My friend died today

For Ze'ev, may your memory always be blessed, and may your soul rise to Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden)

I went to a funeral today. This friend was too young to die, and he was single at 50 years old. He had liver disease, and while awaiting a liver transplant he got a hospital "superbug". His liver couldn't handle or process the antibiotics, and he got sepsis, and died.
He was an only child to his elderly parents who were just /broken/, and collapsing under their legs today.

As I walked around this graveyard, stepping around the hardened dirt mounds, trying to stay on the narrow paths, I realized that I live a very privileged life. Yes, in an obvious way that I lived through my superbug experience, but the more immediate realization was that I am so blessed to have children. This man never got to do that. A whole massive, colorful section of love and life was not opened to him.

Juxtapose that with yesterday: I had the honor of celebrating the engagement of a good friend. She is in my generation, and is now finally getting that chance to have kids. She wants it more than anything, and was blessed to be set up with the right guy 5 months ago.

Both these people have no kids, but one is engaged to be married, and the other was buried today.

Funerals in Israel are so raw, completely stripped of any embellishments. The first one I ever went to here was back in '95, my first year here. It was only a few months after Rabin's assassination. That funeral was for a friend's roommate; a suicide.
It was then that I saw the shocking presentation of the diseased. I expected a regular, plain, closed casket, made of pine, like I had seen in American funerals. Here, the body is buried only in a thin, white cotton wrap, draped with a velvet Magen David (Jewish star). Today, when I looked at the wrapped human form lying on a steel gurney, his face in my mind's eye, I could not reconcile that HE was actually under there.

After the funeral I came home, very sore from the hike in the graveyard, and from physical therapy today. Ya'akov was sitting there at the dining room table. I walked up to him and hugged him from behind and kissed his head. I told him I was at a funeral. And he said "I know, the one for [his English teacher's] family from the car accident". Then I told him "no, not that one... I had to miss going there because another friend died today."
What a crazy sentence, right?

I plopped down on the couch, and Shifra came to me for hugs. I wrapped both arms around her skinny, 7-year-old frame. Then Azriel ran down the stairs and reached up for me to take him in my lap for snuggles. I held him the way I always do, the way his little body fits perfectly into mine. He put his thumb in his mouth, and started stoking my face like he always does with his thumb sucking. It is the most a m a z i n g love experience, the one I feel with Azriel. The one a parent feels for their child.

Shifra knew I was at a funeral, I had explained it to her when I picked her up early from school (so I could make it on time to the funeral). Azriel asked what's a "fooral?"... and I told him that it was an important place where we go to say good-bye when people die. (he asked me if Grandpa Dolph -Robert's father- died, and I told him no, it was another person who he *doesn't* know, one of ima's friends). I told him I was sad there, and I am soooo happy to be home with him and everyone.

Then I saw Dov, entering the living room after he finished with his computer time allotment for the day. He simply said:

"hi ima"
I greeted him: "hi, sweetie", "how was your day"?
Dov: "Ummm, fine, actually. I had a few classes free, we went to play soccer in the play yard with the extra time."
So, of course I asked "why was that?"
Dov: "you know! You were just there- at the funeral of [the English teacher's] daughter-in-law and baby... lots of my teachers were there, too".
I then had to tell him, too, that I had to miss that funeral because another friend died this morning.
"Who?" He said.
"A friend from the orchestra. Maybe you remember him; he was a clarinet player, and had a big bushy beard."
Dov: "oh, yeah! Him! What's his name again? He died? Why?"

Really, out of the mouths of babes... why?
All I could answer is "well, it just is".