All Set for Black, Thanks. by Miriam Weinstein

Author:Miriam Weinstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2016-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

HOW to DELIVER THOSE FINAL WORDS: BEST EULOGY EVER!

“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

—Jerry Seinfeld

THE ONLY REASON I WAS NOT PARALYZED WITH nerves when I stood up as the only non-family member to deliver a eulogy at my friend Wendy’s funeral was the fact that I was so undone by my friend Wendy’s death that my normal speaking anxiety never had a chance to kick in. I looked around the synagogue audience like a pro, noting that it was standing-room only, with her son’s entire high school class filling the aisles at the rear. I waited so long to make sure I was totally ready to begin that the rabbi, who was sitting to my left, and from whom I had learned this trick of not rushing yourself, caught my eye and frowned as if to say, enough already with the prima donna. Let’s get on with the show.

Wendy was two months older than I was: fifty-one. We, along with our husbands, were the only New York City-bred Jews in our exquisitely WASP New England seaside town. Within days of our arrival, a dozen years earlier, she had phoned me: “You’re in the Temple!” (It was not in our little town, trust me, but in the neighboring small city.) “You moved here from Cambridge! You have got to come over right away!”

It was a friendship that was a no-brainer. And it barreled along without interruption until Wendy died of a quick-moving cancer, her bedroom full of friends who were singing, first hymns, then folk songs, then whatever came to mind. After she died, when her husband asked me if I would deliver a eulogy I was flattered, relieved to have a focus for my grief, anxious about the end product, excited to begin. At the time, I was working for our local newspaper chain, and was accustomed to writing on deadline in a newsroom with twenty desks lined up in rows. You had to block out ten other conversations as you conducted phone interviews or patched together, if not deathless, then at least serviceable, prose. So, sitting down at home at my own computer with only my husband, kids, dog and grieving friends to distract me was—oh my God, who am I kidding? It was agony.

Pretty much by definition, if you are asked to speak at a funeral or memorial it means you are hurting—aware in all your nerve endings of the void where the person in question used to be. And in this case there was also the twinning effect: Wendy and I had so many similarities. She was the first of my peers to die. I had been so intimately involved in her last year; when she took to her bed, it was my borrowed nightgown she was wearing. I missed her terribly already.

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