adventure began. Even the enjoyable moments with Nette in the final months of her life had been stressful to me. I just didn’t realize it fully until she was gone. I was probably always waiting for her bite to return, and I held that in my body. In my breath. But now, no matter what else I had thought or felt, I was at peace. And I inhaled and exhaled with clear awareness of that peace.
Being no stranger to death and her aftermath, I had a set of expectations going into Nette’s. But much like anything that was unique to Nette, my expectations were quickly blown out of the water. The order of funeral proceedings, which I knew so well since the order is the same for every Jewish person, did not apply to Nette. She had made her own very specific arrangements years prior, and there would not be a funeral of any kind for a few months. As had become the norm with Nette, my family had to find their way through an unusual process after managing her care under equally unusual circumstances.
Nette’s belongings had been cleaned out when she was conserved. And by cleaned out, I mean pilfered from before being sent to my mother. Her best jewelry was gone. Her furs were gone too. While we will never know who did the pilfering, what we do know is that no one was “minding the store.”
With considerable work on my end to find a real estate agent and to get the work done to make it presentable, the house had been sold nearly two years ago, just a few months prior to the judge giving us permission to move Nette. And the few things she had had in her room at the care facility—the bed and dresser and her clothing—my mother and sister decided to leave in case someone else might need them. There was nothing left to do on that front.
What was left was the excruciating task of the will and trust. Zeit had died a few months before Nette, and since my mother had been named executor of both Nette’s and Zeit’s wills, there was now a great deal of work for her to manage. Boxes of Nette’s things had been arriving from San Francisco for months, as Paula had taken her time in sending over things she didn’t feel were “essential.” But now they were all arriving at the same time. Hastily packed. Broken. Unlabeled. Box after box arrived. It seemed to be never-ending, and it was yet another reminder of the sad state of disrepair Nette’s life had fallen into during her later years.
The documents around the will and trust numbered nearly one hundred pages, with very specific instructions about every penny. And there was money left, even with Paula’s seemingly absent accounting practices. In spite of what I had always experienced as her extreme selfishness, Nette was deeply devoted to several charities, including one that was specific to dachshunds. Nette and Zeit had had two dachshunds that they had loved deeply and treated very much like their children, and their trust clearly wanted that love to be shared after their deaths. There were education charities that were meaningful to Zeit and dance-related ones that were meaningful to them both. Fortunately, the process was quite smooth, all things considered. And then all we had left was simply to schedule, a couple of months later, Nette’s burial in San Francisco.
Chapter Twenty
AMONG THE MANY IDIOSYNCRASIES THAT EXISTED within Nette and Zeit’s marriage was the notion that Zeit always considered himself to be a Jew. He connected to Judaism deeply, and it seemed—at least to me—that he enjoyed our simchas far more than Nette ever did. If I were being snarky, I would posit that Nette didn’t enjoy any event at which she was not the center of attention, and she would often go about the business of ensuring that she was the center of attention in every room she inhabited. Clearly, her funeral would be no different.
Judaism has very specific and, I think, beautiful rules around funeral rites. It is only in the last thirty years that cremation has been “allowed” (depending upon the sect of Judaism and the family’s personal beliefs), but the rites and traditions around how families behave have been quite standard for centuries.
For a start, we bury our dead as quickly as possible, with burial prohibited on the Sabbath and on certain holidays. There were only seventy-two hours between my father’s death and his burial. Some families bury within forty-eight hours.
During the funeral, a prescribed set of prayers are offered, including El Malei Rachamim, which is a mournful prayer sung for the soul of the departed. When the service ends and the burial is taking place, the attendees protectively make two lines so that the grieving family can leave immediately after they put dirt into the grave, without having to see anything further.
And then the family sits shiva, which is a time when the community comes together to pay their respects in the family home, bringing food to comfort the family and making sure their every need is met. Shiva traditionally lasts seven days.
The list of customs and traditions is far longer than this, but my point is that it is specific and designed to offer comfort to the family from the moment the loss takes place. And for the most part, it works as the rabbis intended it to work.
