Adventures in Shiva sitting - part 2
Friday morning, Daddy-llama and I were on a mission. Since Mommy-llama and Merrily, couldn't leave the house while observing mourning customs, we were given a list of errands. We had to return Merrily's library books, go to the grocery store, pick up Josh-llama from the airport. Luckily, we had the Garmin Nuvi to direct us.
The library was great. I picked out some books from the new fiction rack for Mom, Daddy discovered the "Friends of the Library" book sale store, where he bought seven books on the history of WWII and on Israel. "This stuff was great!" he said, "I can't believe they were getting rid of it!"
We made our way to the kosher butcher shop/bakery and the regular grocery store. "Don't buy too much food!" Merrily pleaded, "My fridge isn't that big and Marc is bringing over stuff too." We ignored her. Both she and my Grandma don't know about shopping for very hungry relatives. They eat half a banana, 3/4 of a red pepper, 1/4 of an onion, a quart of milk, etc. We, on the other hand, believe in consuming in quantity. We got all kinds of fruit and vegetables, which were pretty much gone by Saturday night. (We also got jello pudding cups, which my parents love, and Merrily turned out to be equally excited about. "My mother would make the real stuff," she explained, "before she got into vitamins and wheat germ. Nothing was as delicious as licking the spoon from hot chocolate pudding!" )
It was necessary to leave at least one person at home for Merrily to boss around at all times. This is partially because Merrily and my mom were not supposed to do "stuff" (cooking, cleaning, answering the phone) while in mourning...and partially because Merrily is very bossy :)
We also got lost picking up Josh at Reagan National, because the Garmin routed us through downtown D.C., where we kept hitting crazy traffic. There are also all these weird left exits on 395. At least we got to see scenic parts of Our Nation's Capital, since our tax dollars are paying for it. We had to turn around in the Pentagon parking lot (I thought we were going to be searched by armed guards for sure, but I guess a lot of people turn around to get back on the highway.)
The funeral home had sent over "low" chairs that the mourners (my mom and Merrily) were supposed to sit in. We speculated whether in fact there was a company that made chairs specifically for this purposes, or simply amputated the legs off of regular sized chairs. "It's like being at the beach," my mom said, "All we need are some umbrellas, beach towels and lemonade!"
The funeral home also put an obituary in the Washington Post here. When we saw it (daughters of Fanny that we are) we're like, "They spelled her name wrong!" And then I noticed they spelled my name wrong, which isn't even my name, but M's last name, which I never adopted. Oh well.
Mourning is suspended on the Sabbath, so things got more jovial on Friday night. Merrily found a folder of scathing letters my grandmother had written over the years, including a hysterical one dated 1978 to the Governor of Ohio regarding a speed trap in the town of Girard, Ohio. Merrily had been driving Grandma and her kids in her station wagon on the highway outside the town of Girard, OH when she was pulled over by a copy who claimed that he saw her going 75 mph on his radar. (I doubt that Merry's station wagon could even reach top speeds of 75 mph when handled by a NASCAR driver.)
So since they were from out of town, they followed the cop back to the teeny tiny courthouse, where they paid the ticket. Grandma took my cousin Sharon to the bathroom, where there wasn't any toilet paper. So Grandma writes this scathing letter to Governor of Ohio, cc's the local newspaper and decries the injustice of the speed trap as a money making scheme, the "souped up" radar gun and with all that extra revenue they're pulling in from unwitting motorists passing through, they should at least have enough money to put some toilet paper in the bathroom. When my mom read the letter aloud, we were absolutely hysterical with laughter. It was so Grandma Fanny...but none of us had ever heard the story before.
On Saturday morning, Mom, Josh and I went to Merrily's synagogue, where I kept whispering blasphemous comments to my Mom during the Torah reading. Then the rabbi gave a speech, the details of which escape me, except he referenced some 17th century Talmudic scholar's metaphor about eagles and bats, upon which my mom and I whispered loudly in unison, "Bats aren't Bugs!".
Also, on Saturday, we managed to lose my dad's Hertz car rental agreement. We turned the house upside down looking for it, but it was nowhere to be found. James, Tamar's bf, came in from NYC to come hang out with us. He and Tamar were champions of Rummikub, whereupon they trounced the rest of us twice. I also managed to eat half of package of chocolate rugalach during the course of the game.
Saturday night we got a phone call from Israel: My aunt's son called to announce that his wife had just given birth to a new baby and emailed the pictures from the hospital. My mom was like, "It's a baby! They all look the same!" but Merrily was beside herself.
Sunday morning, we were preparing for an onslaught of shiva callers bringing condolences. We'd also run out of certain necessary supplies such as fruit, plastic cups and diet coke. Daddy-llama and I also had to take Josh back to the airport and pick up Tamar and James from the hotel they were staying at.
