I’ve been attempting to stream the funeral of Flo S. What an idea, a live stream into one’s past! Our families were friends back in Shreveport a zillion years ago.
The S’s had three children, just like there were three of us! The kids were friends, the parents were friends. I’m getting picture but no sound. Flo wrote me after she read a blog I wrote about Chuck, her son who died of AIDS twenty-five years ago.
The funeral service is being streamed from B’nai Zion Temple where I went to Sunday School in Shreveport, Louisiana eight million years ago. The Rabbi’s a she! And she’s brandishing a guitar. Our rabbi was bald and I only remember him brandishing the Torah and telling us tales about the lampshades the Nazis made out of Jewish children.
I never liked going to the temple. I was afraid of the rabbi, for one, Mama was a self-hating Jew and I was always loyal to my mother. Self-hating or not we always had brunch on Sunday (the gentiles had dinner). And our brunch always included smoked fish of some kind and bagels. These were obtained at the deli counter of a grocery store called Weingartens (sounds Jewish—yes?) and were located off to the side to separate them from the bologna, the liverwurst, the ham, the rolled turkey, the potato salad. The Jewish side of the deli had half a dozen kosher salamis, a few very dead smoked fish with milky eyes, some desiccated slices of lox, a couple of jars of herring in cream sauce and little squares of Philadelphia cream cheese.
As I stare at the long ago chapel at Binai Zion Temple, I remember my mother fainting when she was called on to light the lights on Friday and then again at the Friday night service after my father died. After that, we more or less stopped going. By the time I was fourteen, I was at the convent, and my mother didn’t celebrate the Jewish holidays anymore.
When Flo and I talked on the phone a couple of months ago, we had planned the call for several weeks. Not because I’m so busy, she was.
“It’s terrible you don’t talk to your sister and brother,” Flo said. I expected that.
I replied, “It is terrible, But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“That’s what your sister says, you know, your sister visits me!”
“I’m glad!” said I, “If I lived in the same town as you, I’d visit you too!”
“And your brother calls me on Chuck’s yorseit every year.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t called you,” I said. “And it’s great to hear your voice! I would know your voice anywhere.”
“I loved what you wrote about Chuck. Do you know I read it on Chuck’s yorseit?”
“That must mean I wrote it on or near Chuck’s yortseit.”
We were both quiet.
Then I told Flo some of the things I remembered about their house: the ping pong table in the “kids area”, the black board in the kitchen with a new vocabulary word every day; how when my father was in the hospital before he died, it was at her house my siblings and I stayed because we were too young to stay alone. I also told her how I could “see” her in her tennis dress, how I remembered her very orthodox parents visiting and how her father and mother draped cloth napkins over their heads and how it was the first time I ever saw a woman making Jewish motions over the candles. When he was growing up and was briefly observant, my son used to admonish me, “How come you don’t know how to do that thing with your hands?”
“You know your mother dropped me,” Flo told me presently, I wasn’t surprised, my mother dropped almost everyone; she even dropped me for a time.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Ruth was a little nuts.” And when Flo told me why my mother dropped her, I remembered how mean my mother could be: for a long moment, I felt her ancient power, how cruel she was. And indeed Flo admitted she’d been very hurt.
Then it was my turn, I’d been rehearsing the question ever since I knew Flo and I were going to speak on the phone.
“Do you know why my father hated me?”
Flo on the other end made some kind of noise.
Flo didn’t say, “Your father didn’t hate you.” Flo didn’t say, “How can you say a thing like that?” She didn’t say what my sister said when I asked her that question: “You had the happiest childhood and everyone loved you.”
“I don’t remember,” replied Flo. And why should she? You don’t live to ninety something dwelling on things like that.
Flo told me she liked my first book, and was reading my second book, and after she finished she was passing them along to members of her family.
A couple of weeks later, I heard from Flo’s son, that Flo was ill. And a couple of weeks after that, she’d entered the hospice program.
Flo was a great southern Jewish lady. You’d have to be from a small town where there weren’t many Jews to know what that means. And, even if I’m disappointed she couldn’t shed any light on the central existential mystery I will no doubt carry to my grave, I’m so glad we were in touch and we spoke.
I’m lighting a candle for Flo tonight.
Illustration by the fabulous Aimee Levy
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