Mabfan's Musings

It's hard for me to believe, but 60 years ago today my maternal grandfather Louis Cohen died of multiple myeloma far too young.. (On the Hebrew calendar, Louis died on 19 Shevat 5716, so his yahrzeit was a few days ago.)

Tonight and tomorrow is the yahrzeit (Hebrew anniversary of the death) of my maternal grandfather Louis Cohen, who passed away from multiple myeloma far too young.

Sadly, I never knew him. I'd like to share his story.

Louis Cohen was born in Ukraine. I've seen his birth certificate; it's in Russian.

Louis emigrated to the United States when he was around the age of six or seven years old, with his parents, Jacob Cohen & Yetta Sokolovsky, and his younger sister, Molly Cohen. The family settled in Brownsville, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that was attracting a lot of Jewish immigrants and was considered a nicer place to live than the Lower East Side. Jacob got a job delivering canisters for soda water, and eventually he bought the business. My mom remembered that he made his deliveries driving a green truck.

Although Louis did not know English when he emigrated, he picked it up very quickly. Apparently, as a child he started school in a special class in which the students mostly did arts and crafts. But with his ability to learn English quickly he soon moved into a regular class. He graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School, went on to Pace Institute for two or three years, and became an accountant. He began keeping the books for his father Jacob.

In 1929, his parents bought a house in Flatbush for the whole family, located at 817 East 45th Street between Avenue D and Foster Avenue. On June 1, 1930, Louis married my grandmother Clara Baker in Boston. They were fourth cousins; either their grandfathers or great grandfathers were brothers. After they got married, they moved in with his parents. Furthermore, my Mom's aunt Molly married Irving Bell, a dentist who went to Tufts Dental School, and they also lived in the Jacob Cohen house. Apparently it was not uncommon for a large extended family to stay under one roof for such a long time.

Louis and Clara had two children. My Mom was born in 1936 and my uncle Robert was born a few years after.

Sometime in the 1940s Louis joined the Masons. As he was in his thirties, he was a little too old to be drafted into World War II. In fact, he kept missing the window to be drafted, for which he was very grateful.

Around 1945 Louis joined the law firm of Morrit & Eisenstein and did their accounting and the accounting for their clients. Later on, lawyer Fred Johnson also joined the firm, and the four of them worked very closely together. Mom tells me that Fred Morrit was a State Senator and a songwriter, but I haven't been able to find much information about him, or about Morris Eisenstein.

One thing that makes me proud of my grandfather has to do with his support for my mom. In the 1950s, there was no major emphasis on women's education, but Louis supported Mom's education wholeheartedly. He was very proud of her, and even though he didn't want her to leave home he did support her decision to attend Mount Holyoke college. Mom only spent a year there, though, because soon after she started college Louis died. When that happened, Mom came home and transferred to Barnard so she could live with her family.

Louis died of multiple myeloma at age of 50, knowing that he had helped raise and support two wonderful children. Sadly, both of Louis's parents were still alive when he died. They passed on themselves in the early 1960s, while my mother was in law school.

On the Hebrew calendar, Louis died on 19 Shevat 5716. Tonight and tomorrow are 19 Shevat 5774.

I remember him.

Two days before my birthday, a close friend of mine and her community suffered a loss of a man, a writer, who was only 50 years old and died of what appeared to be a sudden heart attack. The very next day, an acquaintance of mine, a teacher, who had been two years ahead of me in high school and was only in his 40s, also died of a sudden heart attack.

And then last night, we heard that another good friend had lost his wife just hours before. She was also in her 40s and suffered an apparent sudden heart attack.

Needless to say, this combination of deaths has affected me.

As many of you know, I lost my father when I was in college, and my mother passed away a little over five years ago. Just last fall, I lost my aunt, meaning another member of that generation was now gone. I've had a lot of experience dealing with the fact that death is out there, that it exists, and that it can't be fought off in the end. Like all of us, I try not to let it overwhelm me, but it never strays too far from my thoughts. For example, just yesterday, as I was video recording my daughters singing and reading aloud, it occurred to me that one day they would value these videos not for their own appearances in them but for the sound of my voice behind the camera. (I hate how morbid those thoughts are, but I cannot deny their existence.)

