cancer, prostatic cancer, heart disease, cataractsâbut his mind was all there.
âThere should be a ritual, a blessing, something one can say to ease the passing of the flesh (while the mind endures). Papa, pass gently. I know you are at peace. I know you have entered us all, that you are part of us, that we carry you wherever we go, and that you shall seed the world with poems, with paintings, even though your eyes and voice are gone.
â âWhy, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Wereât not a Shameâwereât not a Shame for
him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?
âFrom his favorite poem,â Isadora said and stepped down from the podium.
Â
By the time she found her seat again, she was covered in cold sweat as if she had a fever breaking. It wasnât just the heavy knit dress she was wearing, nor the emotion produced by reading these things about her grandfather, nor the fact that the rabbi sucked in his breath horribly when she uttered the word hell in the poem, nor even the unmistakable feeling that she had uttered a malediction, hastening her grandfatherâs passage to hell and dooming him to everlasting torment. There was more: a sense that however detailed the memoir, however accurate it sought to be, it could never sum up the man. No writing could. Life was messy, various, contradictory. Writing, which tried to impose order on experience, wound up diminishing that experience simply because so many things had to be left out. Her grandfather was gone. No poem, no memoir, not even his own paintings could hold him; no artifact could contain the multitudes within the man. What use was art if it could not deliver what it promisedârespite from death? Approaching her fortieth birthday, at the crest of her career, she felt this most keenly. It was not enough merely to âmake a leeving,â or to win prizes, or be famous, to have a long listing in Whoâs Who, or to be assured an obit in the Times. There had to be more to life than what she had struggled for all her nearly four decades. But what was it? According to the worldâs estimation, she had it all. Then why was she so frightened? And what was she so frightened of? Ought she to sit za-Zen, like Josh? Ought she to divest herself of material possessions and become a devotee of Sai Babaâthe only guru who didnât come to America and do lecture tours? No. Such enlightenment was not for a gamy girl like Isadoraâa wearer of perfumes, a connoisseur of cocks. But still ... what did this death mean to her life? Papa was, in some spiritual sense, her father, and when your father dies in you at last, he leaves you free to love another man. Then why did she feel a great tide of change overtaking her life? And why did it seem that this tide was about to sweep away everything she knew?
She sat through the closing prayers with her palms dripping and her mouth dry with grief. When the ceremony ended, neither the fact that many relatives were weeping nor that others said the most complimentary things about her eulogy, comforted her. Nor did it comfort her when her last ex-husband, Bennett Wing, the psychoanalyst, embraced her tearfully, and said how moved heâd been. Nor did it comfort her when her âlittleâ sister Chloe dismissed her fears of malediction with: âI can assure you that the Almighty wonât dispose of Papaâs soul based upon your poem.â Nor did it comfort her when Josh said: âPromise me that if I die before you, youâll just give me a straight Jewish funeralâwith no paeans of praise to my cock, okay?â Isadora laughed. Early in their relationship she had written juicily erotic poems to Josh, which depicted the fabled organ in various stages of tumescence and detumescence. But Isadora was hardly comforted by his joking about it now. She felt that she had exposed herself in a place where only pious platitudes
âThere should be a ritual, a blessing, something one can say to ease the passing of the flesh (while the mind endures). Papa, pass gently. I know you are at peace. I know you have entered us all, that you are part of us, that we carry you wherever we go, and that you shall seed the world with poems, with paintings, even though your eyes and voice are gone.
â âWhy, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Wereât not a Shameâwereât not a Shame for
him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?
âFrom his favorite poem,â Isadora said and stepped down from the podium.
Â
By the time she found her seat again, she was covered in cold sweat as if she had a fever breaking. It wasnât just the heavy knit dress she was wearing, nor the emotion produced by reading these things about her grandfather, nor the fact that the rabbi sucked in his breath horribly when she uttered the word hell in the poem, nor even the unmistakable feeling that she had uttered a malediction, hastening her grandfatherâs passage to hell and dooming him to everlasting torment. There was more: a sense that however detailed the memoir, however accurate it sought to be, it could never sum up the man. No writing could. Life was messy, various, contradictory. Writing, which tried to impose order on experience, wound up diminishing that experience simply because so many things had to be left out. Her grandfather was gone. No poem, no memoir, not even his own paintings could hold him; no artifact could contain the multitudes within the man. What use was art if it could not deliver what it promisedârespite from death? Approaching her fortieth birthday, at the crest of her career, she felt this most keenly. It was not enough merely to âmake a leeving,â or to win prizes, or be famous, to have a long listing in Whoâs Who, or to be assured an obit in the Times. There had to be more to life than what she had struggled for all her nearly four decades. But what was it? According to the worldâs estimation, she had it all. Then why was she so frightened? And what was she so frightened of? Ought she to sit za-Zen, like Josh? Ought she to divest herself of material possessions and become a devotee of Sai Babaâthe only guru who didnât come to America and do lecture tours? No. Such enlightenment was not for a gamy girl like Isadoraâa wearer of perfumes, a connoisseur of cocks. But still ... what did this death mean to her life? Papa was, in some spiritual sense, her father, and when your father dies in you at last, he leaves you free to love another man. Then why did she feel a great tide of change overtaking her life? And why did it seem that this tide was about to sweep away everything she knew?
She sat through the closing prayers with her palms dripping and her mouth dry with grief. When the ceremony ended, neither the fact that many relatives were weeping nor that others said the most complimentary things about her eulogy, comforted her. Nor did it comfort her when her last ex-husband, Bennett Wing, the psychoanalyst, embraced her tearfully, and said how moved heâd been. Nor did it comfort her when her âlittleâ sister Chloe dismissed her fears of malediction with: âI can assure you that the Almighty wonât dispose of Papaâs soul based upon your poem.â Nor did it comfort her when Josh said: âPromise me that if I die before you, youâll just give me a straight Jewish funeralâwith no paeans of praise to my cock, okay?â Isadora laughed. Early in their relationship she had written juicily erotic poems to Josh, which depicted the fabled organ in various stages of tumescence and detumescence. But Isadora was hardly comforted by his joking about it now. She felt that she had exposed herself in a place where only pious platitudes
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