Eulogy Explained (2)

The second thing I said was that in his way of dying, as well, Asher was exceptional.
He probably fell to his death on Sunday, November 4, his first day of hiking in the Colca Canyon in Peru. He apparently took the wrong path from the very start and reached a difficult place, overestimated his ability to cross it, slipped, fell more than forty meters, and died immediately. He was alone, so no one saw him set out, and no one knew he had fallen until his body was found two months later.
Almost everyone who hears about this tragic accident asks, "Was he alone?" Perhaps if he had not been alone, he would not have taken the wrong path. Perhaps if he had not been alone, his partner would have said, "Asher, that's a dangerous place, let's turn back." Certainly, if he had not been alone, unless his partner had also fallen, we would have known of his death within a day.
We can wish that someone had been by his side to tell him to turn back. I fantasize over and over again about being there myself, calling out, "Asher, that's too risky! Turn back!" But nothing can change what happened. We can wish that he had had better judgment or more skill. But fatal accidents happen all them time, and this time it happened to him.
There is a weight on my chest as I write this. During the six weeks between the time that we realized he was missing until his body was found, there were many days when I felt grief for Asher in the most physical way: pain around my heart. I learned how apt the expression, "a heavy heart," truly is. But until his body was located and identified, we imagined scenarios that would leave him alive - kidnapped, perhaps, or injured, sick, on some kind of spiritual journey - anything that would not have ended in a grave in Jerusalem.
Asher did a great deal during his short life, and, had it not been cut short, he would undoubtedly have done many extraordinary things. As sorry as I feel for us, for our loss, I feel even sorrier for him and his loss, for the future he won't have.