When I see all this tragedy around me, I want to offer words of comfort, and I tend to feel that my own experiences should be able to help. I should be able to ease the minds of those friends of mine who just started losing their first parent in the past few years; after all, I was a pioneer, exploring the territory well ahead of many of them. But my own experience has taught me the truth behind one truism: there are no words.

I remember that when my father died, my mother tried to explain to me that she had lost a husband, and it was hard for me to understand what that meant. All I knew was that I had lost a father. But now, having spent so much of my life with one person, I have a better grasp of what it was my mom had, even as I still have no idea what it means to lose it. I hear that a friend has lost his wife, and I want to say something, but I have no idea what I can possibly say. My own losses are in no way congruent to his.

What I can say is this: the first hours, days, and weeks after the death of a loved one are surreal. It's like stepping off a curb into a street that you didn't realize was there. For that time, the universe just doesn't seem to make sense. Then, slowly, you start to pick up the pieces of the world around you, and you manage to fit it together like a jigsaw puzzle that was scattered to the four winds.

At my mother's funeral, Rabbi Shmuel Feld talked about eventually adjusting to the "new normal." To all of my friends who are suffering these recent losses, I can't tell you that it gets better, because, well, it doesn't. But it does get "normal," if that makes any sense.

May we all be comforted.

It's been a few weeks since I've managed to blog here; as I hope people can imagine, the kids still take up a lot of time in our lives. Nomi and I continue to enjoy being parents, and I find myself torn between wanting to post every update about the kids and not wanting to deluge the readers of this blog with all those details. I would post about other things going on in my life, but as I noted recently on Twitter and Facebook, there's not much else going on.

Well, that's not entirely true. We're working, of course, and I'm always trying to make progress on some writing project or other. We're continuing to clean the apartment; in particular, every day we make a little more progress in the kids' room so it will one day be entirely theirs. And we socialize a little bit, although that's mostly close to home. We did make it to a wedding last month, and we're going to another one this month, but any trips out of the house involve so many logistical details that they have to be considered carefully before implementing. (I sound like a military general.)

Amidst all the current chaos that is our lives, however, I didn't want to let two anniversaries pass today without mention.

A year ago today, on Sunday, November 2, 2008, was the official publication day of my collection I Remember the Future. It's hard for me to believe that the book has been out for a whole year. I blogged about publication day last year in my post The Publication Party, and I noted how wonderful it was to have so many people turn out for the celebration.

In honor of the first anniversary of the book's publication, the Open Book Society website is featuring an exclusive interview with me. I discuss a variety of topics, including my thoughts on the current state of the publishing industry and how having twins has affected my writing. Feel free to check it out.

(Also, although I'm probably preaching to the choir here, keep in mind that the book is still in print, and would make a great gift for Chanukah or Christmas. And check out all the other books Apex has for sale.)

Ahem.

So that's one year ago. Nineteen years ago... well, nineteen years ago my father died. And oddly enough, that's true this year on both the Gregorian and Hebrew calendar. Dad died on the evening of November 2, 1990, after sundown, which means that he died on the 15th of Cheshvan in the year 5751. As it so happens, the 15 of Cheshvan began last night and lasts all day today until sundown – and today is November 2.

I've discussed my father here before and how much he influenced me – in fact, I did so again just last year in the post Joel David Burstein for anyone who wants to be reminded about him. Yesterday evening, when I went to shul to recite the Mourner's Kaddish, I contemplated how far I've come from that night in college when Dad was taken from me.

For many years, I defined myself as an adult who had lost his father. Then, in 2007, I had to learn to redefine myself as an adult who had lost both his parents, and that was at an age when most people still have their parents around. But this past summer, I began to redefine myself again, as a father to twins. Last night, as I held my two daughters and thought about how they've both been named in a way that honors my parents, I thought about how joyously Dad would have held the two of them were he alive today.