Of course, as Judaism was never a core part of Nette’s identity, she and Zeit made provisions to be buried at sea in San Francisco. Nette said many times that she didn’t believe in things like shiva or cemeteries. And so, when I thought about it, a burial at sea made a great deal of sense. They loved travel, and as they aged, travelling by cruise ship became their favorite way to continue to see the world. It made perfect sense that they would want to be
scattered on the water that had, in many ways, become a second home to them. And it was just colorful and eccentric enough to inspire conversation, even before they were gone. As ever, they were doing things their way. You can’t imagine the looks Nette would get when she boldly proclaimed that she and Zeit planned to be buried at sea. To talk of one’s inevitable death during healthy days was shocking enough to people. To choose an avant-garde interment only added to that.
Zeit’s final months and the management of his care had become challenging for us when a “family member” had magically appeared. When Zeit came into our family, he told us that he had no family other than ours. He immigrated to America from Taiwan in the 1960s, and during all the years we knew him, we never met a single person from his side. Suspiciously, once he became sick and the estate needed to be managed, a man claiming to be Zeit’s nephew appeared. And he was able to provide enough proof for Paula to believe him and grant him a voice in decisions made on Zeit’s behalf. To this day, I have never met or spoken with this man. He did not come to meet Paula or visit with Zeit. He never came to court. I was the person there when Zeit and Nette parted for the final time. I was the one with Zeit throughout his final hospital stay, fighting with Paula and the hospital staff because they could not reach this nephew to get his permission for me to visit. And when Zeit died, my mother, sister, and I were the family present to scatter Zeit’s ashes on the Pacific. This so-called relative was nowhere to be found.
Being the nice Jewish girl that I am, I had never even imagined what a burial at sea might entail. I really did not consider that there were options other than the traditional ones. But once the clearances (which were complicated and considerable) were given, a date was set, and my mother, sister, and I made the trip to San Francisco.
“What do you think this will be like?” my sister asked. Ever a traditionalist, she found the notion of a burial at sea both fascinating and a bit overwhelming. On some level, we all did.
“I’m not sure,” I said, “but in my head, it will be beautiful. And peaceful.”
In my head and in my heart, it would be—after many months of no beauty and no peace.
It was a picture-perfect day to be on the water. Warm, sunny, and the waters were calm. In many ways, it was much like Zeit himself, who—no matter what seemed to confront him, including, at times, Nette’s abusive energy—was always gentle, soft-spoken, and calm.
Once we boarded the boat, there were the exact beauty and peace to the process and ceremony that I had imagined there would be. The boat held three other families, all in varying states of grief, clutching urns filled with ashes that were to be scattered on the ocean.
The captain took us to a spot just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and called each family up separately so that there might be a sense of privacy. The farewells were as varied as were the families themselves. Some people prayed. Some sang. Some wept. And then someone from the family would lean over the railing and allow their loved one’s ashes to drift away. When it was our turn, as Zeit would have wanted, we said the Mourner’s Kaddish—one of the traditional Jewish prayers for mourning—and together, we let him go, into the waves and sunshine.
Yitgadal … v’yitkadash … sh’mei raba … Amen.
We whispered it. Ever since my father’s death, this prayer always came in a whisper filled with love and sadness and hope that, at last, there might be some peace. Our little ceremony was far more beautiful than I could have possibly anticipated, and even then, knowing that Nette was tucked away in her room in Chicago, I found myself looking forward to the day we would put her to rest in the same manner.
Of course, the day of Nette’s sailing was much different. Just as Mother Nature gave us a day that reflected Zeit and his energy, she also gave us a day that reflected Nette and hers.
“Great,” I quipped. “This weather is just like Nette was. Dark, cold, stormy. Bitchy.”
My sister, who has never shared or appreciated my at times irreverent sense of humor, immediately grimaced. “Marra!”
But it was out there. And it was true.
In an homage to Nette and her always impeccable sense of style, I chose to wear Chanel. Flats because we were going to be on a boat but Chanel, nonetheless, and I wrapped my perfectly blown-out hair in an Hermès scarf that I thought Nette might have appreciated. We were both slaves to fashion and the labels that make people think you’re quite fancy, so it felt like just the right choice.
“Marra, you look lovely, but I don’t think you’re going to be warm enough,” my mother warned me. “It’s so much colder out on the water …”
“I will be fine, Mama,” I said. “I don’t have a coat that goes with this outfit.”
I have often pushed against my mother when she tries, as I tell her somewhat affectionately, to micromanage me. And this day was no different. Little did I know that my choice to look just right would come back to haunt me in every way possible.
