Four Brothers. In memoriam... →[More:]
Yesterday, Jon and I attended my Uncle Sam's funeral. He was the last of the original four brothers: Leo, the oldest (and my namesake); Sidney, my father; Milton; and Sam, the youngest. They grew up during the Depression in Bridgeport, CT. Their father left the family and married four more times. Their mother moved them all out to Ann Arbor, MI, for college, back when in-state tuition was a hundred dollars a semester, and scrubbed floors to support the family. Leo became a lawyer, and Milton and Sam became doctors (both were doctors in WWII). My father eventually took over his father's factory, manufacturing bedsprings (he never quite forgave his father, though; he hung his picture in the garage).

At the funeral, there were grown children and grandchildren of my Uncle Sam, and even two great-grandchildren, the latest of whom was born just this week. Life carries on. At the cemetery, relatives and friends took turns dropping shovelfuls of dirt into the grave. ("We, as his loved ones, can care for him better than anyone," the rabbi said.) As in the picture from the 1930s, he's between two of his brothers, my father, Sidney, and Milton.