Requiem for an empty Lot

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AmyKossBlogThang: Musical Ambush

AmyKossBlogThang: Musical Ambush: A s a kid I didn’t mind my poppa practicing violin at home, or his friends coming over to play chamber music, and I loved it when he sa...

Musical Ambush

As a kid I didn’t mind my poppa practicing violin at home, or his friends coming over to play chamber music, and I loved it when he sat down at the piano, because it meant he was in a good mood. I even liked seeing him in his dark suit, white shirt and bow-tie. 

But I hated his concerts. 

I hated having to wear a dress, hated sitting still in the dark doing nothing. And I hated how interminably l-o-n-g and boring symphonies were, movement after movement after movement. 

It wasn’t as bad when I could bring my best friend Birdy, because we could sit separate from my mom -- that is until intermission when some meddling old fart invariably tattled on us for giggling. Then my mom, burning with the shame that could have been avoided if she’d let me stay home in the first place, would make me and Birdy sit on either side of her for the rest of the concert, or the rest of our lives, whichever came first. 

But I somehow grew up and found myself liking some classical music. In high school the high drama of Dvorak’s New World Symphony spoke to me, blasted loud and throbbing with emotion. In time more subtle composers made sense, and I eventually started tuning in to the classical radio station. I even dressed up and went to concerts on purpose and without Birdy. 

Then my Poppa died. 

I miss him when I’m building something and need his advice. I miss him when the kids do something he’d like, such as get married. I miss him when I see birds being birds, and squirrels being squirrels; and flowers blooming: But I knew I would. 

What I didn’t see coming was that even now, almost two years later, I still can't listen to classical music without crumbling.

When I was a kid, if anyone had told me that one day that dreary music that I detested would become my sweet Poppa's voice from the other side, I would have laughed.

xo Amy

AmyKossBlogThang: Disc of Death

AmyKossBlogThang: Disc of Death: D ears, as   we are all the center of our own universes, it stands to reason that our personal dead are way deader then the nameless, f...

Flexi-Funeral

Dears, 

Beside my chronic morbidity and the current crush of death in the news, I'm prompted to write today by my recent experience of a futuristic funeral of convenience.

My cousin Lenny died over a year ago. I’d been texting with his daughter during his last days and was informed when he’d breathed his last. I was sad, or sad-ish; Lenny had been a big part of my childhood, and sweet, shiny bits of him remained in my memories, but we hadn’t seen each other in decades. Buying a last minute plane ticket to attend his funeral was not a consideration.  

Historically if you must attend a memorial service you did so at a proscribed time in a proscribed place, say Mt. Sinai Chapel at 3:00 on Tuesday the fifth. And in the old days if you were unable to attend because say, you lived in Los Angeles and the deceased was to be interred in Minneapolis, then you were off the hook. 

But a few weeks ago Lenny's daughter sent me a package with some old family photos and a disc with a recording of her dad's funeral service. This meant the traditional restrictions of time and distance no longer applied. 

She had taken the time and effort to copy and mail it, so I knew she wanted me to listen, but a disc of this kind is not something a person is necessarily eager to play. But even if I were, it didn’t seem right to pop Lenny's funeral into the player while scrubbing grout or doing my nails. 

So weeks, maybe months, passed before I finally took the CD and drove to Forest Lawn. In a feeble attempt to minimize the maudlin creepiness, I avoided the freshly dug graves and the ones with obvious active mourners. I parked instead near the long dead, recognizable by the absence of flowers on their graves. 

There in the seclusion of the forgotten, I slipped in the disc and attended my cousin’s funeral in the privacy of my car. I watched a cemetery crow hop around while the Rabbi moaned in Hebrew, Lenny's son delivered a eulogy recounting his dad's WWII silver star heroism and cello playing. His granddaughter talked about his jokes and magic tricks and fondness for dogs.

My crow flew away as the service ended with the schmaltzy caterwauling of the cantor. I’d forgotten to bring tissues and had to wipe my snot on my sleeve.  

xo Amy   

AmyKossBlogThang: Uncle Jerry

AmyKossBlogThang: Uncle Jerry: Dearest Dears,  My Uncle Jerry, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, made my mother so miserable that as a kid, I just wished he'd get...

Uncle Jerry

Dearest Dears, 

My Uncle Jerry, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, made my mother so miserable that as a kid, I just wished he'd get hit by a bus. When I'd hear about some good guy dying before his time, I'd wish it was Jerry instead. I could always tell from my mother's posture or tone of voice when she'd had contact with her brother. He sucked the soul right out of her.

Jerry got a degree in mathematics before I was born. But by the time I was conscious he was in and out of institutions and jails. Sometimes homeless, sometimes taken in by women who thought they could help him. These women blew my mind -- why would they want my creepy uncle Jerry? 

The pattern repeated. A new social worker or girlfriend would call my mom, horrified by her callousness. What kind of sister could let her brother sleep in unlocked cars? Eat out of trash cans? Go without meds?

And my mom would agree, she was a horrible person, a terrible sister. She'd let her dead mother down. Hadn't Bubbi said, "Something's wrong with Jerry! We have to help Jerry!" before she died at 51?

The girlfriends and social workers never lasted, but my mom's guilt and misery was relentless. My own sympathies, however, were never with Jerry. Ever. I hated when he "visited," I hated what he did to my parents -- his mental illness was virulently contagious.

It wasn't until adulthood that I had any real compassion for the Uncle Jerrys of the world. And now that Jerry is dead, of natural causes, at a ripe old age, I can see how fiercely I detested him and his disease. There was no separating the two, for me. 

Since then other friends and family members have been stricken with similar illnesses. With them it has been easier to understand that the illness is not the person and the person is not the illness.

And now there is a brilliant book called CHALLENGER DEEP by Neal Shusterman. A first person narrative of a 15 year old boy's nightmarish plummet into mental illness. This book would be an amazing read for anyone, but for kids with mental illness in their family: wow! A brilliant, terrifying, hard to read but impossible to put down treasure. 

If I'd had this book as a kid, I probably wouldn't have hated my uncle Jerry any less, but maybe I would have understood him a tiny bit more.  

xo
Amy

P.S. CHALLENGER DEEP won the NBA (National Book Award for Young People) a couple days ago, and never have I agreed more with any award committee's choice.