So Wifey and I drove over to the cemetery off the Palmetto, where her parents sleep and someday we shall, too, and joined the 15 or so mourners for her friend Alissa, whose cremains inside a nice urn were to be buried.
We caught up with Seth and Daniel, her 2 sons, who are delightful young men. Seth is married to Poom, a Vietnamese lady, and they have a 7 year old boy, who clearly misses his grandmother. Daniel was there with his girlfriend, and has had his own health challenges -- a brain tumor, thankfully not glioblastoma, which was surgically removed by Komotar the wizard at UM and Daniel should be just fine -- he's a pathologist in Jupiter.
We say with Jackie and Lori, friends from childhood (high school for Wifey), and Jamie Alissa's junior high boyfriend who reconnected with her after a lifetime in LA when he moved to Boynton Beach and the two started dating again.
The family hired a local cantor, who I'll call Rachelle, since that's her name, who I NEVER got along with. I think she may have some kind of Asberger's --her daughter and D2 were sorority sisters at UF, and whenever I approach Rachelle at various functions and bring this up, she acts like I'm an insurance agent trying to sell her a policy she doesn't want. So I gave her wide berth. Wifey approached her after the services, where she did a yeoman's job for someone who had never met the deceased, and asked how her daughters were. She asked "Why do you ask?" Wifey said she knew them, from our Ds. Strange bird, that cantor woman...
But Alissa's son and friends spoke beautifully about the gentle, hippie woman who in many ways remained stuck in the 1970s. Jamie said when she asked him to retrieve her tie-dyed shirt, he found 50 in her closet.
We all shoveled a bit of earth onto the small container holding the urn, and then we were off -- Lori, Jackie, Jamie, Wifey and I to Bagel Emporium -- Alissa LOVED Shorty's and delis.
They spoke of times dating back -- way back. Jamie told of seeing the horse races at Tropical Park -- I told him they stopped racing there in the 60s! But the stables remain -- Miami and Miami Dade Sheriffs horses live there, now.
Wifey and Alissa and Lori graduated Killian High. Jackie was a Gables grad -- Jamie moved to LA and went to high school there. We toasted Alissa with Dr. Brown's soda -- as she would have liked.
Jamie told us when Alissa got the diagnosis -- which was primary lung cancer -- she decided to just let it run its course. Her brother Mark went the same way -- he had prostate cancer which had spread to his bladder and was told it was treatable, but he said to let it go, too. Both siblings joined their parents in the great beyond within months.
When I last texted with Alissa upon her becoming a grandmother, she told me it was the best thing ever in her life. And she was close with Samuel -- named after her late father. When I'm with my Little Man and Baby Man, I think of her -- she was spot on!
As we were leaving the Emporium parking lot, Wifey said she had meant to take a picture -- to see how all of us look versus 10 years into the future. I corrected her -- let's hope all 5 of us are HERE 10 years into the future. Ain't nothing guaranteed, as Tom Petty sand, and found out.
My friend and broker Pat is in town and he asked me to meet at Fox's. I plan to Uber over -- tonight seems the night for that third martini -- to toast Alissa.
Wifey has another shiva this weekend -- Sunday - in the grove -- for her friend Karen's mother, who died at 94.
As for me -- enough with all the dying. I joke about it, but it's been a bit much lately.
Hopefully the Big Man's plans agree...
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