I wish they could have met my parents, their grandparents, and I hope I'll be able to impress upon them the kind of people they were.

One year ago, and nineteen years ago.

This shabbat will be the day of Mom's yahrzeit. She died on January 25, 2007, which fell on 6 Shvat on the Hebrew calendar, and 6 Shvat this year falls on January 31.

In honor of my mom's yahrzeit, Nomi and I are sponsoring kiddush at our shul, Kadimah-Toras Moshe, on shabbas morning. That afternoon, I'm the speaker at shalosh seudos (the third meal), and for my topic I've decided to speak on "Superman and Moses." Mincha begins at 4:30 pm for anyone in the area who wants to hear my talk. However, for those who can't be there, I'll be basing much (but not all) of what I have to say on the book Up, Up, and Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero by Rabbi Simcha Weinstein (and yes, I'll be giving him credit for it).

And yes, I know people still want me to write up my comments on "Spider-Man and Repentance." I will when I can.

When I last posted about my personal life, gnomi and I were contemplating the drive to Connecticut to pay our respects to the Greenberger family.

In the end, gnomi and I decided that we ought to proceed with our previous Sunday plans after all, so we didn't go to Connecticut. As much as we wanted to, there was one item that simply had to take precedence. (More on that at the end.)

There were a few things we had planned to do on Sunday, and we managed to do most of them. We had lunch with cellio, who was passing through Boston on her way to Pittsburgh, and so if we didn't see her yesterday we have no idea when we would have a chance to see her next. (As cellio has posted, there was a nice small group at lunch.)

We drove out to Burlington and did three things. We visited Nomi's parents, we went to the Bose store, and we took a new author photo of me.

But the most important thing we did, and the main reason we stuck to the original plan, was that we took care of some final issues with Mom's estate. As previously planned, Nomi and I went over to my older brother's place to deal with the final paperwork. My brothers and I now each have one more form to fill out and mail to the estate lawyer, and once we do, Mom's estate will be closed.

I'm not sure if I'm feeling a sense of closure or not. The whole process of dealing with a parent's death from the moment you hear about it is a series of steps. I've gone through a variety of "closing steps," I suppose, both religious and secular ones, and I still find myself occasionally obsessing over the loss. As I told people years after my father died, you never fully "get over it," nor would you want to. You just eventually adjust to a new version of normality, one in which the person's absence has become a normal part of your everyday life.

And so, I guess that's where I am right now.

Meanwhile, I've got to finish off my final assignments for my publishing classes, and see the final steps that need to be taken before I Remember the Future is officially published.

As baseball season starts up in earnest, I can't help but think about my own history as a fan of the sport.

When I was growing up, my younger brother Josh was the real instigator when it came to baseball. I suppose that left to my own devices, I could have just ignored baseball for the most part; I was more into comic books and Star Trek.

But Josh fell in love with baseball at an early age, and due to his urgings, my family began following our beloved team: the Yankees.

You read that right. In the beginning, despite living in Queens, the Burstein clan were Yankees fans as well as Mets fans.

There were legitimate reasons for this. We grew up in the 1970s, and in 1977 the Yankees had one of the major success stories of their career. That was the year of Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson, and the year of the World Series. I vividly remember the whole family shlepping to the Bronx to see a game or two; I remember how much we cheered for Thurmon Munson and how tragic it was when he died; and I remember how we idolized Reggie, and his eponymous candy bar.

However, by the time the 1980s rolled around, we had started to mostly follow the major league team in Flushing. I think it was the return of Tom Seaver to the Mets for the 1983 season that caught our imagination, although I do recall that Josh was also a big fan of Danny Heep. Josh started following the Mets regularly, and the rest of us followed suit.

Josh was eager to attend games at Shea Stadium, and so my parents took a step that still boggles my mind today. They bought season tickets to Mets games. Now, we didn't buy tickets for the whole family, nor did we buy tickets for every single home game in the season. Rather, we bought a package of tickets for all Saturday games, and we only bought two seats for those games. The theory was that Josh would get to go to each game, and someone else in the family would take him. Most of the time either Mom or Dad would take Josh to Shea, but occasionally Jon or I would do so.

