You can't believe who came to your funeral. But I can't write it here, because maybe they'll read it, and unlike you I still have to screw up an account. But there were a lot of people there, and all I wanted to do was stand in the back with you and gossip. There were all kinds of people from the class that you probably hadn't seen since you were 17, there were people from the newspaper, there were all kinds of tattooed people who, if I had to gamble, sold CDs with you once.
I was, as they say, both from the bride's side and from the groom's side. Proud to be the oldest friend, and also among those who saw you very recently. All kinds of people who grew up with us told me, "Look where we meet," and I was silent or said "yes."
You'd probably whisper in my ear some sarcastic comment, and I'd laugh and people would watch, and it's not pleasant, after all, to have a funeral. By the way, if there was any competition of audience attractiveness at funerals, you would win hugely.
I thought it would probably have made you embarrassed to know that a lot of handsome and sad boys had come. There was one with a cowboy hat, who bent down and stroked the pile of earth they put on you and mumbled a few words. I decided in my heart for both of us that we forgave him for the cowboy hat, because he was really handsome and really sad.
• • •
After they buried you and most of them finished saying goodbye and moved away, I approached the small sign with your name written on it. So now you live here? Still better than that apartment in Allenby. I stood there, I don't exactly know how long. It was hot. Why is it always hot at funerals? On the way back to the car, I stopped and let everyone pass me. I made myself look at the phone. I didn't want to recite that "I'm fine, you know, given the circumstances."
I don't know who read Dalia Ravikovitch's "Even Rocks Break" at the funeral, but Suri, you've never been a rock. And you didn't break either, you were always broken. Reasonable and normal children do not paint the wall in their room with colored stripes like that of a circus tent as an ironic artistic element of resistance! To tell the truth, I knew it would be really ugly, but I kept my mouth shut and kept painting.
Then I took inspiration from you and painted the bathroom with black oil, which my mother had to scrape with a squirt when they decided to sell the house. Reasonable, normal children also don't talk for years about when they'll do it and how they'll do it when they do it. So here, you did it.
• • •
PR people will continue to send emails to your email address, invite you to fringe shows and hesitant indie performances by 20-year-olds, and of course all things worthwhile, but you were one of those who go to the first type. Optimistic? Love a person? Just a virdo? Loves music and art and beauty. Your email will fill up until Google decides that enough, and then you start jumping at them notification that you don't get more emails, but it will be two years late. You're still on my phone. I can call you. I can tag you. Here, I tagged. Nothing happened.
You would tear up laughing at the musician who chose to share the message you sent him with compliments. Like the fact that you're dead is just another good reason to pick himself up. People are unbearable, right?
• • •
Not your sisters. They are so great. Two lovely women that you raised, and raised amazingly. They spoke very, very well, and everyone was crying. Little Ziv, who I remember as a tiny orange thing in a diaper, who hides shyly when I enter, and Shani, the middle one, who as far as I'm concerned is still 10 years old. You were so nice to her, even though she was your little sister, and I was surprised every time: Do you let her into your room? Do you suggest she join to watch the movie? What kind of strange brothers are you?
It will take me a long time to figure it all out. I'm not mad at you. Everyone does what they have to do, and it must have been very difficult. One of the worst things about being a writer, and you know it better than I do, is never being present and skipping everything that happens to you, straight to the summary stage. To the poem I'm going to write about it, to the pause, to the column. Also a column comes out to me, what can I tell you. But you brought me to write here, it was your idea.
• • •
The newspaper wanted to put a picture of us together here, but even at the age of 43 we are still teenagers who are angry at the world as if it owes them something, and never agree to be photographed. What can you put up here? Maybe the cover of Kid Eye? I feel like you need an editor's hand here, if you can for a second.
I love you, Raz.
PS: Simon took the cat, so don't worry about that.
P.S. 2: If I was asked to speak, I would read this poem by Jacob Shabtai:
"With light we set out to ask
on the way to the crater and
you laughed out loud, your face
is bright and you will see, the paths here are not clear.
In all spaces, only a single
eagle in my hand in the white
glare strikes mirror blinders
, the paths here are unclear.
The quiet dryness, your thirsty
lips and the murmur of lizards of light so heavy, your face burning
to me, are the paths
here unclear.
The hair of our heads in the dust became a return,
suddenly the night came
, we dropped on the sand, the darkness in the mountains
is a mirror, both the paths here are unclear."
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