To my beloved cousin Sonny,

With my words, I am standing here today with our family, besides you, a witness to your life.

In this moment when silence is all I can muster, when the comfort of our embraces speak more eloquently for us, when the tears that roll down our cheeks seal our lips, and when memories of you overwhelm our speech,

I have  yet within me  a deep desire to speak to you.

Perhaps I need to find my words at this time , because we are a family who used words with such premeditated reservation,

Relatives, who failed to discover the liberating connection between emotion and language,

And   now we stand here all too aware that we have become the poorer for not allowing our feelings to find expression in words.

So I need to speak to you and in doing, my hope is that my words help me find the beginning to my healing.

I lament that you and  I missed so much of life together. I lament that our words were not a priority to our busy lives, that they were not sufficiently moving to find each other across the oceans in a way that could have brought us together sooner. Ours was a missed opportunity of our lifetimes and I grieve at the time we let slip by in silence.

If the lesson of Yom Kippur is that we are gifted a new beginning with this new year,

then surely your life over the past year, has returned us, your beloved family and friends  to  a new appreciation.

In the brief year of my knowing you, you returned me to a love of our family that lay separated by distance and time. No amount of gratitude can substitute for this act of reconnection. 

In the same year, you renewed the honor, admiration and deep respect of your children and allowed them to rediscover your courage and strength that gave them guidance and security  through their formative lives.

In this last year you renewed the deep love of your life’s partner with your fortitude and humble pride, forever acting to protect those around you until the end.

And in this last year too you shared with me how you gave your gentle smile and open arms to your grandchildren, in a bond of love that connected you to your future generations.

My beloved  Sonny,

 The words I  speak are in the present tense, because Judaism teaches us that you are alive, in that your “neshama” continues to live through the virtue and goodness that is bound up in it.

The beauty of your life, your innate decency, the acts  of love, honor and selflessness that you gave to all of us, the quiet heroism with which you lived your  life, - all this  lives on in eternity through us,  your descendants.

For us, the survivors  who are privileged witnesses of your legacy, Rabbi Kook best expressed how you are still with us , when he said

I live in you, in each of you,
In your life my life has meaning,
Without you I am naught,
In your eternity , I have life eternal,
In your glory I am honored.

For us, your descendants, here today, the words of the message we take to heart are that –

We are not only here to  bury  our loved  one, but to resurrect our hope and reaffirm the value and content of our lives in the context of your legacy. In due course our memories will begin to conduct a sacred search of our past with you. Our wish, dear Sonny, is that all you have been - we are able to carry into our own lives and into the lives  of  our children,

May your memory be a blessing to all of us present today. May the example of your life be a light to the generations that called you my husband, my father, my saba, my sister, my uncle,   my cousin, my relative , my friend.

May we and our children earn the privilege in our own lives to carry the crown of your beloved memory.