Gaudy Patter

In the mid-seventies, Bev spent a few years living on a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv. I can only assume her conversion to Judaism happened sometime before. My father tells me that his mom even visited his sister in Israel. Beverly returned to NYC after a while, possibly due to some visa problems. I don't have all the details.

In fourth grade, my parents relayed an invitation to me from my hipster aunt: she had a friend who worked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and would I like to go with her? When I was 9, I was all about parades. My parents put me on the Long Island Rail Road, and Bev met me at Penn Station. We took the subway to her tiny studio apartment, where she prepared a vegetarian hotplate dinner. I remember walking down the chilly hallway that night to brush my teeth, thinking about how neat it was that she never had to clean her bathroom.

Just after 5 the next morning, we swaddled ourselves in wool and left to meet her friend in a large building I can't recall. It may have been an armory, or some other improbable expanse of enclosed urban space. It was weird, holding her hand as we walked around the fringes of a cavernous room filled with dingy, deflated icons of the American century. "Underdog!" I shouted at one bluish mound. A saggy comb-like structure took shape across the hall, heralding the arrival of a well-known cartoon moose.

I was a weird kid. By fifth grade, I had five Jean Pierre-Rampal LPs. I couldn't hit a baseball with any confidence, but I knew my French flautists. Bev invited me out another time to see Rampal perform with Isaac Stern at Carnegie Hall. I wore church clothes on this outing, and for reasons still unknown to me, I brought along an actual grown-up tie, instead of a clip-on. Of course, neither of us had any idea of how to knot it, but a portly, very effeminate man down the hall did a fantastic job of adjusting it for my height.

When the concert was over, Bev turned to me and casually asked if I'd like to go backstage.

Backstage at Carnegie Hall! I was culturally literate enough to understand that this was a Very Big Deal.

As we threaded through the crowd, she added, "we're going to meet some friends of mine, okay?" Turns out Beverly knew Issac Stern's children. And there's me, a precocious aesthete with 10 birthdays under my belt, shaking hands with not one, but two virtuosos. No one cared to hear my story at school a few days later, but I didn't care.

I always wanted to do more with my Aunt Bev, but my parents separated when I was 12 or so, and our relationship took a hit. We were out of touch, but she remained my cool aunt well into adulthood.

Twelve or thirteen years ago, I got a call from my father. Beverly had suffered a debilitating stroke. Dad brought her out to Phoenix from Toledo so he could keep an eye on her as she convalesced. She spent several months living with Dad and Ella until she found a place more her style -- an assisted-living facility managed by a Jewish community group.

The stroke affected her ability to walk and talk, as these things do. Still, she was able to get around with a cane, and she followed conversations closely, though it was a struggle for her to find her words. I learned to phrase questions simply. "Red or white?" presented a nearly insurmountable challenge, but "white zinfandel?" was an easy one for her to field.

Before long, Beverly developed her own life -- plenty of friends, talk radio, religious services, trips to Wal-Mart. There were times when I'd be in town and she literally would not have the time to see me, due to a holiday or pre-arranged activity.

"You know Bev," my dad would say. "She likes routine and doing her own thing." Most times, she was able to fit me in. If she knew I was around, she'd always be sure to bring a small Ziploc to dinner with all of her broken earrings. We'd sit at the table after everyone else was gone, and I'd talk about what I was up to while tweaking her silver back into artful shapes, reattaching spangles and beads.

Just before Thanksgiving, she was hospitalized for observation after blacking out and falling in her room. That's when we learned about the brain tumor that had metastasized into her lungs. She'd been receiving regular medical checkups, so how this progressed to Stage 5 is something I don't understand. Then again, I don't understand any of this.

Experience hasn't exposed me to much grief. My darkest moments spring from real and imagined personal failures, not external calamities. I'm in the second half of my fourth decade, and this is the most time I've spent with someone whose clock is winding down. When my father called me to catch me up on how she's doing, I didn't think twice about flying out to see her.

This photo is about everything that's wrong and everything that's right about being alive.

I went directly to the county hospital from the airport in my rental and asked a woman at an information desk for directions before popping into the gift shop. "If it's not kitsch, we don't stock it," seemed to be their motto. I left empty-handed and resolved to bring a real gift on my next visit.

Then I rode the elevator to the sixth floor and wandered until I found room 31.

