In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried

The story’s epigraph is a dedication to Jessica Wolfson, the author’s friend who died of a disease. This lends an aura of reality to the story, suggesting the story is rooted in autobiographical experience. The title references a cemetery, a collection of physical markers that memorialize the dead. The image represents death within life.

Although a persistent presence within the story, the word death is avoided, cleansed through euphemism and obscured through wordplay, understatement, and ambiguity. Rather than speak the word, the friend uses euphemisms such as “end o’ the line” (9). When the narrator shares a funny story, the friend’s response conflates humor with murder. She says, “Oh, you’re killing me” (3), an attempt to neutralize the horrific concept. After the friend dies, the narrator communicates this detail euphemistically by saying, “[S]he was moved to the cemetery” (9).

Despite the friend’s illness and likely imminent death, both narrator and friend hide their psychic pain behind the literal and metaphoric hospital masks they wear. Only after the friend’s death can the narrator begin to process her pain and grieve. The uncertainty and randomness of death has been paralyzing. The