We were the first to arrive, and we were brought to a room for family in the back with the rabbi. My parents and Dan arrived shortly after, as did Dan’s parents—an unwelcome surprise. My mother’s sister, Mildred, entered with her family as well. I asked them all to excuse me as I went over my eulogy in a corner. I didn’t want their sympathy. My father tried to say he was sorry again, but Dan successfully navigated him away, with a nod to me.
Eventually the rabbi told us it was time and led us into the sanctuary, where I stopped in my tracks.
A sea of heads turned to look at us. It was standing room only, people lining the back and side walls, pressed tightly together, with only the front two rows, reserved for family, open.
“Who—who are these people?” I asked Lillian in a whisper.
But the rabbi turned and answered. “Ada brought thousands of people together in her lifetime. This is just a fraction of them.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Dan. She hadn’t been paid for us, but we numbered among those. Mama and Daddy too, in a less direct way.
As we moved through the crowd though, two people caught my eye—largely because they stood out from the rest of the assembled throng, but also because one of them was just about the only person I recognized other than my family. Thomas stood, in a suit, next to an elderly woman, whom I assumed was John’s wife.
We reached them, a few people from the back, and I wrapped my arms around Thomas in a hug, drawing both whispers and a couple of gasps, all of which I ignored.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He nodded. “This is my grandmother. Grandmama, this is Miss Ada’s niece, Marilyn.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, shaking my hand.
I clutched hers with my left as well. “Thank you for being here.” The rabbi cleared his throat at the holdup, and she extricated her hand, using it to pat me on the arm.
I didn’t know her. But somehow that kindness gave me the push I needed to make my way to the front, where Ada’s urn rested on a cloth-covered table.
The rabbi spoke first, leading the congregation in two readings before giving his own eulogy.
“We gather here today to remember Ada Heller. So many of us were blessed to know her, though this may be the first time she set foot in this building for anything other than a wedding.”
People stirred uncomfortably, unsure of whether they were supposed to laugh or not. The rabbi shook his head as his joke fell flat.
“Ada dedicated her life to the service of others. Both as a nurse, serving in the first World War, and later as a matchmaker, bringing together the Jewish community of Philadelphia in so many happy marriages, which is one of the greatest mitzvot a person can provide.
“There are those who say that a person who creates three successful matches automatically ascends to the highest level in the afterlife. I don’t know if Ada believed in all that. But I do know why this is such a holy calling. It is the first thing that the Lord did after creating man—creating a match for him. We are each only half a soul, and when Ada made a match, she created whole families, both the partners and the children who were born of those marriages.”
He paused, taking a deep breath. “I, myself, am one of those children, born of an Ada Heller match. As are my own children. How many here can say the same?”
There was the sound of fabric swishing all throughout the room and I turned, watching how many dozens of hands went up.
“None of us knows for sure if there is an afterlife until we leave this world. But what I do know is that we live on through the memories we leave. And that is Ada’s legacy. She will live on through all of us in this room. As long as we remember her and tell our children and our children’s children of the woman who created our families, Ada will never truly die.”
He led the congregation in the Mourner’s Kaddish, then introduced me. I winced as he called me her great-niece, then rose and went to the bimah with my typed eulogy clasped tight in my hand.
“The first thing to know about Ada,” I began. But then I made the mistake of looking out into the sea of people, and my voice broke. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to be able to make it through this.
I took a deep breath, trying to compose myself, and focused on a spot at the back of the sanctuary. But a woman moved in front of the door, and I startled.
She wore a turquoise Hermès scarf around her hair, a pair of cat eye sunglasses covering her eyes, her lips a shade of red I recognized at a glance. She lowered the glasses and winked at me.
She wasn’t really there. I knew that. And by the time I looked down at my notes and then back up at the door, she was gone. But her presence in that moment, real or imagined, gave me the strength to go on.
“The first thing to know about Ada,” I repeated, my voice strong now, “is that she would have dressed you down, regardless of who you were, Rabbi, for calling me her ‘great’ niece. Implying Ada was a day past thirty would earn you her scorn.” People stirred. “Go ahead and laugh,” I told them. “Ada despised anything maudlin and would have walked right up to the front if she were here and told you all to go home if you were going to be mopey. So we’re going to make this a celebration of her instead of a goodbye. Deal?”
“Deal,” a few people repeated. I glanced down at the front row and saw Dan next to my mother. He nodded at me, flashing me a discreet thumbs-up. I looked back at the door one more time, hoping to see her there, but my imagination could only produce her once.
“Ada was the most cantankerous person I’ve ever met in my life.” I turned to her urn. “You hear that? It’s true.” A few chuckles. “But she was also my best friend. Something I never expected to say about a seventy-fi—I mean, thirty-year-old.” More chuckles.
“I think even down here in Philadelphia, it’s common knowledge how I came to spend the summer with her. And I honestly thought it was a fate worse than death when I arrived. On the car ride back from the station, me holding on for dear life in the backseat—if you’ve ever jumped onto a curb to avoid falling victim to Ada’s driving, you know what I mean—Ada confiscated my lipstick. Apparently it made me look ‘like a tart.’ Which, quite honestly, was exactly the look I was going for. Not three minutes later, she was putting it on at a traffic light. She told me she could pull it off.”