יהי רצון שזכרה יהיה מהפכה
Coughs and murmurs from attendees merged together to form a hum at the back of his head as he leaned forward, resting his forehead on the pew in front of him. He looked like he was praying, but that was the last thing he would be doing. His eyes were sore and his temples were throbbing with a headache. He’d not slept well the night before, or the previous week at all. He kept waking every morning hoping it had all been a nightmare, and each morning he woke up disappointed and devastated once again.
They were gathered together for the funeral so there was no room for denial anymore. That stage of grief wouldn’t survive the service, though Zeller had clung to it so desperately. No, there was no more refusing to accept it, he was being forced to. His best friend was gone. She had indeed been murdered, sliced up, and displayed like a museum exhibit. He envied the attendees filling up the synagogue; most of them were blissfully unaware of the state she was in when she was discovered. Even among those who were aware, like the other FBI agents filling the back pews, they hadn’t seen it for themselves. The two closest to her, Zeller and Price, had.
Price was on the left of him and letting his eyes move over the rows ahead of and beside him, actually looking his age for once. Zeller was looking older than his years. It seemed as if the dark circles under his eyes were growing darker after each night inflicted with insomnia and nightmares. He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he swore he saw more gray hairs pop in his temples and beard over the past week than ever. He didn’t feel like himself sitting there in that black suit, wearing a kippah, shuffling the note cards he’d prepared in his hands.
“You know you don’t have to go up there if you don’t want to,” said Price softly, looking somberly at his friend. Zeller gave a shake of his head and muttered, “No, I have to go.”
“No, you don’t. I could go up instead. Jack could. If it’s too much, it’s totally under—”
“Jim, this is the least I can do for her,” insisted Zeller with his voice strung tight. “This is the last good thing I can do for her. I need to do this.” Price nodded and reached over to pat his knee and Zeller sighed, closing his eyes. They opened when the murmuring quieted and he saw the rabbi approach his pulpit, below which Beverly’s casket was propped. It was a simple pine coffin that had a white pall draped over it with black stripes on either end. Zeller’s eye twitched when he thought about how difficult it must have been to reconstruct her so that she was together enough to fit inside that narrow casket.
He watched as the rabbi ushered over several members of the Katz family, including her parents and her three siblings. They were each wearing a black ribbon around their wrist which they held out toward the rabbi. He held up a pair of scissors and explained, “This is the keriah, it’s an ancient tradition of ripping or cutting a garment of the bereaved. Because we are physical beings, we ought to express our grief in such a physical manner. Because Beverly was torn away from us, we ought to represent that in such a way.” The rabbi brought the scissors to each ribbon on each wrist and cut them. Beverly’s mom, a petite Asian woman buried her face in her husband’s chest, his head towering over her. Zeller felt a pang in his chest for her. No parent should ever have to bury their child.
The family returned to their seats and the rabbi returned to behind the pulpit as he gave his greeting to the attendees and started his prayers. Zeller had long ago forgotten most of what he’d learned of Hebrew since he spoke little of it throughout his life since Hebrew school. But he knew that the rabbi was likely reciting passages from Psalms, as was custom. It had been so long since he’d been to a funeral, it almost felt like a first time again. The first couple were of elderly relatives and were attended before he turned eighteen, the last being of a colleague he barely knew who’d taken his life over five years ago. As closely as Zeller worked with death in his professional life, he had very little experience with it in his personal life.
That had changed with Beverly’s death. Now he was intimately acquainted with death, more so than he’d ever been before. He knew far more than he ever needed to about what Beverly’s insides looked like. He hated that it left such an imprint on his brain that it was hard to focus on any positive memories without thinking of what became of her. It was like a stain on every good moment they shared. It was difficult to be grateful for them when he knew there wouldn’t be any more, when there should have been many more. She was owed such a longer life than she had. She did so much good with the half-life that she did have, she would have done so many more good things had she had a full one.
