Details About the Funeral Procedure of Late Shri Jayeshbhai Shantilal Shah
             On Friday, September 28th, 2001, our family was notified by local authorities that a body matching dental records of Jayesh Shah was recovered. We confirmed with New York medical examiners that it was a positive match with no doubts. The transfer of the body to the Funeral home was handled by the Funeral Home personnel on a direct basis as that was the official protocol. On Sunday, September 30th our family had a closed casket funeral service, performed the last rites with Maharaj, and had a cremation service in New Bergen, New Jersey at J. Rivera Funeral Home. There were about 150 people at the funeral home consisting of immediate family members, relatives and friends.
            New Jersey Funeral/ Cremation (from Mansukh Gala - Jayesh's Masa) :
Starting with the Mangalic prayers, there were some soothing prathana songs sung by good singers from the community for about an hour. After a brief welcome note, there was a 10 minute "Man Shanti" speech given by a close family friend. This was followed with 2 final Shraddhanjali prayers. After that, Amar Gala (cousin) gave his brief "final respect" speech for Jayesh.
            After that Niloy Shah gave his appreciation speech for all the family and community friends who have given their invaluable, warm, caring, relentless support and comfort ever since the disaster occurred.         
           Following that, every one present, one by one, gave their "last respect" by putting some flower petals over Jayesh's closed casket saying prayers. While every one wanted to take additional time to meet with individual family members on one to one basis, the over all time constraint allowed meeting by only some. From the funeral home, the casket was then shouldered by six
Close family members and relatives and moved from the hall to a special car (used for such services), to take it to the crematory that was very near by (3-4 minutes away).
          This particular crematory had a special set up and hall created for performing some additional Cria/ceremony. Only the close family members men and women, had been requested to come for this last personal ceremony. One gujarati maharaj had come to perform it. He took the time to explain most of the slokes in Gujarati also and that provided soothing understanding of
Life and death. This was really needed by the family members at that point to derive some peace before parting with the casket. Some Jain prayers were also read, spoken by Maltiben, Harsha and others during this process and close to the end. Then the casket was moved in to another special room where the special burn furnace/kiln was situated. In this final area, only the men came. Niloy was carrying Jayesh's son Kevin (6 years) for giving the last fire to the casket. Here, of course the fire process is done by turning the power switch on, not by physical lighting of a match stick. The entireprocess went very smoothly, peacefully and calmly. In some unobvious ways,this may have provided some closure to all the family members although "full closure" may take a very long time. In some uncertain ways, this may have marked the beginning of "all family member's individual healing" process although undoubtedly every one is aware that healing process may not be quick.
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