OCR Text |
Show I sang soprano, sharing sheet music v/i th the vo-,- -,n >'- oxi uie young vvoman beside M. I thought of her as my s i s t e r . And after a time, i t seamed that she was not so very different than our drowned l a n i s , no?r so remotely connected to my father who must by now be in heaven with the Father of us a l l. But I wasn't the only one who f e l t the sting of intrusion. If my brothers and s i s t e r s and mothers talked of i t , I didn't hear them. But at our l a s t , pre-viewing rehearsal, Isaac rose and smiled kindly as he clasped his hands and began to speak. "Many people called Father ' f a t h e r . 0 And I know he wanted t'-.em to think of him that way. But if everyone who called him 'father' came up to sing with his sons and daughters, there'd be no one in the audience." He smiled and his voice was but gentle, a firm - - a perfect amelioration. The point was made. Several people l e f t the room quietly. Some stopped to express gratitude for the new sense of definition, h'e practiced and seemed for a short time to be a single unit with no holes, no discord. 3y the time I reached the viewing room, most of the close relations had arrived. In a few moments, his patients, distant relatives, friends, admirers, and followers would pour into the^Meffs'ized viewing room and overflow into the hall, the foyer and onto the front steps of the mortuary, I stood in the hallway tailing with people near the door until I glimpsed the casket flooded with li^ht. I realizad hen that I was trying to avoid seeing it, I remembered my Srandmothr's funeral, of how disturbed I'd been that she seared to be asieen when in fact sha did not rise or speah and never ?U |