We set off for Fisherman’s Wharf, and the sun continued to hide from us. The wind picked up, and by the time we actually reached the pier, it was cold. Brutally cold. The bone-chilling, teeth-chattering kind that even the best cocoa does not fix.
And for three women from Chicago to be cold says a lot.
“There’s a T-shirt shop over there,” my sister said. “I’m sure they have sweatshirts or something.”
As my sister knows well, if there is one thing that brings out the fashion snob in me, it is seeing families dressed in matching touristy clothing.
“I don’t care how cold it is,” I said. “I am not wearing a tourist fleece. That matches both of you. That we had to buy at Fisherman’s Wharf. I just cannot do that.”
And yet, my desire not to freeze won out, and there we were. Within minutes, we were dressed in matching fleece jackets stamped with FISHERMAN’S WHARF SAN FRANCISCO—and my perfect Chanel and Hermès funeral gear never saw the light of day. Sadly, the jackets were not nearly enough to insulate us for the dark comedy that lay ahead.
The water was rough. So rough that we were not able to stand without holding on for dear life, and even sitting down required anchoring so as not to slide to and fro on the benches. The captain, the same one from Zeit’s funeral, gave instructions far different from the ones issued at Zeit’s scattering, given the rough seas.
“I would like to ask that you allow me to scatter the ashes of your loved ones. The inclement weather makes the action much trickier, and if it’s not done just right, there is a very good chance the ashes will blow back on you. And we really don’t want that to happen.”
While I was rarely one to follow instructions, that was all I needed to hear. I happily sat down. “We can say Kaddish from here,” I proclaimed.
My mother agreed. My sister did not.
“I’ll do it. I want to do it,” my sister insisted. “Nette would want that.”
The captain, my mother, and I tried to talk her out of it for all of the obvious reasons. “There is no way this will go well, Alisa,” I said. “But if you really want to, I’ll be over here. Sitting. Far from the water. Like the captain said.”
She would not be swayed. I left her to it and took my seat back on the bench with my mother. I’d had enough of Nette’s figurative ashes blown back in my face to last me a lifetime while she was living. I did not need any of her actual ashes anywhere near me now that she was dead.
Yitgadal … v’yitkadash …
We began the Kaddish again. My mother and I seated on the bench. My sister leaning over the railing with the urn. Right on cue, the wind kicked up as she began to toss the ashes, and they blew back. All over my sister. And I could not help but laugh. Heartily. And perhaps a bit too loudly to be appropriate.
My sister took it in stride.
“Do not say, ‘I told you so!’ But does anyone have a Handi Wipe?”
That only sent me into deeper laugh-fueled hysteria. I’m not sure that a Handi Wipe really does the trick when dealing with the ashes of a family member, but it was all we
had to work with, and so we cleaned her up as best we could and headed back to shore.
We had agreed earlier in the day to go for a nice lunch afterward so that we might have something to look forward to, but as the scattering took less time than we’d anticipated, we had a bit of time between docking and our reservation. So we took a wander on the pier, each of us quietly processing what it meant now that we had laid Nette to rest.
As I stopped to take things in and breathe a bit, one of the many seagulls that had been circling overhead relieved himself—all over me, my Hermès scarf, and my Chanel shoes. I had, of course, removed the horrible tourist fleece the minute the weather allowed me to, so all of my couture was now soiled. And there I was. Covered once again in shit because of Nette.
My sister, now in hysterics of her own, said, “Would you like a Handi Wipe?” To me, it was like Nette getting the last laugh—and making sure that she had it her way, even at her own funeral.
I immediately looked at my mother, who was also beside herself with laughter. “My lunch,” I said, “is going to involve a cocktail, and a strong one at that.” And we went off to lunch, all slightly worse for wear but with the job of putting Nette to rest behind us.
I find myself wondering if putting someone to rest really does just that. I have borne witness to the lives and deaths of three people from the closest possible vantage point, and I cannot say that any of them has ever left me, in large ways or in small.
There was no shiva after Nette’s burial at sea. We simply packed up our bags and returned to Chicago—and to our lives.
Mine forever changed.
Epilogue
AFTER NETTE’S PASSING, IT TOOK SOME TIME FOR the estate to fully settle. And as many months as the settling of the estate took, it took even longer for me to settle—and to process what had taken place over the course of a life lived with these two versions of Nette in it.