We entered the gloom of the house. Most of the mourners were from distant suburbs, even Rochester and Philly. Few young people (i.e., anyone under fifty). The “kids” didn’t know Sadie because she neither married nor had any children of her own. Nonetheless her death cast a long shadow upon the holiday season, and already my aunts were whining about how it “won’t be the same this year.” I gave a private prayer of thanks to Sadie since attending this funeral would allow me to wriggle out of my annual holiday pilgrimage. It’s unprofessional visiting the extended family. Does Russell Banks visit his family? Richard Ford? Richard Price? I doubt it. The difference is, those big wheels have their own brood. I don’t.

In the cramped living room, soft, sad faces rose up from the hushed velour murk like bloated cadavers from a muddy lake bottom. Someone had lit a fire, making the room too warm. Borrowed folding chairs lined the walls of the back bedroom and the hallway. In the kitchen, dishes covered with aluminum foil formed a traffic jam along the narrow Depression-era counters: Stroganoff, cabbage rolls, casseroles, roast chicken, wild rice, even kasha.

As I greeted the wizened faces of the alte kaker, I saw the future. What was happening here would repeat itself over and over again in the next decade or so, like a remake of a bad movie, with different protagonists cast in the starring role of corpse. They’ll all go, one by one, including Dad. Including me.

I came face-to-face with the rabbi, who stood much too close to me as he spoke. His breath reeked of Manischewitz and I noticed hair sprouting from his ears. How soon will I have to shave my ears? He intoned homilies about Sadie and life and irony and all that and then abruptly turned the conversation to the subject of his nephew Randy, who is an aspiring screenwriter living in Brooklyn. “That’s near you, right? Perhaps you could spare a few minutes to give Randy a call and give him some pointers?” I squeezed the rabbi’s shoulder and insisted he have his nephew call me. Then I absentmindedly forgot to write down my number.

My aunt Norma wandered into the living room clutching a bundle of tinted photographs. A guessing game ensued, everyone trying to figure out the who’s who of eighty years ago, when Sadie was a teen and when the gang of long-lost uncles and aunts sported oily black hair and tightly layered buttoned-down clothing. Here was a picture of Dad as a baby, bare-bottomed on a bearskin rug! Here was my ancient grandmother when she was a shy girl, her whole life ahead of her. Here was Sadie wearing gloves and a pillbox hat. Others too, the elders of that bygone era, stiff and anonymous and grim. No one present could recall their names.