Yesterday was my grandfather Victor’s yahrzeit – the anniversary of his death, observed by loved ones (but especially by one’s children). A dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur (as was his father, Max, who was also an accomplished inventor), Victor loved his family, and loved his work. But he didn’t particularly love Judaism. As he once told me, after his mother died when he was a child, any religious observance in his family went out the door with his mother’s body. While he was alive, he would tell people he didn’t even want a funeral; he just wanted the people still living to enjoy their lives for the day.

So, rather than heading to synagogue as would be traditional, my parents observed Victor’s yahrzeit with a ritual much dearer to his heart: dinner at Denny’s. There was no Denny’s in New York when he was still alive, so any time he came out to visit us in California, a trip to Denny’s (particularly for the coffee, which he inexplicably loved) was inevitably on the must-do list.

I think sometimes about the New Orleans tradition of the Jazz Funeral: friends and family, led by a brass band playing somber songs and spirituals, slowly march from the deceased’s home to the cemetery. And then, as soon as the body is in the ground, as soon as the members of the procession have said their final goodbyes, there’s the ‘cutting loose’ of the body. The brass band switches to raucous jazz, and everyone drinks and dances and parties in their dead loved one’s honor.

I think the New Orleaners, like my grandfather Victor, have it entirely right. The best way to remember someone isn’t to sit at mourn, but to get right to living. As Joan Didion wrote, “the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can.”