We made a stop at Grandma's apartment to pick up her plants (which she loved like children) and Merrily reminded us to pick the vegetable soup from Grandma's fridge. (Merrily and Grandma had a symbiotic relationship in which Grandma made Merrily vegetable soup and chicken soup, and packed it up for her in glass instant coffee jars. Hours before she died, Grandma gave Merrily a list of stuff to remember, including taking home the soup.)
It was kind of strange seeing grandma's apartment with her lovingly arranged cards and family photos and her cardigan sweaters draped over the chairs, without Grandma in it. We were reminded at the suddenness of her death, there was still a bowl of soup on the table with a half-full can of ginger ale. We washed the few dishes we collected, gathered up perishables and took out the trash. I put all of the plants into boxes which we carried back to the car, along with Merrily's jars of soup.
We made a refueling stop at the kosher butcher shop/bakery for necessaries such as rye bread and lox, and 20 packages of minute steaks, which the butcher flash froze and packed in insulated bags for us to take back to KC. (NB: Since the Agriprocessors scandal in Postville IA, where immigration busted the kosher meat facility for hiring illegal immigrants, there has been a shortage of kosher meat available in KC and other communities where Agriprocessors has like 80 percent market share. Since my mom is carnivorous, I agreed to take back steaks with me and Zach-llama on our flight that evening that evening and stash them in her freezer. Mom was staying until the end of shiva on wednesday.)
By the time we got back to Merrily sans Josh, plus Tamar and James and lots of groceries, callers had already started arriving. I frantically started cutting up cantaloupes and strawberries, celery and red peppers and arranging them artfully on plates. I also made my mom and merrily cream cheese and lox sandwiches, then my bro-in-law Dan came (he just started working as a staffer on Capitol hill) and I made him a sandwich. Them my in laws from B'more came (M's dad and stepmom), and I gave them selzer..and then people just kept pouring including uncle Alfred (my aunt's ex) and his wife, my cousin Sharon and her kids, lovingly dubbed vilda chayas (Yiddish for "wild beasts") We gave the older people diet coke and ice, gave the kids pizza. My dad arrived from Max's with a falafel for me. Max's falafels are like manna from heaven, IMHO, the best falafels in the known universe. However, I was attempting to eat mine while conversing with various people who stopped by to give their condolences.
Zach and I were flying back to KC out of National at 7pm, so we figured we had to leave by 4:30pm. I was rushing around trying to collect some of Grandma's plants to take back with me, packing up mom's steaks in my suit case, while I was leaning over to stuff items into a shopping bag, I stood up quickly, ramming my shoulder into the pointy corner of the cantilevered high kitchen counter. I know I let out a loud scream and was attempting to bite my tongue as not to offend the shiva guests with a streak of extremely foul cursing. Mostly I just writhed on the floor. Then I got up and we went to airport.
I shouldn't have worried about rushing. We got the airport and found out that due to a huge weather system up and down the east coast, flights had been cancelled and delayed all afternoon. So Zach and I found seats and waited. I was kicking myself for not packing sandwiches (there was so much food at Merrily's), but I didn't think about it because I was rushing to get to the airport on time. We grazed and the airport and waited. And waited some more. Finally, the plane got there at 11:30 pm. There was a wild cheer from the passengers. The flight stopped in Milwaukee, but we stayed on the plane. It finally landed in Kansas City at 2:30 am central. We got out luggage (the frozen steaks!), found my dad's car and went home. I let zach drive on highway because I was exhausted and there was no one on the road at 3am. (He was very good!) Then we got back to my parent's house around 4am, we through the steaks in the freezer (some of which were defrosted from their sojourn), and we crashed. I didn't even want to go back to my house.
This morning, I opened my purse to call my office to let them know I wouldn't be there. I found the missing Hertz rental car agreement (at somepoint, I must have had it so we wouldn't lose it, but it had since been replaced) and merrily's car keys (she'd given them to me to get into Grandma's apartment.) I also called my dad to explain I'd solved several mysteries and suspected that Jimmy Hoffa was somewhere in the bottom of my purse, too. As penance, I fed-exed the keys back to merrily and went home to go to sleep.
Alice tried to escape into the garage when I came home, so I grabbed her tail to keep her from bolting (she didn't like that and went to hide under the couch.) Eventually, she came out to snuggle.
Today, I've spent most of the day sleeping and still feel like I've been run over by a truck. This was a pretty crazy, crazy weekend and I suspect I will need the rest of the week to recover. On the balance though, I think Grandma would approve. Her family was more important to her than anythingn, and I think she would like to have us all together and telling funny stories. For that, I'm grateful that I was able to be there.