(Written after Michael Graff passed away on August 11, 2021)
Just a few days ago you were lying in your hospital bed in Hadassah Hospital awaiting treatment after being transferred from Shaare Zedek, and despite your great handicaps we managed to have a good light-hearted conversation, and I told you that I planned to come to visit you on Thursday (August 12) and bring you the sugar-free cake and Coca-Cola bottle you asked for. So it was a real and terrible shock the following day when I came home to hear from your dear wife Irene the tragic news that you had left us and left this cruel world after months of physical suffering for your pain-racked body which could no longer withstand the unending blows on the inhospitable hospital beds, and so you left us, your family and friends, to grieve.
Even your funeral in Jerusalem the next day was in many ways a painfully hurried and harried affair because it had to be hastily arranged and executed in the midst of a host of other funerals seemingly all taking place at the same time on Har Hamenuchot as a result of the Corona pandemic and the endless heat. So much so, that to our great regret there was no time as is customary for close family and friends to bid you words of appreciation and farewell from the podium in front of the stretcher bearing your body. At least your son was able to recite Kaddish before they hurried us away with your body to a vast new underground section where they placed your body in a compartment in the wall, and after the Kehilat Yerushalayim Hevra Kadisha Rabbi in charge recited the customary psalms and blessings he and his assistants went off leaving the few of us, your wife and son, granddaughter and husband, myself and David Cochav, and Mr. Samet and his workers from the music store, to say a few words in your memory.