By JanetheWriter
At last week's Yizkor service, just before the El Malei Rachamim, the rabbi asked people to recite the names of those they were remembering and to say a few words about them. Knowing that my mother would, of course, speak about her parents, I planned to mention two bachelor uncles -- great uncles, really, -- one whom I knew and one whom I did not.

Uncle Irv was my mother's uncle, my grandfather's brother, about whom I've written before on this blog. He was a gardener's gardener. As one who kills houseplants with great regularity, I most certainly did not inherit any of his DNA. In a small plot of soil - indoors or out - Uncle Irv could coax tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, beans, flowers and more to burst forth from the earth, all the while smoking forbidden cigarettes and "hiding" them in his pocket whenever one of us came out in the yard to check on him. It's a wonder he never set himself on fire. He was as loving to all of us -- his nieces and their families -- as he was to his beloved plants, and we miss him terribly.

Uncle Max, too, was my mother's uncle, my grandmother's brother. Although I did not know him, I do know that when my mother was growing up, he and his sister, my Tante Laura, shared an apartment on Second Avenue between Second and Third streets, right next door to Provenzano Lanza Funeral Home on the Lower East Side. I've been told that he was extremely organized and meticulous (and, as anyone who knows me well will tell you, I most certainly did inherit those genes!), and kept scores of bound journals and records, all in German. Included in those volumes were endless lists, writings, calculations, sketches, and more. I've had an opportunity to thumb through some of those pages from time to time, all the while wishing I'd had a chance to know the fellow yekke who created them.

In the end, though, it was neither Uncle Irv nor Uncle Max about whom I spoke that morning. Instead, when the rabbi's eyes met mine, Chaim Glasberg was the name that tumbled from my lips. In the same way that I've written about Uncle Irv on this blog, so too, have I written about him in these pages. But, unlike Uncle Irv, Chaim Glasberg probably doesn't have anyone else to remember him. However, since I randomly plucked his name from among the thousands on the stucco walls of Prague's Pinkas Synagogue more than a year ago, Chaim Glasberg has been with me - just like my grandparents, my Tante Laura, and my bachelor uncles. Last week, though, as his name came forth, it was as though he was sitting right next to me in the pew. And, as with others whose lives give meaning to our own, it was nice to have him there.

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