The Brooklyn Paper used the Smartmom page to memorialize my dad. They strung together some of these blog posts. I didn’t know a thing about it. On Friday Hugh said, "I like the thing in the Brooklyn Paper." I didn’t know what he was talking about. Now I do.

Our beloved Smartmom — Louise Crawford — lost her father, Monte
Ghertler, on Sunday. The Brooklyn Paper staff offers its full
condolences — and, in fact, was so moved by our columnist’s writings
about her father’s death on her Web site, Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn,
that we have compiled these excerpts:

In lieu of flowers, the family is asking for donations to the Crandall Library, 251 Glen St., Glens Falls, NY 12801.

Dad, we love you

My dad died yesterday at 4:15. I was with him when it happened. He
was in hospice in the sunny living room of his Brooklyn Heights
apartment on the 27th floor with its view of the Manhattan skyline he
adored.

For most of the day he moaned softly. At 3:45 or so, my sister
played one of his favorite records, scratches and all, on the
phonograph: “Kinderszenen or Scenes from Childhood,” by Robert Schumann.

Just before he died he had three labored breaths. But there was no fear, no panic in his eyes.

Writing the Eulogy

Last week at the hospital, Hillary, my stepmother, told me that my
father wanted me to speak at his funeral. That was an honor like no
other, but also a huge pressure.

How could I write something — anything — that would compare to what my father would say on such an occasion?

His wanting me to do this was his way of showing his faith in me
about this most important thing that we share: the ability to turn
experience into words, to find the right way to say that which is so
hard to express.

Hillary also said that my father wanted me to read a poem and that I’d know which one.

Hmm. I was stumped. Was it something by Yeats, Shakespeare or Frank
O’Hara? I really didn’t know what poem he was talking about. And I was
stressed. But then it came to me: he probably meant the last two pages
of “The House at Pooh Corner,” by A.A. Milne, a book he cherished. I
read this section at my high school graduation and my father was moved
to tears.

So I am putting all my grief, shock, and numbness into the writing
of this eulogy. At my computer is the only place I want to be right now
tinkering with it, making it better, adding things, trying to write
something worthy of the man.

Planning The Funeral

Sitting in the funeral directors plush office at the Frank E.
Campbell Funeral Chapel was surreal; one of those situations you dread
your whole life but is much more normal than you expect.

We had to choose the coffin and discuss my father’s entombment in
the family mausoleum. We even looked at a layout of the mausoleum. We
want my father next to his dad, Dewey.

“Flowers or no flowers?”

My sister wanted flowers, my stepmother did not. No real stalemate.
We decided against them, because we couldn’t really think of a flower
that represented my father.

The secretary typed up the New York Times death announcement that I wrote and we proofread it.

“It needs a comma here,” I said reaching for a pen.

It all felt so ordinary.

Meeting The Rabbi

This morning, my sister and I met with Rabbi Andy Bachman at
Congregation Beth Elohim. He asked a lot of questions and we got a
chance to tell him much about my father’s life.

Rabbi Bachman seemed to enjoy the story about the time my father
went to work at a shoe store. My father, then 19 or 20, assured the
store’s owner that he had plenty of experience in the shoe business,
but when he was caught inexpertly trying to force a shoe onto a large
woman’s foot, the owner replied: “You’re no shoe man, Ghertler.”

My sister told Rabbi Bachman what a funny storyteller my father was.
It felt sad to have to describe it knowing that we’d never again see my
father rub his hands the way he did when he was warming up for a great
punchline.

Afterwards, we waited under the scaffolding at Beth Elohim for a fierce downpour to die down.

I walked toward Seventh Avenue, but the sudden feeling of wet and
cold made me rethink my plan. Then I saw a black car service car and I hopped in
the back.

“You got lucky,” said a man who was standing on the corner of Eighth Avenue as I got into the car.

Today, the grief was a fog around my forehead. I had the sense that
the world was moving on and I wasn’t part of it. I wanted to say,
“Don’t these people know that Monte Ghertler is gone?”

Friends

Friends called all day. One helpfully stopped by my apartment to
pick up an envelope that needed to be driven over to my stepmother’s
apartment in Brooklyn Heights.

I feel overwhelmed at the thought of seeing a lot of people today.
I feel so inside myself and I don’t know if I will be able to connect
with anyone. I’m nervous about my eulogy and keep thinking of all the
things I didn’t say in it.

Monte Ghertler, 1929–2008

Monte Ghertler, legendary advertising copywriter and creative
director, author, songwriter, connoisseur of art, literature, music,
philosophy, birdwatching, opera, and thoroughbred horse racing, died
peacefully in his Brooklyn Heights home on September 7, 2008,
surrounded by loving family members.

Monte, who had a successful career in advertising, had a way with
words, a sharp intellect, a hilarious sense of humor, and a love of
books, music and his family.

He is survived by his wife, Hillary; his daugheters, Louise and
Caroline; his sons-in-law, Hugh Crawford and Jeffrey Jacobson; and
three grandchildren.