Exhumation
by Haya Pomrenze
Mima'amakim Fall, 2005 issue
Eyes closed, Sy Esterson suffered on El Al’s Flight 71. His wife, Elaine, insisted on the aisle
seat, so he was wedged in the middle where even the slightest movement caused discomfort.
The situation was exacerbated when Elaine befriended the man in the window seat. Even with
Sy’s headset on, he could hear the buzzing of his wife’s voice.
“He exhumed my mother-in-law’s body for burial in Jerusalem,” Elaine said in an intense whisper she reserved for words like cancer and lesbian. “We’re not religious, but we believe in the holiness of the land. This is our second trip.”
Sy raised the airflow from the overhead vent.
“We also believe in the sanctity of Jerusalem,” the attentive listener said, smelling of mint chewing gum. Luke was on a pilgrimage to Israel with the Christian Messianic Church.
Elaine leaned across Sy; her elbow poked him in the sternum. Sy placed National Geographic between them as a buffer. “Fifteen thousand dollars, this whole process has cost,” she said to Luke. “I wanted a cruise once we saved enough from his pension. Instead I got a trip to Israel.”
Sy prickled at how easily she trivialized this important event. Actually, his decision to exhume his mother’s body had come about accidentally, when the funeral home had a flooding problem from a defunct sprinkler system. Once his mother’s stone needed to be moved, Sy reasoned, he might as well disinter the body for re-burial in Israel. He told people his mother’s cousins had moved to Israel after the war and she’d had an attachment to the country.
“They escaped from Russia when Sy was just three,” Elaine told Luke. “His mother was a widow.” “What happened to the father?” Luke lifted his eyes from Receiving the Holy Spirit. “Killed in a pogrom or something like that.” Elaine motioned vaguely with her hands. As she outlined the bare bones of his life - his mother’s illness that was always changing and never had a name, Sy’s new caretakers, his childless aunt and uncle, - he actually derived some satisfaction at her meager account. His own memories were poorly focused like a broken kaleidoscope. He barely recalled his weekly stilted visits to a woman who had the bed covers pulled to her armpits, and the oppressive quiet in the room, except for the sound of magazine pages turning (she turned too fast to actually read them).
Elaine was now telling Luke how he’d gotten his accounting degree, graduating in the top third of his class.
Sy massaged his gray haired temples and turned up the volume on the Ulpan tape while searching his Hebrew-English dictionary for the words cemetery, shrouds, re-burial and sundown. He wanted to be prepared for the re-burial but unfortunately his compact dictionary had no word for that.
Only yesterday, Sy had gone to Beth El cemetery in Riverwood, New York, to disinter his mother’s remains. Rabbi Kagan, the young funeral home chaplain, had met with Sy twice before. He now placed his arm on Sy’s arthritic left shoulder as they walked to the grave. “Mr. Esterson,” Rabbi Kagan cautioned. “The remains are usually decomposed after fifty years. Maybe you should wait in my office.”
Sy hesitated. He had missed her funeral while a counselor at Camp Dora in the Catskills in the summer of 1950. His uncle called from the city to inform Sy of his mother’s death, insisting that he not return for the funeral. A quick, quiet affair, his uncle had told him. You can sit shiva at the camp. He was given a room off the infirmary with a broken screen door where he completed the traditional mourning period. The mosquitoes paid more attention to him than campers or counselors.
“I want to see it,” Sy told the rabbi. (Elaine had opted to wait in the taxi en route to the airport.)
He watched as three muscled men dug up the grave of his mother. He cleared his throat from the stirred particles of dirt. The workmen paused, blotted sweat from their faces with their forearms. It was a hot October with a touch of humidity.
Rabbi Kagan slowly opened the coffin. He gasped even though Sy could not detect an odor. “Look at the bones! I’ve only seen bones intact twice before. Your mother must have been a special lady, a tzadeikes.”
Sy was surprised by the bones’ smallness. They were gray, almost black in some places and flecked with cracks. He remembered reading that the bones of the righteous are left intact. But Sy could neither verify nor negate the rabbi’s statement regarding his mother’s character. He had barely known her. The intolerable silent visits had tortured Sy and they dwindled from weekly to once a month so that by the time she died, she was more of a memory than a real person.
“You okay?” Rabbi Kagan asked. “When people don’t cry, I get nervous.”
