Ariber di oygn vos faln shoyn tsu, tsu shlofn in eybiker ru

We buried my grandfather this afternoon. The cemetery is hedged around with more suburban strip than I remember, but my grandmother is still buried there, just within the pine-straw shadow of the trees. We drove up in the midmorning; met the rest of the family at the graveside. My mother's cousins were there—the children of my grandfather's older sister, who died nineteen years before he did—and three members of the Portland chevra kadisha. They had set up chairs, but it was too cold not to be standing, and there weren't so many of us that we needed them. There was thin snow on the ground. Someone keeps clearing away the stones from my grandmother's grave. (I had not brought one from the sea, but before I left I found a thumb-sized chunk of quartzy red granite lying in the roots of a winter-stripped bush—probably overturned from the gravedigging—and laid it on her nameplate. Bernice Madinek Glixman, May 6 1923—March 13 1997.) The rabbi came from Bet Ha'am, my grandmother's congregation where I was almost bat mitzvah and we went every year for Rosh Hashanah to a church with a dropcloth hung over the altar, painted with a burning bush, because they had no synagogue of their own. He had not known either of my grandparents; he had assembled his notes from my mother and her siblings; he said nothing that hurt anyone. There were two or three psalms, although I only remember 23 and 90. My uncle spoke, not practiced, not quite crying, very well. It turned out I didn't need the card from the chevra kadisha for the mourner's Kaddish. I helped carry the coffin. Family participation in the burial was more symbolic than at the last funeral I attended, in Vancouver: a pot of earth and a trowel, rather than the heaped dirt and a spade. Afterward we went for dinner at Street and Co.; I'm told we did the same after my grandmother's funeral, but I still can't remember it. (The food was excellent. I had the whole fish of the day, a dorado with mussels and fennel, served fins, eyes, bones and all, which horrified my cousin Tristen. He spent most of the dinner trying to figure out his mythical nature with me and Rush-That-Speaks and not feeling that he should be wearing black. None of my great-grandparents were even alive when I was born.) It was strange not to have the house in Portland to go back to. Grief is one of those things that folds time on itself. Everyone is trying to sleep now, since last night no one could. Rush leaves tomorrow. It was the last night of Hanukkah.

You like the twinks and the bears and the girls and the boys

1. A text-exchange this afternoon between me and rushthatspeaks, who is hopefully no longer on the bus through infinite Connecticut:

There are oak leaves on my floor, trailing out the door of my bedroom. I feel as though I have been left by a demon lover.

The leaves should turn back to Chanukah gelt in 3 days, don't worry about it.

I love this person. You see why.

2. My Yuletide reading this year has been somewhat scattershot, but there were still a few pieces that got my attention. Recommendations as follows.

( Can anyone tell me whether the epic-length continuation of 'Barrett's Privateers' is worth its ten chapters? )

3. Is it true that the time between Christmas and New Year's can be referred to as "the dead days," or did I just import that from the Mayan calendar?