Nothing distracts like a new baby

     My wife asked if I wanted to cover the mirrors. A Jewish tradition in a house of mourning. At first I said no. Many pressing practical concerns had been raised by my mother suddenly dying that morning, but her soul becoming trapped in a mirror wasn't among them.
      Then I immediately changed my mind and agreed. Rituals comfort. The tradition had been retrofitted for modern times, in that nimble, adaptive way religion employs, scrambling to stay both timeless and relevant. Now covering mirrors is supposed to discourage vanity among the bereaved. I'm all for that. We could all use less vanity. Imagine where our once-proud nation would today be if fewer people were consumed by unchecked self-regard.
      "Suddenly" is the wrong word. My mother had actually been steadily dying for years — ailment upon indignity upon deterioration. Every time I'd visit, I'd make sure to kiss her goodbye and tell her I love her because I really wasn't sure if I'd see her again. The last time, a week earlier,, I'd gone to show her a photo of her newborn great-granddaughter.
      My mother, increasingly indifferent for the past few months, perked up, and even phoned her sisters, whom she'd uncharacteristically ignored, to share the happy news. We agreed that this was the most beautiful and perfect baby in the history of babies, and as soon as the tot could travel — probably at Thanksgiving — she would be personally presented for approval. Though I had my doubts of that ever happening, and stood in the doorway a long moment, just gazing at my mother, until I realized she was glaring back at me with a "what-are-you-looking-at-bub?" expression, and turned away.
      The next time I saw her she was dead, in bay 48 of the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital. Not a moment I'd prepared for. I don't believe I actually turned to my wife and implored, "Do something!" But I certainly thought it. My mother sang as a young girl — on the radio, on television — and sang to us all our lives. Last month was the first time she didn't call on my birthday and sing "Happy Birthday to You," In those last few moments together, I sang a couple brief lullabies she'd sung to us: "Rock-a-Bye" and "My Bonnie," an odd Scottish dirge she's somehow turned into a bedtime song, speaking of retrofitting. But apt in its sense of loss and longing. "Bring back, bring back, bring back my Bonnie to me."
      We went directly from the hospital to Golden Haven in Addison, where our parents lived. I told my father that his wife of 69 years had died. "How old was she?" he replied. I said 88, He nodded and observed that 88 is a good age, then let the matter drop. If he brings up the subject again, I plan to say that she went to the hospital, which is true, and leave off the rest. Who wants to re-discover, even vaguely, that his wife has died, over and over, every day, if not every hour?
      Jews get our own into the ground fast. My mother died on a Saturday, and was buried the following Wednesday. I'm not sure how we picked Shalom Memorial Park -- that was my brother -- but I admired how smoothly the whole process was handled. My mother had a keen eye for the mistakes of others, a trait I've inherited in full. But the only wrong aspect to the process in my view was there are no headstones jutting out of the ground — the Arlington Heights cemetery is a memorial garden, all bronze plaques, flush with the grass. When we drove through the place, I was uncomfortable with that absence, and considered insisting we find somewhere else, where she could have a granite tombstone.. But I decided to go with the flow, speaking of suppressing vanity, and not insist upon my own preference. Maybe covering those mirrors had an effect after all.

      The paper told me to take as much time off as I liked, and most of a week was consumed with planning the funeral and then holding it, removing her effects out of her apartment and donating them to charity.
     But in one of those examples of lucky timing that would look trite in fiction but life doesn't blush to serve up, 48 hours after we buried my mother, my wife and I flew to New York City to meet my new granddaughter, and help her parents pack up their apartment and move to a different city. Because merely having a baby isn't difficult enough.

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