“I’m okay, I’m all right.”
Sy watched as the rabbi displayed the bones in skeletal form. It was not a perfect skeleton - some bones must have decomposed. The rabbi placed them in a metal shipping container and scooped dirt from the coffin to gather the last remains. He splashed embalming fluid throughout the container as if squirting cleaning fluid on a car.
“Esa Ainai El Ha’harim, Me’ayin Yavoh Ezri,” Rabbi Kagan chanted Psalm 151 as he rocked back and forth in prayer. His right hand remained fixed on his trimmed beard.
Sy opened to the frayed, maroon bookmark. “My eyes gaze to the heavens, from where will my help come?” he responded.
They continued this religious volley, the rabbi singing praises, Sy providing a tepid translation. By the end, Sy assumed a shuckling stance as his body, too, swayed to the rhythm of the prayer.
Without warning Rabbi Kagan grasped the collar of Sy’s pinstriped irregular shirt, made a tiny cut with pocket scissors, and tore the material. Sy could have chosen a black ribbon for the kriyah ceremony, but he opted for the Orthodox custom of tearing one’s garment.
“You are now considered a mourner,” Rabbi Kagan said.
“A mourner.” He looked at the rabbi. “For how long?”
“Until sundown after the burial.”
Sy turned a page on the prayer book. “Blessed are you, Our God, the true Judge.”
Attached to a chain dangled a chipped washing cup. Sy poured water first on his right hand, and then on his left as Rabbi Kagan had done. The cold water felt good on his hands. “Have a safe flight,” Rabbi Kagan said. “Your mother will be at rest in Jerusalem, waiting for the Messiah.”
Maybe I should have told him I wasn’t at my mother’s funeral, Sy thought, vaguely aware of Elaine in the front seat of the taxi reading Good Housekeeping. If he knew, maybe he would’ve made a speech or had a minyan.
Slowly, Sy and Elaine navigated off the plane and stood with other families awaiting cargo. It was ten in the morning. Sy noticed that two men and a woman with a blue beret had torn clothing as well. Sy assumed they were waiting for bodies, freshly dead. He felt unworthy of their sympathetic glances and looked away. After the security officers signed off on the documents from Riverwood, a fully bearded man with a large black yarmulke placed the metal shipping container on a dolly labeled Chevra Kadisha.
Sy spotted Avi holding a sign, Esterson, written on flimsy yellow paper. His first cousin from his mother’s side looked much older than he remembered.
“Avi!” Elaine motioned.
The men approached each other. Avi took Sy’s hand and shook enthusiastically.
“Welcome, welcome. How was your trip?” Avi asked.
“Tiring.” Sy answered. “We’re ready to go”.
He climbed the uneven Jerusalem stone walkway of Har Shalom cemetery. Elaine lagged behind. He consulted his map of the cemetery. The diagram resembled a semi-circular tiered wedding cake. He crossed off the name of each family plot they reached – Rabinovitz. Hillblum, Friedman. According to the map they were close but the midday chamsin forced him to stop.
“I don’t remember the heat being so oppressive.” Sy drank from his plastic canteen.
“This chamsin, it’s the worst heat we’ve had.” Avi wiped against his matted brown curly hair with his hand.
They had gone up an extra row and backtracked to find the plot.
“Sy, where are you? Always rushing ahead!” Elaine’s voice echoed through the cemetery. He looked down and saw her flowered sunhat two rows down. “Go up one tier and make a right. You should be near Friedman.”
“Please come down and help me; you know how I get mixed up.”
“I also got a little lost. Just relax and follow my voice.” Sy impatiently brushed his hands against his pants.
Members of the Chevra Kadisha were waiting by the freshly dug earth. Elaine had caught up and was fanning her hat against her neck. Sy saw his mother’s remains wrapped in white cloth with the royal blue Magen David. The stone, a modest slab of white marble, was ready to be set. He brailed the name carved on the stone: Hadas Bat Sorah. Elaine patted Sy’s neck.
Avi grabbed the shovel and scooped dirt from the prepared mound. Sy was startled as the dirt hit the remains. Two workers chewed gum as they finished shoveling.
“She had a hard life,” Avi remarked. “Never recovered from the pogroms.”
“She had a sad life.” Sy heard the piercing wail of mourners at a burial several tiers down. Several dark- skinned women beat their chests in unison.
