Harris had sent me an email the day before:
Subject: my phone dont work here
i was trying to tell you happy birthday to iris and that i’m sorry i couldn’t be there for it, but i will be next year.
• • •
There’s priceless footage of Harris’s first birthday in my mom’s DVD collection. He’s sitting in his high chair with shaggy brown hair, wearing a tiny, maroon Oklahoma Sooners shirt—my dad went to University of Oklahoma and is still a die-hard fan.
In the video, my mom puts the whole cake on his tray, and I scream in agony in the background. I want it. Harris pushes his hand into the middle of the cake like he’s pulling out a beating heart in that scene from Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom. He shoves cake into his mouth by the fistful like a barbarian, coating his entire person in icing.
After a few bites, my mom takes the cake away from Harris and puts it in front of me on the kitchen table. Harris screams and cries. Then she takes the cake away from me and gives it back to Harris. I lose my mind. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Aunt Carol, and Uncle Herb laugh loudly in the background. This goes on for several more rounds. They think it’s hilarious.
Watching it, I think: Grandma, Uncle Herbie, and Harris are all dead now.
37 Eleven Months, Two Weeks, Five Days
In Judaism, an unveiling is the ceremony that happens within a year of a loved one’s death to formally dedicate the headstone. Prior to today, your grave was marked with a sad little sign that stuck out of the ground with your name typed in Arial font. Today we will go the cemetery for the unveiling. It’s a beautiful day: clear blue skies, sixty-one degrees.
I was living in Manhattan when the Twin Towers fell: that was a beautiful day.
I got the call that you died last February: that was a beautiful day.
We go to the cemetery to unveil your headstone: another beautiful day.
Beautiful days scare the shit out of me now.
• • •
We plan to meet at the cemetery at 1:00 p.m. I haven’t showered for a couple of days and decide it would be an appropriate time, but I’m dragging my feet. It usually takes me twenty minutes to get showered, dressed, and out the door. Today, it takes close to an hour. I stand in the shower so long the hot water turns cold.
After brushing my wet hair, I sit down for a while on the foot of the bed in my towel, blank. I get up, stare at all the clothes in my closet, and sit down a while longer. I’m having trouble breathing like I did sitting in the waiting room right before your funeral.
I start to sweat. My heart beats fast. I feel nauseous. I focus on my breathing to make sure it functions properly. I finally manage to put on a dress and two shoes and make my way downstairs and into the car. The drive over is relatively quiet. Iris eats peanut butter pretzels loudly in the back seat and eventually falls asleep a few minutes before we reach our destination.
When we pull into the cemetery, I see Mom and Dad, Taal, Matt Marcus, and Matt’s girlfriend, Eby. Matt and Eby are wearing their purple “Harris” Phish T-shirts that they designed for the last Phish tour, the one you missed because you were here. They sold a ton of them.
We open our car doors gingerly so as not to wake the baby and head toward the covered headstone that sits underneath a shady tree. We quietly stand in a semi-circle around it, and Mom passes out copies of the short service she’s created for her son who’s buried beneath her feet. Meanwhile, Eby sits in the backseat of the car with Iris while she naps, her little mouth agape, completely safe from the sad scene on the other side of the car door, not fifty feet away.
Mom instructs us to read everything together. A few lines in, I blurt out, “Aah! I hate choral reading.” I really do hate it. At various points, I drop out to cry. Mom does the same. Mike cries, too, but continues to read through the service. Dad reads quietly, inaudibly:
We thank God for the gift of Harris who enriched our lives while he walked beside us.
We remember his memory in death even as we loved him in life.
We are grateful for the opportunity afforded us by this unveiling service to reach back into time and to remember the moments, days, and years we shared with Harris this day.
May his life indeed be bound up in the bond of everlasting life.
The greatest tribute is to remember his life:
In the rising of the sun and in its going down…We will remember him.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter…We will remember him.
In the opening of the buds and the rebirth of spring…We will remember him.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer…We will remember.
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn…We will remember him.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends…We will remember him.
When we are weary and in need of strength…We will remember him.
When we have joys we yearn to share…We will remember him.
When we gaze into Iris’s eyes…We will remember him.
So long as we live, so he too shall live,
For he is part of us, part of