Once the rabbi was finished with the El Malei Rachamim and moment of silence for the deceased, he raised his head to look to Zeller and he gave a nod, rising from his pew. Rebecca, who was seated beside Jimmy, reached out and took his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You’ve got this,” she mouthed and Jimmy rested his hand on the inside of his friend’s elbow, giving a nod. Zeller mustered a weak smile back at them, squeezing his sister’s hand back before releasing it and heading up the aisle to approach the pulpit. The rabbi stepped aside and gestured for the agent to take his place, which he did.
It was only until he was at the pulpit that the nerves really hit him and he noticed just how many people there were in the synagogue. It was almost completely full, with at least two-hundred fifty people sitting and staring at him right now. Zeller swallowed, feeling the ever present dryness at the back of his throat. It was always there when he wasn’t drinking alcohol, which he hadn’t been since last night. The one thing he wasn’t going to do was show up drunk to Beverly’s funeral, as tempting as it had been to get wasted the morning of.
“Thanks everyone…” he started with a slight rasp in his voice, but then cleared it and repeated, “Thanks everyone for coming. It means a lot that this many people would show up for Beverly.” He shoved a hand in his trouser pocket and tapped the edges of his notecards on the pulpit, nodding lightly. “But I shouldn’t be surprised because Bev would show up for each and every one of you. Even if you didn’t know her all that well. She’d always be there for people who needed it.” He bit the corner of his lip and glanced down at his note cards, shifting in place and clearing his throat again.
“It’s hard to come up with an anecdote to represent Bev or describe what she was like… because every moment with her was remarkable. Every time we hung out was better than the last. I only wish that I had done so more, especially in the past few months.” He felt his chest throb with regret at allowing a wedge to come between them, especially during the last months of her life. But they didn’t need to know that. “My favorite times were our Jewish Christmases, where if Hanukkah didn’t take place on the twenty-fifth, we’d come over to my place and order Chinese food and play video games all day. We’d say that that was our favorite holiday.”
There were a few chuckles from the crowd and a light smile touched Zeller’s lips before he glanced down at his note cards and continued, “If I had to describe Bev in one word, it would be… bright. Not just bright as in smart, though she was sharp as a tack, but bright like a lighthouse. Like the light at the end of the tunnel. She gave hope, she believed in you even when you didn’t. And you trusted her because you knew she couldn’t be wrong, so there must be something worthwhile about you.” His smile widened and he blinked repeatedly.
“A lot of people thought that we were dating on the sly but it was never like that for us,” he said with a soft chuckle. “No, we always got along better as friends and we knew it was better that way. I did ask her one time if she would make a pact to marry me if we both ended up being still single at forty, and she promptly told me to piss off.” That earned an even louder hum of chuckles from the attendees and he glanced down at her parents who were mustering smiles in their grimaces of pain. “I do know that she wanted to be a mom at some point and…” Emotion rose up in him, feeling like a hand squeezing around his throat. “I wish someone could have given her that because she would have been a really great mom.” His voice wavered with the last few words and his eyes grew hot with tears working their way in.
“But she wouldn’t settle for nobody. She was married to the job like we all were. And… it’s gonna be really difficult not having her there. Not only because she was the smartest among us, she was also the glue that held the team together. Sometimes we’d end up in arguments, but Bev was always the mediator, always the voice of reason. But she made everyone feel heard and seen. That’s how we all knew she was the oldest sibling. She was a big sister to us all.” He looked to his younger sister Rebecca and she nodded at him, then looked to his mom and stepdad sitting beside her. They had all known and loved Beverly like one of their own.
