Photoessay #1099 - Two trips

Two trips in the next month or so. Very different.

Tomorrow we (Dennis, me, Danny, Naomi) will travel to Connecticut for the final internment of my parents at Mishkan Israel Cemetery in New Haven. My cousin will host. It's just another step but the finality and the event cause that life cycle mandela to turn another interval. It all goes round and round. For all of us.

I will see my cousins and their families. I haven't really seen them all since before the beginning. My cousin's grandsons. My sibs of course. I choose to remember the delight of my mother when she bought the space in the Mishkan Israel cemetery. The congregation of her parents, and grandparents. She celebrated, she felt so good about it, she wanted to break out the champagne. Huge for her; her elation at getting this done.

I know I went there on my last trip to New Haven. 1974. A while back. I'm sure I went to the cemetery. Yes, yes, I remember because my grandmother had just died and there was her grave looking so fresh. Jarring. In fact, she had died in the middle of that summer long trip and I had stayed at my parent's house in Rockford keeping things together while my mom flew to New Haven. I remember taking my mom to the airport.

The rabbi is holding something at 11am on Friday at the cemetery. The picture taken from ancestry site. An entrance to Mishkan Israel Cemetery.

We're planning a 'visiting' trip to California the last week in August. We'll stop first in Marin County at the Beittels. We'll catch the end of Mark's visit from Italy. His daughter Micolle will be there for a monthvisiting her grandmother. Just heard from Mark, actually, he did a video skype call from Italy. Don't have a video camera on this but it was good seeing his image. He was booking tickets to a jazz concert but that was Saturday, the day before we come. No problem, he said, we'll plan a backyard barbecue on Sunday when you come. Sounds fun. We'll go to Sacramento for a few days, then maybe to Santa Cruz though weekdays for JJ are promblematic. Ending with Wine Day at Eliza and Jim's vineyard in the Napa valley.

I need to dig up the family history to look at when we're in that cemetery....