This Is How It Felt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                              On Monday, a group of us--David, my sister, my two nephews, and my nephew Matthew's wife--returned to Resurrection Cemetery, in Piscataway, New Jersey, to lay to rest the cremains of my father.

                              It was as ominous as the opening funeral in "Frankenstein."  The message of finality was nailed into me, like a coffin being shut.  That my sister and I are the last remnants of my parents on this earth.  That our own mortality is inevitable.  To console myself, I thought of Emily Bronte's final passage in "Wuthering Heights."  To paraphrase, I was somewhat comforted, knowing my parents would sleep peacefully, forever, in that quiet earth.

                               Then there was the lunch in Highland Park, where nothing seemed the same, because I was not the same person I was when I left, thirty five years ago.  Those years cannot be erased, and while I did accomplish a fair share there, neither can the slights I suffered there be entirely forgotten. Though, as I said to David, had I spent all 63 years of my life in that one area, I might have had a nervous breakdown.

                               The dust will finally settle, and my parents are now reunited.

                               May they both rest in peace.

                               Here is the funeral scene from "Doctor Zhivago."  It is as fine a representation of how I felt.  Oh, and the little boy featured is the son of actor Omar Sharif.