There were a few beats of silence that hung in the synagogue as the words started to blur on his notecards, other than a few coughs from the crowd. He sniffed and blinked away the tears, looking up at the attendees as they started to blur together too. Setting down the notecards on the pulpit, he sighed and let his head hang. “None of these words are doing her justice,” he murmured with a small shake of his head. “Because there are no words that could fully describe what Beverly meant to us all. Something like that can’t be explained, it can only be felt. And I feel… lost without her.” He swallowed hard and lowered his eyes. “Frankly I don’t want to be here, I want to be holed up in my apartment, getting drunk so I can forget she’s gone. Or sleep so I can dream she’s still alive.. I don’t…” Tears stung like pinpricks in his eyes and he squeezed them shut. “... want a life without Beverly. I don’t think any of us do.” He paused and added, “But we have no choice.”
He huffed and shook his head, uttering a choked laugh. “Oh, and she would find it all too amusing that I’m up here talking about myself. I can see her crossing her arms and shaking her head, saying ‘that’s just so you, Zee.’” He pressed his lips together. He could tell them that he was pretty sure he was the last person to speak to Beverly before she met her killer. He could tell them that they had a falling out because of their differences of opinion on Will Graham. He could admit that he might not have been her best friend in the end anymore. But that would muddy the waters, detract attention from where it should be, which was on her, not him. This is not about you, he thought to himself and nodded.
“Beverly’s not here because she was taken from us,” he said gravely, gripping either edge of the pulpit. “She’s gone because she was murdered… by someone we should have caught a long time ago. Someone for whom justice will come one day and I dearly hope soon. And yeah there is some responsibility that lies with some of us in this room, me included.” He cleared his throat to swallow again and took a deep breath. “But I know Beverly wouldn’t want us to blame ourselves. Even if we do, she wouldn’t blame us either. She would say it’s an occupational hazard, that she knew what she was doing and what she had signed up for, and to think of her as a fallen soldier.”
He looked down to her casket and let another silence fall over the room for a few seconds. “I could be up here for hours and it still wouldn’t be enough to send someone like Beverly off. She was so much grander than the words I’m using. It’s hard to believe someone like that could even be dead. She seemed larger than life. Invincible. Untouchable. But I guess this proves to us that nobody is, and that we need to cherish every moment we have with each other. Because we never know if it’s going to be our last. If I’d known the last time I talked to Beverly was going to be the last, I would have hugged her and not let go until she shoved me off. And I suggest you do the same for your loved ones tonight.”
He took another deep breath and flexed his fingers on the corners of the pulpit. “I know you can’t hear me, Bev, but on the off chance you can… I love you. You were the best of us. I know I’ll never meet anyone like you again. I’m both glad and heartbroken over that. You were the best thing to ever happen to me… and losing you is the worst thing to ever happen to me. But I’ll never forget the good times. I’m pretty sure I’ll think about you every day til I die. Thank you for being in my life.”
He wiped under his eyes and went down to Beverly’s casket, putting his hand over where her head would be and then patted it. “Yehi zichra mahapecha,” he murmured under his breath. It was only after he started walking down the aisle again that the tears rushed in. It felt like he was walking away from his best friend once and for all. He didn’t want to, he wanted to go back and pound on that casket until she woke up. But that wasn’t going to happen. She was really gone.
The tears ran down his cheeks and dripped to the blue carpet along the aisle. He approached and passed his seat, Jimmy and his family turning to watch him go all the way down to the entrance and open to let himself out. He didn’t want to break down in public. Rebecca got up from her seat and moved past Jimmy and followed her brother out of the synagogue at a discreet pace. Outside, he was sitting on the steps and weeping and she sat down beside him, leaning against him and wrapping an arm around his back.
“She’s not coming back,” he whimpered, shielding his eyes with his hand. “She’s gone and she’s not coming back.” Rebecca shook her head slowly and squeezed her arm around her brother. It hurt her to see him in so much pain like never before. “I’m here,” she whispered and stroked his back. “We’re all here for you. And you did so good up there, Brian. I’m proud of you. Bev would be proud of you.” He turned toward her and then leaned his face against her shoulder, letting the fabric of her dress soak up his tears.
