It probably should have been easier. The idea was simple; stop at my father’s (and grandparents’) gravesite on our way to LaGuardia Airport. According to Google Maps, Wellwood Cemetery is moments off the Southern State Parkway. Mark, the Philippine driver who was helping transport, shop, and provide light caring duties for my nonagenarian aunt and uncle, would drive us.
It is striking that, while I tend to forget the names of most places I visit infrequently, Wellwood remains entrenched in my consciousness. Having said that, every element, every moment, every image of those painful hours and days are etched in my memory. The elevator door opening to the hospital ward. “How long”, I asked, my Uncle Stuart. “Very soon” he responded. Walking into my father’s hospital room where he lay moaning in his delirium. Returning to the hospital the next morning to view his lifeless body before it was wheeled away. The queue of friends and acquaintances in the receiving room in the funeral parlor. Felix, the tall strong, African American foreman in my father’s spice factory, weeping during the service. The long, silent ride in the limousine and the long trail of cars navigating the narrow roads in the cemetery. Dropping the first shovel-full of dirt onto his casket – a strikingly painful and poignant gesture - as if I needed a greater sense of finality. The glass pitcher, cup, and hand towels sitting aside the front door. The dining room table laden with bagels, lox, a large urn of coffee, Entenmann's crumb cake.
It should have been easier to find the cemetery, it is, after all, on Wellwood Avenue. We had both Google Maps, a listing of the location of my father’s gravesite, and a cemetery plot map. The first Wellwood Cemetery we visited seemed wrong as it seemed too small, and the headstones did not match the ones I remembered from that day a half-century ago. We circled till we found the correct Wellwood Cemetery, only to find that all the gates were locked. And so, while Mark waited in the car, my wife Jo and I climbed over the low stone wall at the entrance and went searching for my father. Fifteen minutes of fruitless searching led us nowhere. It wasn’t until a cemetery worker drove by in his pickup truck that we were pointed in the right direction.
It was Jo who found it. “David, it’s here”. I ran over, and there it was, the plot stone with the “Walfish” etched into the marble; the name “Raphael”, written below, was hidden beneath the trimmed hedge. Three headstones Francis Walfish, Max Walfish, and Alvin Raphael lay at our feet.
In the Jewish tradition, Jo and I placed small stones on each headstone. We recited Kaddish. We stood silently for several minutes and then walked towards the gate, climbed over the stone wall, and drove off to LaGuardia Airport.
I don’t know why I had never visited the gravesite. Certainly, having lived away from New York for 42 of the 48 years since the unveiling of his headstone was a factor. But that leaves a minimum of six years of opportunity along with numerous visits to New York during those years.
It is a strange comparison, but perhaps it was for the same reason I never took psychotropic drugs in the years after my father's death. I was afraid of the images that would haunt me, of the memories that would come to life with malignant ferociously. The profound sadness, the abject fear, the deep-seated anger. All the hurt, all the regret. And perhaps, most frightening and painful, all the memories; each so deeply embedded in my soul.
But none of that happened. Instead, a sense of peace embraced me.
With Jo beside me, I reflected on my father’s passing in the context of the days of my life and my life as it is today. My family, my friends, and others I love. My life’s work. My beliefs and my values. My choices.
Along with thousands of other life moments, my father’s death made me who I am. I have been framed by both days in his presence and those in his absence. I do miss him, and I do think of him. I’d like to think that he would have been proud of me. I’d like to think that, somewhere, in some heavenly sphere, he is. A long time ago I wrote of his passing “Time does not heal all wounds; it is how you spend your time that heals wounds”. Perhaps that is right. I pray that I will never forget the painful days of this death and that they will always stand side by side with the joyful memories of his life.
When we view our sadness in the context of our joys, and our joys in the context of our sadness, both take on greater depth and relevance. The glass is both half empty and half full.
David Raphael 2021
