People laugh when I say it. But it was a beautiful funeral.

The plane arrived at seven. We stood around the airport about an hour while technicalities were taking place behind the gates. A happy woman carrying a large basket of flowers was waiting with gay impatience. I moved a step in her direction. I wanted to tell her we were waiting for a sad man
with a sad task but I stepped back again. She had a right to her joyous moment just as we had to our sadder one. I watched and waited. finally her young man came out and the photographers clicked away. He was a young violinist just returning from a successful trip abroad. Bulbs flashed, kisses passed, jokes splashed. It was a gay meeting.

And we were waiting for a son with his dead father.
This private sorrow would not intrude upon the earlier public joy.
When my mourner came through, he was immediately surrounded by men on many hats, the wide brimmed velour of the "Chassid", the Homburg of the Hungarians, the generous black of the "Chabadnick", the small knitted "Kipah" of the "Kibbutznick" and Benei Akivahnick. And none of them were new.

They were well worn hats that sat on heads that knew them well. Each man was doing a "Mitzvah" because he wanted to do a Mitzvah. He believed in it!

They were people who knew the family. They were their kind of Jew. They had broken bread together, had prayed together,
it was their Jewishness that had brought them to the funeral
and it was the father's Jewishness that brought him to this spot that he had chosen to be buried in, in Jerusalem. That was the spirit. That was the bond.

The almost new moon was coming up thinly on the sky as we left the airport. Tears came easily to old eyes. What were they remembering? What were they trying not to remember

And Asher, too old to be a bewildered child but too young to be world weary. He knew not death and life's inevitable
being conquered by it. He didn't know what questions to ask and none seemed important now. He said nothing. He was busy with "arrangements", decisions, hurried actions when only peace and quiet were desired, thinking of his mother, now alone, the considerations, the advices, the endless explanations, the nights of "no sleep", the utter weariness.

There was no mood for talk The night wound around the purring car and we arrived in Jerusalem in silence.

The "Kriah" was done at "Avichayil" . I waited outside. There were five steps down into the cellar room. The light came dimly through the open door. Everyone stumbled over the
uneven steps. It was deadly quiet. Not even a bird twittered.

There was just the dark, the trees reaching up high into the night and the stars. Every word of the "El Malei Rachamim" seeped out of the doorway up the old worn steps, stumbling and soaring as it had done for generations. It was indeed a beautiful funeral.