A year ago today, my grandfather died. Texts from Kabbalistic Judaism suggest the path of the soul's journey after death. There is Gehenna where the soul is purified through fire. Some believe this lasts for a period of twelve months, others say twelve months is the maximum punishment a soul may undergo. I believe, though, that my grandfather's Gehenna was the period of the Holocaust. After twelve months, the soul moves on to the realms of Lower Gan Eden or Upper Gan Eden, where it is clothed in celestial garments to study Torah. From there, it moves on to Tzor- Ha Hayyim, "the bundle of the living", the source of all souls. There, it prepares for a return to the living in a new physical form. A soul sent back to Earth to help those around it.
Maybe.
Still, I speak to him.
My grandfather was an extraordinary man. Compassionate beyond measure, kind, witty, hysterically funny. I miss him with an ache that sits in my chest. I miss his eyes, his smile. I wrote this a few months after he passed away. In honor of his yahrtzeit, I would like to share it now.
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This is a story about reincarnation.
Or a story about the repetition of human sentiment. The hide and seek game of I miss you. The merry go round of “hello, goodbye” that comes after grief.
Really, it’s a story about what happens after you die.
If anyone can tell me, I am certain it’s you.
Once upon a time there was an old man, and he lived in the basement, and he bought the women roses for their birthdays and the men hats for theirs.
Once upon a time there was an old man, and he lived in the basement. He left his dentures in water glasses and sometimes on dinner plates. He made raspberry tea with sugar and syrup. The first time the girl fell in love she ran to tell him how it happened.
Once upon a time there was an old man and he lived in the basement, and he taught her how to jitterbug, and read palms, and tell the kind of stories that made people lose their breath.
Once upon a time there was an old man and he lived in the basement, and he told stories, and she wrote poems, and knew that, somehow, whatever happens after you die or people are connected, however it works, he was a little piece of her soul. And she his. Or whatever.
When you die, the world opens before you into golden white. When you die you’re offered a series of baseball cards with lives written on them and you choose yours by lottery. When you die God decides if you’re going to heaven and hell. When you die, there is nothing. When you die, you die.
When he died her body bent into question mark grieving. She’d read in books about the way people “jackknife in grief”. Like poetry. When he died she fell over her knees like a punch to the soft part of her stomach. And again and again from outside herself keening, “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a castle in the woods. The castle was big and white and the woods were dark and green and inside she met fairies, and trolls, and creatures who lived in the shadow and in the space the roots of trees left for bodies beneath the ground. When it rained, she'd go out and stare up until the lightning scared her back in. Afterwards she’d walk barefoot on the dirt, feel the earth swallowing rainwater under her feet.
When she was young she knew she’d forget herself. Convinced she could feel her brain changing into an adult, she wrote reminders to her older body. This is who you are, she’d say, don’t forget, and when you turn into an adult with adult cares and imagination, remember that this is who you are supposed to be. When she turns to look back in old journals, the words are scrawled in panicked script, their weight nearly tearing the page.
This is what happens when you die. First, you stop breathing. The aid finds you after you’ve drifted off. At 3 am, they bring the relatives down. Calls are made. Your body stays in bed. When you die, the rabbi comes over and prays for you. Later that afternoon, the ambulance comes to take your body away.
And though you die, she isn’t convinced that you’ve left. In her bedroom, she speaks to you out loud. She knows it is possible you might try to say goodbye. Or not. Quickly, she tries to reach for your soul before it goes.
When you die, in Judaism, you are buried in a white shroud and a wooden casket. The idea is that you return to the Earth as quickly as possible. At your funeral, she gave the eulogy. Went to the cemetery in a limousine. Drank cosmopolitans. When you died hundreds came to grieve.
A few months later she found your voicemails. A form of reincarnation, though not the same exactly. And isn't it funny. To hear your voice, the same as it had always been. So much more present than video. When she remembered your voicemails, she listened to them again and again. She forgot you were missing. Your voice in her ear sounded the same.
What is grieving but the merry go round of hello and goodbye again.
Hear are the things we remember. The idiosyncratic stains on an old sweater. The particular pronunciation of words. The favorite stories. The lines round the eyes. The tenor of a specific expression. The smell of laundry detergent, clean and warm.
After you died she wrote to you. Specifically. In a special kind of ink in a special kind of way, very very clearly. If there was some way to see it in heaven, she didn’t want to impede understanding with her poor handwriting.
The first time she brought him home you spoke Russian to each other, giggling all the while. The first time she read your book, she had to put it down, blushing at the sex scenes. The first time she drove your car after you died, Klezmer blasted from the stereo. She slid the windows down and drove to the supermarket dancing as she rolled down Green Georgia streets.
When she moves to the city, she falls in love with its loud trumpet quality. Each street corner, for her, carries a memory. Upon returning to her favorite places they layer, like collage.
These are the places she’ll find you:
Washington Square Park
The fourth floor of a fifth floor walk up
A bouquet of sunflowers
A hastily scrawled note on a subway window
The underside of the Manhattan bridge
Delancey
The Times Square Trumpet Player last Thursday
Duck Pond, Central Park
She isn’t looking, not exactly. And when she finds you it isn’t obvious. It’s just odd, that’s all.
Once upon a time there was a young girl and she lived in a little room in a big city. The city was vast and gray, and its trees were green and sparse. During the summer, the river held sunlight.
Once upon a time there was a young girl and she lived in a big city, and found herself in a small forest, and that’s where she met you again.
But that, I think, is a story for another time.