Beverly was in bed, her upper body elevated at a 30-degree angle. I counted five pouches hanging from her electronic IV infuser, as well as a feeding tube and a ventilator. My eyes followed the plastic lines from the machines into Bev's body. Her head lolled to one side, eyes closed as she breathed deeply. Chemo made quick work of her hair, and she was without her trademark earrings and glasses. A telenovela played quietly on her roommate's Zenith. As soon as I sat, Bev stirred.

She turned her head and looked directly into my eyes for a few minutes before I said a word. I held her gaze, even though part of me wanted to run away. I'm still not sure what I was feeling. Fear? Guilt? Anger? All of that, and more besides, but I'm not in touch with it enough to write about it competently.

n.b.: My aunt has the same eyes as my grandfather; a distinctive, beautiful blue-brown I've never seen in anyone apart from those two people. I'd never noticed it until that afternoon.

Finally, I spoke. I asked her if she knew who I was, and she nodded. I tried to be upbeat, wishing I'd Googled something that would help me provide comfort to a loved one who's terminally ill:

+aunt +cancer +goodbye
"life cut short" + injustice "coming to terms"
"raw deal" +unfair +acceptance

I started talking, feeling more useless with each word. She never took her eyes away from mine.

Mostly, I reminisced. Hayden Planetarium, Carnegie Hall, Thanksgiving parade. I told her she inspired me to be intrepid when Liz first suggested that we take a trip around the world. I told that she was always my favorite relative, and how amazing I thought it was that she'd traveled as much as she had and learned a few languages along the way, picking up a grad degree in German Literature before she was done studying.

Things I should have said years ago. Why we save these things up, I don't know. Have they started selling time in Costco-sized quantities we can consume at will? No?

I asked how she was doing, possibly the dumbest damned thing I've said as an adult. She glanced at the IV and the tangle of tubes passing in and out of her body, and then back into my eyes before she replied with great effort:

"It's all a bit much."

That's Bev.

I saw her twice more. The day after I arrived, the doctor decided that more chemo wouldn't be any use, so they removed the feeding tube and discharged her. By my third visit, she was back at the nursing home, this time in the hospice wing where they'll try to make her comfortable. She was angled up in bed, studying the menu for next week's Passover seder.

I brought her several CDs I'd burned that morning. Ella put on the Lou Rawls disc while I made small talk. I'd gotten lost on the way over, leaving me with only 20 minutes before I needed to speed to the airport and return my rental car. I paused to check the time while Bev read and re-read the Passover menu.

"I've got to go," I said, "but I want you to know that I love you a lot, okay?"

Her eyes bore into me, and she nodded her head ever so slightly.

"Okay, then." I stood, and put my hand on hers.

I leaned in so she could kiss my cheek. I kissed her forehead, stood up, and turned away quickly. Sharing my grief with Bev was a selfish action I would not permit.

Ella put her arms around me and thanked me for coming. I'm not sure what I said, but I recall that speaking was difficult.

Outside her door, I passed a nurses' station. Two women were engaged in conversation while a third completed some paperwork. A fourth woman nodded at me and gave me a short wave I couldn't return. She kept nodding, as if she understood something.

In the parking lot, I considered something I'd read the night before while researching Jewish funeral rites. Kaddish is a traditional mourner's prayer recited daily for the first year after someone's passing, and then yearly on Yahrzeit, the date of their death. For people of faith, reciting Kaddish elevates the departed person's soul in the World to Come.

I'm envious of religious people. Books and rituals offer them answers and a level of comfort with life's randomness that I'll never know. I'll find personal and creative ways to celebrate Bev's life -- now, and after she's gone.

These remembrances won't take the form of a lighted candle, and I don't know where I'd find 10 Jewish men to help me recite the Kaddish, even if I spoke Hebrew.

But I can continue to seek out new experiences, challenge myself, and draw strength from my friends and family. I can travel, write, feed my head, use humor and sarcasm to make strong points, and work to care a little less about what others think.

That's my tribute to Bev. I don't foresee any trouble making it happen, and as it turns out, it's even in keeping with Jewish tradition:

Yizkor:

History is a continuum. If we, the living, give charity or do good deeds due to the lasting influence or in memory of a departed parent or other loved one, the merit is truly that of the soul in its spiritual realm. Moreover, G-d in His mercy credits our deed to the departed one because he or she too would have done the same were it possible.