And to my mind, Shea was the most beautiful stadium in the world. It was big, and blue, and always (believe it or not) very clean. The fans felt united in our love of the team, something I felt whenever the announcer spoke or when they played "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch. Our seats were a bit far up, so the field looked somewhat far away, but the view from our seats (along the first base line) was unobstructed. When I sat with Josh at a game, I would take in the expansive, deep blue sky, breathe in fresh parkland air, and root, root, root for our home team. And if they didn't win, it was a shame.

Now, baseball fans are aware that we all have our own little superstitions and idiosincrasies. And it did not escape my notice that every time I attended a Mets game at Shea, the Mets would lose. Rationally, I knew that my presence in the stadium had no effect whatsoever, but in the back of my mind, I felt like a jinx.

So when 1986 rolled around, and the Mets ended up in the World Series, and my family acquired tickets to games one and seven, I was torn about whether or not I should accompany Josh to the games.

For about one second. World Series? I'm there, baby!

Josh was amused when I "offered" to take him to the World Series games, but the fact was that both Dad and Mom didn't care that much about attending in person, and neither did Jon. (Mom's only concern was that we would be safe among the crowds, and I promised her that I would look after Josh.) Josh and I attended game one on Saturday, October 18, and I recall how raucous and boisterous the other fans were. There was something magical in the air – at least, until the Mets lost to the Red Sox 1-0.

We watched the rest of the games on television with trepidation. On the one hand, we wanted the Mets to win the World Series, and as quickly as possible. On the other hand, we had tickets to game seven, and if the Mets won too soon, we wouldn't be able to attend game seven as it would not be played. So we watched, as the Mets lost game two, then won game three and four, then lost game five...

I won't reiterate the details of game six here, except to note how quickly we went from depression to elation. Game seven was delayed by rain and held on the evening of Monday, October 27, and Josh and I went. I remember how disappointed we felt when the Sox took an early lead in the second inning; how delighted we felt when the Mets scored three runs each in the sixth and seventh innings; how nervous we felt when the Sox scored two more runs in the eighth; how pleased we felt when the Mets scored two more in the bottom of that same inning; and how the stadium erupted in joyful cheers when the game ended with a Mets win. The Mets were champions again, for the first time within our lifetime, and we dearly hope to see them win a World Series again at some point soon. (Please.)

The last time I was in Shea was to see the Mets in one of the 1988 playoff games. I don't remember which game it was I saw, or even who I was with. All I remember is that they lost that game, and went on to lose the pennant.

And now, I'll probably never return to Shea again. For this season is the last one that will be played at Shea, as in 2009 the Mets will take up residence in Citi Field, just next door. And of all the news sites to praise Shea Stadium and William A. Shea, oddly enough, it's the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana with the best tribute. Check out the article "Mets shouldn't forget Shea when new stadium opens" by Bob Estelle, and learn about how Bill Shea worked to replace the Dodgers and Giants. If it weren't for Bill Shea, I wouldn't have the fond memories of the Mets – and of Shea Stadium – that I have today.

Thanks, Bill.

Here in Bursteinville, gnomi and I are anticipating a busy weekend, starting tomorrow.

Folks may recall that last month, my half-brother Danny got married to Barbara Heller in Michigan. This Sunday is when they're having a second celebration, and so Nomi and I are heading down to New York City for the weekend. We decided to get to the city in time for lunch tomorrow so we could meet up with one of my high school friends, a gentleman we don't see as often as we'd like.

I know there's a lot going on in the area this weekend, and I know there's always a lot of people to see, so if we miss you this time, maybe we'll catch you next time. For this trip, we're taking advantage of the gracious hospitality of sdelmonte and batyatoon for shabbat, so we're pretty much spending the weekend with them in Queens. Shabbat afternoon, we'll also be getting together with chaos_wrangler and G.

