This weekend is Booker Fest, a big deal around the 100 Men Hall and a big deal for me who is always scrambling like crazy to get it all together. This week, my brother text me that he was coming to New Orleans and it is the third of Elul, the 40th anniversary of my father’s death, and we should all meet at his grave. Imagine the conflict – so much to do for the weekend, my father’s grave is in New Orleans, my siblings are all older than me, should I stay or should I go – and there I was driving to New Orleans on Wednesday before Booker Fest kicks off on Thursday at 5PM. Still with so much to do.
I said I could be there at 11am. At 10:15, as I was pulling onto the I-10, my brother called to say they were there. I said well I can’t get there till 11am. He said, well, I’ll let you know if we leave. What? I had a gut feeling that I should turn around and go back home. But I stayed the course. I called my younger brother who had not responded to the text but who also lives in New Orleans. He hemmed and hawed. He wasn’t psyched about an impromptu reunion. I couldn’t much blame him. He and I got into a conversation about our father, our legacy, the trauma and the truth. But I said, you know, friends my age are starting to lose their siblings and I feel like, you know, we just don’t know, when will be the last time one of us is not around. My brother said, call me later and I might meet you there.
Eleven minutes from the cemetery, my brother called and said where are you? I said 11 minutes away. He said okay, we’re here. Then my older brother called and said, where are you? I said I’m eight minutes away. He said, well David just told me you were going to be here in five minutes. I said, “He lied.”
I arrived, my older brother sat in his black Escalade, he said it was too hot to get out. David accompanied me into the cemetery, one of the few where a Jewish person can be buried under the requisite six feet. A stone, I said. David found two rocks for me and I put them on my father’s headstone. Forty years ago, this headstone caused a Battle Royale with the synagogue’s brotherhood and my family. My family wanted my father to have a headstone similar to his father’s. But his father is buried in New York, and this shul had different rules, and it wouldn’t allow for a marble covering over the top of the grave. Just grass was allowed. The compromise after a long arduous back and forth was that my family left the shul, and my father’s grave looks like his father’s in Canarsie and like no other grave on Frenchman Street. Our old shul is now in Metairie, and Oschner is in the building on Canal Boulevard. All because of Katrina.
My two brothers left, and I text my younger brother. He pulled up minutes later, and I got out of the car, and went into the cemetery for the second time. I saw a stone on the ground and went to pick it up for him, but then saw it was a seashell. I laughed. Here you go, I said, fitting, as I handed it to him, we are both shells of our former selves. Ha!
