songbird's crazy world

Last year we lost my mother’s sister. I wrote about it  here . Jewish ritual requires that a headstone be erected at the grave, and that a ceremony called an “unveiling” take place to observe the occasion. Traditionally the headstone is erected shortly after the funeral, with the unveiling held before the first anniversary of the person’s death. I haven’t written about the unveiling … because it hasn’t happened yet. For whatever reason, my mother just couldn’t bring herself to order the stone. It was becoming, as my late grandmother would say, “a shonde for the neighbors”. ( Shonde means “shame” or “embarrassment”, but with a Yiddish inflection it’s more powerful….) So finally I had to take matters into my own hands. I’m the one who made the phone calls. And on Sunday I drove my mother to (Lord help us) the Lower East Side to visit the showroom and place the order. This type of transaction is all very new to me, I’ve been fortunate enough not to have had to purchase a ...

(cross posted at Midcentury Modern Moms ) Today's post was supposed to be a fluffy little piece about my daughters' prom woes.  (don't worry, it'll post eventually.) Today Becca was supposed to miss school so that she and her dad could take a look at one of the colleges that accepted her. Today Jen was supposed to be in classes, eat in the dining hall and sleep in her dorm. Today I was supposed to enjoy a business lunch in a fine restaurant in lower Manhattan. Instead, my daughters and I -- and my sisters and parents --  will attend a funeral. My mother's younger sister passed away in the wee hours of Saturday morning. My aunt's death was not unexpected.  she fell ill early in february, and got progressively worse until the inevitable happened. My daughters are no strangers to the rituals of death, of mourning and loss.  They've been to the funeral of a schoolmate, a young man who died so tragically in an auto accident.  (Jen amazed her non-...