Today is the 59th birthday of an old friend who died last January 2.  A few days later I joined an amazingly large group of people who went out to the necropolis, snow-covered that day but generally looking like a golf course with a few trees, to help bury a very likable man.

Tomorrow, if the determined widow’s July 21 email requesting a favor and mentioning the date is still accurate, is the unveiling– the Jewish custom of returning to the grave about a year after the funeral and pulling a veil off the engraving that memorializes the departed’s life.  In this case, because of this particular burial ground, it will not be a tombstone unveiled, there are no raised markers there.  A plaque at the head or foot of Steve’s grave will be revealed, and his oldest friend, a rabbi and wonderful speaker, one of the best, will read the inscription and say a few words.  As our friend speaks the large crowd will nod, and sigh, and smile, and cry, and laugh, and they will go somewhere to eat and catch up and then, in their comfortable cars afterwards, life will continue on.

I didn’t agonize long before deciding I won’t be making the trip to the unveiling, outside Boston.  There are a variety of reasons, I suppose.  For one thing, nobody reached out to invite me, outside of the demanding widow’s slightly unreasonable July email requesting that I write, within the next few days, not about any specific memories from the time her husband and I actually spent a lot of time together, but about our conversations in the months before he died, after not seeing each other for decades.  At a loss, and unable to pull something together in the sudden and arbitrary four day window I was given, I didn’t write back and haven’t heard a peep since.

I think of their wedding, and how my friend stood next to his bride and sobbed as the rabbi performed the wedding ceremony, and I remember mumbling to a friend “it is the right of every man to choose the noose into which he slips his head.”  As far as I can tell Steve’s thirty year marriage to this demanding woman was a very happy one.  Though both were amputees from their respective cancers, they continued to have sex right up to the end.  I think that detail I’m probably not supposed to mention speaks remarkably of their love and devotion to each other. 

None of our small circle of old friends has contacted me about the unveiling, on the theory, I suppose, that I could just as easily contact them.  Fair enough.

An objective case could me made that it is difficult for people to reach out to me these days, as most people are reticent in the face of tragedy.   Steve and I once talked briefly about how many people were unable to call him during his decline, or, if they did call, talked of everything but his cancer, although he remained consistently upbeat and much more cheerful than anyone could have expected through the long crucifixion that was his cancer death.  I suspect something similar operates with me, though I feel like I’m as personable as I ever was.  Lurking, behind my deft evasions about how I’m doing, is the unmistakable and terrible tragedy of someone doomed to not truly live in the same world as everyone else, despite having all the tools to flourish in that world.  Like a dying man, the things I am wrestling with are not the carefree playful ones a hard-working, productive person likes to be surrounded with on a day off.

So, happy birthday, Melz.  You were a good man and I salute your success, your many talents, your loving wife and your two beautiful, talented daughters.  In other circumstances, I’d pay a call tomorrow.  But you, as well as anyone and better than most, know the deal, old friend.