Page 404 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
Monday, perhaps Tuesday, was the day of the funeral. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and I recall Phyllis looking out the bedroom window in the morning and then turning to me to say, with a teary and brave, forced smile, “It’s a beautiful day.” Riverside Chapel was as crowded as I have ever seen it, before or since. Every seat in the largest chapel was filled, and there was a huge crowd that stood during a service that was presided over by at least three rabbis, including Rabbi Margo- lies, who flew in from Missouri. Phyllis was upset that the coffin was closed to her while we waited for the service to begin. I’ve come to understand that she was right.
The funeral itself took place in Staten Island, and, after the long, quiet, ride back to Scarsdale, where the whole Rebell family gathered in our home, shiva began. We gathered a minyan (with no woman counted as one of the necessary ten Jews) so that the mourners, Harry, Michael, Arthur, and Phyllis, could say the Kaddish during the Mincha/Maariv services. Swept up by the emotions of the moment, and feeling that I too had suffered a major loss, I found myself saying Kaddish along with those who were obliged by custom to do so. If it was possible for things to worsen for the children, they did. It was obviously trivial, but bears repeating: Peri, the kids’ blue parakeet, died during shiva week, and I conducted a service for the children’s benefit as we interred him in the side yard.
Phyllis was to say the Mourner’s Kaddish—for all of the prescribed eleven months—at services that were held in Temple Israel Center’s chapel every morning and every evening; I would go to every morning service and, unless I absolutely had to work late, I would go to the eve- ning service as well. I went out of a feeling of duty to my wife in order to make sure that there would be ten men present for the necessary minyan and, while I was under no religious obligation to do so, in order to say the Mourner’s Kaddish. Rabbi Ben-Porot, an assistant rabbi from Yemen, ran the chapel services. Occasionally, Rabbi Turetsky would appear in the chapel, as if out of thin air, in the middle of the services, and would choose to stand and pray in the aisle next to Phyllis before sitting behind her and then, at the end of the service, speaking with her.
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