The light shifts as we rattle beneath looming buildings and trees, and I briefly catch my reflection in the dirty window. Dark curls crushed beneath my olive green knit cap, round cheeks, dark eyes, no makeup except a smear of lip gloss I bought because it was called Holiday Cheer. The details are all familiar, but I barely recognize myself. I wonder if I’ll ever feel like the real-me again, or if grief has made me into someone else entirely.
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of losing my dad. A whole year, and it still doesn’t feel real. Most days, it seems like I’m in the wrong version of my life. Or like everything around me is just some strange movie set I wandered onto and can’t seem to escape. I keep waiting for things to feel normal again. For me to feel normal again.
Hasn’t happened yet.
But somehow, a year passed—the days dragging, the months flying—and it was time to return to the cemetery. “Unveiling” is one of a thousand strange and powerful old Jewish traditions. For the first eleven months after someone dies, their headstone is covered. It allows the family to ease in to their new reality, as if easing in is possible. When the first yahrzeit—anniversary of death—approaches, there’s a formal unveiling of the headstone. The next step in the painful, protracted process of accepting that your loved one is really gone.
It was a simple event, held graveside at Beth Shalom cemetery. A quiet corner, shaded beneath a tree, not too near any other headstones. When we buried my father last year, we also purchased the adjacent plot for my mother.
There’s a discount if we get them both now, said my mother. Your father would approve.
Nobody laughed or cried when she said it. We just nodded.
None of us have shown true emotion since Dad was ripped from our lives. The shock of the loss rendered us wooden. We move through the world like marionettes, walking and talking, but no longer real girls. In the days leading up to the unveiling, I had been readying myself for a long-delayed emotional outburst. Hoping someone would finally crack. The first dam would break and set off a chain reaction. Those of us who knew Dad best would finally let our sorrow burst forth like Niagara Falls.
I could almost see it, a holy moment of release: my mother would wail, then my younger sister, Rosie, would join in, and that would give me permission to howl as well. The Goodman women would all let out the mournful keening yearning to break free.
But nope.
Instead, as I stood graveside between my mother and my little sister, all three of us remained dry-eyed. Ana, my sister’s fiancée, was the only one periodically sniffling. The Goodman women simply said the prayers, acknowledged the moment, and that was it. One more mourning to-do item checked off the list, and the marionettes lurched off again.
The unveiling service for my father was almost identical to the one for my grandmother—-except at Bubbe’s unveiling, Dad was there, with silent tears sliding down his face. Squeezing my hand. Putting his arm around my mother. Kissing the top of my sister’s head. Showing his emotions and granting the rest of us permission to mourn. With him at our side, we all cried at the graveside when her headstone was revealed, then laughed over lunch at the nearby diner while we shared our favorite Bubbe stories. My father was the one who knew how to be fully human in a way the rest of us just don’t. We tried to make that clear on his headstone.
DAVID MOSHE GOODMAN
APRIL 10, 1950NOVEMBER 25, 2023
BELOVED FATHER, HUSBAND, BROTHER, FRIEND.
HE NEVER MET A STRANGER
(OR A SANDWICH)
HE DIDN’T LOVE.
HIS MEMORY WILL ALWAYS BE A BLESSING.
It was strange to gaze at those simple letters. Even with their attempts at heart and humor, the words on his headstone were insufficient. Seeing the graven memorial didn’t open me up. It just added another dead bolt to the door I’d firmly shut on my emotions.
Not good enough, I thought, and turned from the stone.
We were also supposed to light a yahrzeit candle in Dad’s memory, or so I thought. The flame would have brought a warmth and brightness my father would have appreciated. But no one mentioned lighting a candle, and I wasn’t sure when or how to bring it up. So I just kept my mouth shut.
When I left the cemetery, hastily thanking the rabbi and making excuses to skip out on post-unveiling socializing, all I could think about was how much my father would have hated our stoic gathering. How much more he would have hated me skipping out on the chance to have lunch with my mother and sister after the service. But also, how he would have loved all the blithely cheerful Christmas decorations along the road beside the memorial park.
