Burial

We buried my mother yesterday.

It was a fairly large service, with relatives who I now only see at weddings and funerals. And lately, in my family there have been far more of the latter.

I said a few words about my mother, her best friend spoke, as did the rabbi. In my speech I tried to portray how incredibly brave, active, and loving my mother was, and at a couple of points people laughed with memory as I described how my mother did not quit chemistry after exploding the lab until she first worked to get an A in the course and how she took over the local school system and forced it to desegregate. Then we went to the grave site. The paratransit van not only had arrived to late to take my mother's sister, who is in a wheelchair for MS, to the service, but they just left her in the graveyard parking lot. The rabbi solved the problem by taking the handles of her wheelchair and pushing her all the way to the grave site himself.

There we said a few prayers, said the Kaddish for the dead, and everyone helped pour dirt over my mother's coffin.

And that is where my mother is now. Buried under the earth.