“Sephardic Jews,” Avi said. “A lot of crying. Years ago, they paid people to cry at funerals. Now there’s a job.”
Sy stared at them. Paid mourners. The mercenary aspect of mourning made him recoil yet he wondered if he should pay them to cry. Somebody should, he thought. He sighed loudly and waited for a feeling of closure, perhaps relief, as they exited the cemetery. It did not come.
Elaine made reservations at an upscale restaurant in the Jewish quarter for that evening. “Remember,” she said. “According to that rabbi, the mourning is over at sunset. It’s time to enjoy.” Sy shielded his gaze from the sun’s glare. At least five more hours to mourn, by his reckoning.
Elaine scouted the new shopping mall in the lobby. A lady drinking coffee stood up and motioned to Elaine and Sy. “Please, may I help you? Special discount.” Her tongue was sluggish, thickened by her Russian accent. She motioned to a sign, Free manicure with haircut. “No thanks, maybe tomorrow,” Elaine replied. “Poor thing,” she continued as they walked to their room. “Tourism is so slow these days.”
Sy fell into a jetlagged sleep. He slept on his back, immobile, a tribute to the narrow cot on which he’d slept as a child. He dreamt he was at the cemetery with Rabbi Kagan. He was retrieving the bones from the casket and connecting them, two at a time, with rusted metal links. The skeleton stood upright and his mother dangled like a marionette suspended in the air. Sy tried to touch it but his feet wouldn’t move. His body stretched as he tried to reach her. Finally he touched the bones of her hand with his index finger. At that instant, the bones disintegrated to white powder, and all proof of her disappeared. He screamed, his fingers still indenting the sheets when he awoke.
“Gone shopping. Don’t forget your jetlag pills”, the note from Elaine said. Sy put on a light blue shirt and navy slacks that Elaine had safety pinned together so he wouldn’t make an incorrect match. Groggy from his anguished mid-afternoon sleep, Sy stayed in the hotel, his headset on. The arched windows in the lobby let in the last light of the day. He passed the beauty salon, and the woman from yesterday smiled, revealing a wide gap between her two front teeth. Sy approached her and noticed her nametag, “Masha”. A small gold flower was clipped onto the tag. He decided to treat himself to a manicure.
“Yes, I have time for manicure,” she said. “No haircut?”
He shook his head, oddly offended by the idea.
Masha perched on her stool and appeared to squat in her largeness. The small daisies on her black Lycra dress distorted with each of her movements. She placed green tinted glasses on her full nose and examined his nails. They were dry and brittle, the skin canvassed with age spots. “You hard working man,” she declared. A gold tooth flashed as she spoke.
“Actually, I am retired.”
“No matter,” she shook her head. “I can tell things.”
His eyes closed and he nodded off as his fingers soaked in the water. When he woke, his hands were enveloped in hers. He suddenly remembered – the rabbi had said that a mourner didn’t cut his hair or nails. Well, it was almost sundown. This would have to do.
Masha propped her elbows on the table as she continued to knead his hands. “Feel good, yes?”
“Yes”. He was more relaxed than he had been in weeks.
“My son,” Masha gestured to the picture by the nail polish display. The black-haired youth in the bronze frame resembled his mother.
“Good looking fellow,” Sy answered. “How old is he?”
“Seventeen. Not like other stewpid boyz; he is hard worker.”
Sy closed his eyes. The hair and nails of the corpse keep growing after death, he couldn’t help but think. Maybe the rabbis were onto something: the Jewish genius for grief and mourning.
Masha sighed and massaged with deep circular motions of her thumbs, her gold bracelets clinking like champagne glasses.
But what was the grief? What corpse? It was an ossuary, a bag of bones. But she’d scarcely been more than that in his life.
“Relax,” Masha said.
He couldn’t ever remember having his hands touched, soothed like this. The manicure was almost over. A deep sadness overwhelmed him. Who was he mourning – her or himself? He was also no more than a bag of bones.
“Meester, you enjoying?”
He made a choking noise as he tried to answer.
Masha half-rose, alarmed. “You okay meester?”
“It’s wonderful. What magical hands.” He stopped. He couldn’t talk.
“Can I get you glass of water?”
“You’re a tzadeikes, a tzadeikes,” he said brokenly. He placed his head on the unsteady table and sobbed as the sun went into the ground.