I had mentioned on the site of the Great Lileks, where we are mourning the loss of Great Lileks Senior, that I had a funeral to go to Wednesday in the city. The father of one of my childhood friends, a man who was like a second dad to every kid who knew him, had died. It seems like we're losing a lot of the good ones these days.
I've lived almost two decades away from the friendly confines of NYC, and the longer I spend away from it, the more I notice things I never did, things that were just the water in which this fish used to swim. For example, the singer at the funeral had a classic New York nasal voice, the kind where you send the voice directly from the vocal cords up into the sinuses. He was otherwise a very good singer, but I wouldn't have been in the least surprised to hear something like:
An’ He will raise youse up on eagle's wings
Bear youse on da breath of dawn
Make youse to shine like da sun
An’ hold youse in da palm of His hand
They did not do bagpipes at this funeral, despite the deceased's Irishness. I guess they only break those out for firemen and policemen, and he was neither. He was, however, a veteran, and they buried him with military honors; two soldiers, flag, and taps.
"I was okay till they played taps," said one of his sons to me, red-eyed. "I didn't know they were going to do that."
Cemeteries in the city are funny, in a way. In the movies, and often in real life, even in places like the massive Evergreens Cemetery that spans the borders of Brooklyn and Queens (which is not even the biggest in the five boroughs), you have the bereaved on a hillside in a shady spot while the final farewell is said, a peaceful and quiet place. Although in films, often raining.
Here we were on a hillside by a major road, traffic whizzing back and forth, swallowing the priest's words, one guy in a truck honking his horn in tribute. A flag is folded, passed on to the widow; roses are placed on the coffin. Good-bye; see you in a better place. Thanks for always being good to me.
I passed that cemetery a million times while growing up. I never knew anyone in it. Now I do.
I used to visit cemeteries all the time, back when I first started genealogical research. Most of them were old cemeteries in the city, and some of the ones where ancestors and relatives lie buried were affiliated with German churches, both Protestant and Catholic.
ReplyDeleteThe German ones were the most fun, because I could understand the inscriptions, and I could see what town in the fatherland these people were born in. Multi-generational plots were interesting. You would see a venerable stone with a German name like Johannes Pickelburger next to a flat bronze marker of James Pickelburger.
There was an actual pair of graves next to one another, mother and son, at the big German Catholic cemetery. She was Frau Schmidt. Her son, a World War I veteran, was named Smith. That tells a whole story right there.
Wow, that is pretty wild, FM. Was this a particular family search or general study of genealogy?
ReplyDeleteI was looking at some ancestor graves and came across some interesting non-relatives. I literally spent hours reading grave markers.
ReplyDeleteNext time I'm in a cemetery I'll have a look around. At least remember those gone before us, for a short time.
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