(photo above by MK Metz; photo below by Steve Baldwin)

My uncle Harvey died this weekend. He was failing, but I didn't expect him to go this fast.

When I was a kid I didn't know him or his kids well, given he lived in New Jersey and we were up in Massachusetts. We'd see them once in a while, but when he and his wife divorced we saw them even less. He got married again around the time I moved to New York City, and though he was still in Jersey I started seeing him and his wife, Charlotte, my favorite auntie, once every couple of months. Plus we'd go to Massachusetts together every Thanksgiving to my mother's, until that eventually slowed due to illness, family fighting, and my mother's illness and death. Over the last decade Charlotte and I became closer and I started to get to know my cousin, Sacha, and in time I became their family and they became mine.

Harvey was a writer, novels, and though none had been published it wasn't for not trying. He wouldn't let me read them, but I knew from conversation they took place in museums or cafes and had lots of intrigue and sex. They had great titles -- 'Sunday Afternoon at the Beauborg' - and in between working on books he'd send letters to creative types he felt a kinship with but felt needed some guidance. 'Dear Quentin Tarantino,' one such letter began. While 'Pulp Fiction' is a work of art, 'Jackie Brown' is awful. What you should've done is...'

He and my mother had two other brothers, one of whom we'd sometimes visit on Thanksgiving. This brother was recently thrown out of an assisted living facility for asking the female residents "Would you like to see my penis?" The other brother, Malcolm, is a poet who lived most of his life with his mother (except for a brief sojourn on Leonard Cohen's couch in Montreal and a briefer visit to the local insane asylum), and now lives on his own near where they all grew up. The brothers were never close; if anything they were highly competitive, so none were expected at the funeral.

Harvey wasn't religious, so instead of a service six of us met yesterday morning in the crematorium at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Green-Wood is a historic landmark, a Gothic Revival relic set in a park-like setting, though the crematorium is glass modern with a hint of Asian temple. It was quiet, sedate, and once inside we were led to a room that had a long pine box at the head and multiple rows of semi-circular padded pews. We walked to the box then sat together in the front pew. The box was a simple rectangle, the top doweled on, and we talked about what we'd miss and what we loved about him. After about fifteen minutes the director came in and gently let us know it was time, and that he'd be back shortly, meaning they were taking Harvey in to be cremated. My aunt stood up to go in with him and we all stood and joined her. I don't know if this was the plan, but the director nodded, then opened a pair of invisible doors. The six of us followed him and the box through the doors.

The room we were now in was like a wide hallway. Harvey's box was on a casket carrier and a worker wheeled the box head first to align with set of doors that were a little bigger than the box. There were eight sets of doors altogether, stacked in two rows of four. The worker unclasped the doors, swung them open and I could suddenly hear the roar of the furnace fire. I glanced in and could see light reflecting off the wall about ten feet in. I realized this was the actual oven. The worker then rolled the box off its carrier into the face of the oven, onto a conveyer belt made of metal rollers. The carrier also had metal rollers -- they were like the kind airports have for handling luggage or the one that the Stop & Shop Supermarket had when I was a kid for loading in heavy boxes. He guided the box into the neck of the furnace and my uncle quietly rolled into the heat. The worker closed the doors. And that was it.

It was so final, so complete. My aunt and cousin wept quietly and I wept with them. Then we came back out into the main room and my aunt's sisters had to go the bathroom, and after they did that we all went outside. Down near the cars I noticed a headstone topped by a statuary that had been worn away by weather and time, a possible cherub that now had spindly arms and moss-mottled legs. Death is impermanence, life is filled with impermanence, and I frequently hear how we are powerless over it. Yet what I was feeling was absolute permanence, absolute life. Green-Wood is home to a flock of wild Quaker parrots, which adds mystery and 'other' to the already surreal landscape, and as we got into our cars and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge my feeling of humble quietude matched the fury of the furnace.