Early Sunday afternoon, Nomi and I will take a cab to the Heller-Burstein celebration, which is at a deli in the northernmost parts of Riverdale. Here's where things get personal in a way I had not expected.

I had decided to call for a cab from Boulevard Taxi, a company that Mom used to use for her daily commute to work. All the folks at Boulevard, the drivers and dispatchers alike, got to know my mom as that nice lady judge in Forest Hills.

Since we needed to know how much the cab would cost, Nomi suggested I call Boulevard last night to find out the price of a ride from the middle of Queens to Riverdale in the Bronx. So when I called last night, and explained I was calling from Boston and why, I made sure to mention my mom. I told the dispatcher that my mom was the judge who they used to pick up in Forest Hills.

"You mean Judge Burstein?" the dispatcher asked.

I was flabbergasted. "Yes."

It turns out they still remember her very fondly, and the dispatcher was delighted to hear me tell him how much Mom had always praised their company's service. On Sunday, he said he's going to take personal charge of making sure I get the cab I need.

A year go this morning, at 6:39 am, as Nomi and I were getting ready to go to work, we received a phone call from my brother Jonathan. Mom had died, and suddenly much of our lives were put on hold as we dealt with the aftermath.

I felt the need to mark today with some sort of mention, but the truth is that the anniversary isn't hitting me emotionally as much as it could. For one thing, I already marked Mom's yahrzeit on the Hebrew calendar a few weeks ago, bringing my religious mourning period to a close.

For another thing, it's been a very busy week. We started the week at Arisia, and on Tuesday and Thursday evenings I had my first two classes in the Boston University Certificate in Publishing program. Furthermore, I've had a lot to do at work and I had a medical follow-up appointment yesterday afternoon. And finally, as I mentioned earlier, the son of a good friend of mine was diagnosed with leukemia, leading me to think about his plight a lot more than mine.

In short, the week has been filled with enough of its own distractions that the anniversary of Mom's death ends up being just one of many things, and not a looming single presence of its own.

And you know what? I know she would have preferred it that way.

Today is the last day for me to recite Mourner's Kaddish for my mom.

Because it's a Friday, Nomi and I asked friends of ours who live near the shul if we could come over for dinner, and we're looking forward to enjoying their hospitality tonight. This afternoon, I'm going to go to the Mincha service, during which I will recite Mourner's Kaddish. Immediately following it will be the Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv service, and I suspect that some folks may have a momentary minor jolt when they realize that my voice is no longer among the chorus reciting the Mourner's Kaddish.

There will be no fanfare to mark the moment, just a quiet acknowledgment that my year of mourning has only one Hebrew month left to go.

I find myself with mixed feelings. On the one hand, and I know this isn't the best way to phrase it, but I'm sick and tired of mourning. I want it to be over with, so I can get back to a closer semblance of normality in my life.

On the other hand...

On the other hand, after you lose a parent, you never want the world to stop acknowledging that loss. Obviously, in the week and month immediately following the death, you need a lot more special consideration. But for the rest of my life, I will be an "orphaned adult," and I would want people to know that and to understand that in their dealings with me. Reciting the Mourner's Kaddish is a very public way of reminding people of your current fragility; that reminder will now get lost in the seas of time.

Of course, we still do other things to remind the world. The Cheshvan before my Mom died, Nomi and I sponsored a kiddush at our shul in honor of my father's yahrzeit. In a way, it helped stave off questions people might have asked; when my mom died, folks already were aware that my father was out of the equation. After my year of mourning is complete, Nomi and I will most likely sponsor a kiddush again, to commemorate my mom and to remind the community that my year is complete. (Amusingly enough, we won't be able to sponsor a kiddush right after the year ends, as that would be Arisia weekend and we'll be at the convention.)

But even though I will continue to remember my mom, and my dad, today's final recitation of the Mourner's Kaddish means that the third phase of mourning is complete. I enter the fourth phase tonight, and, a month from now, the fifth and final phase...which will last for the rest of my life.