Yet More from the Eulogy

I've been using the words I spoke in the presence of Asher's body at the funeral to organize my thoughts. In the meanwhile, of course, we are approaching the thirtieth day after his burial, and we have been through a lot: the seven day mourning period, when we were at home and friends came and visited us and took care of us; the subsequent period, during which we have been fortunate to have our other son with us - on leave without pay from his job with a law firm in Washington DC. I've been attending morning prayers every day, indeed leading them, as the person in the heaviest period of mourning is expected to do, and reciting the kaddish: May His great name be magnified and sanctified...
During the six weeks of tension between the time when we realized that Asher was missing and the time when we learned that his body had been found, I was more or less unable to pray - in fact during the past few years I had been growing more and more distant from prayer and religious ritual. But since his funeral, I have felt that it's right and fitting to pray - not for the "elevation of his soul" as the tradition has it, but in an effort to put together what his death has shattered.
The next thing I said in the eulogy was: I learned a great deal during that limbo period, when Asher was merely missing, not necessarily dead.
The first thing I learned was the amazing power of the imagination, something which, as a student of literature, ought not to have been surprising to me. We knew next to nothing about what had happened to Asher. We had received an email from him, sent from the little town of Chivay the day before he left on the hike, telling us not to worry, that he wasn't planning to do anything dangerous. There was no record of his staying in any hotel or hostel in Chivay. No one remembered him. For all we know he had been murdered or abducted that evening, before he even got to Colca Canyon.
The most probable thing was exactly what did happen, that he had fallen to his death. But even after weeks of intense searches, his body had not been found, suggesting that something else had happened to him. We hoped that he was sick or injured, lying in someone's home, hospitalized somewhere, that he had run away with a local woman, that he had decided to go off and learn how to be a shaman with a mountain wizard ... any scenario that might leave him alive. With virtually no concrete information, the imagination can do wonders.
That period was one of great fear, great tension, great sadness, and great confusion. We continued trying to live our ordinary lives, and at the same time we, as a family, devoted enormous efforts to finding Asher. There were days when I was hopeful and days when I was pessimistic, with no concrete reason for either feeling.
We were fearful that we might never know what had happened to Asher, that he might be missing forever. I can't say with a whole heart that I wouldn't have preferred that to knowing that he is dead. Wouldn't it have been better to have him be missing for even a year or two and then show up? But I'm not sure we could have lived with the tension.
I didn't tell everyone what I was going through. There wasn't any point. What was I going to say, "Oh, by the way, our twenty-eight year old son disappeared in Peru"? So a lot of people were taken by surprise when the news of his death came out. I play in a big band. During the time he was missing, I went to rehearsals and performed twice. Now, during the thirty days since his funeral, I haven't been going to rehearsals. People in mourning aren't supposed to enjoy music, according to the Jewish tradition.
Living with the grief is not easy, but grief is an emotion we share with other people. Too many other people. Life is full of sadness now, and all our future joy will be colored by it.
That's what I said afterward in the eulogy: Asher's death has torn a huge hole in our lives, in the lives of his immediate family, in the lives of our community here in Israel, and in the lives of a huge network of friends and relatives abroad. A few people came to visit us during the shiva who had suffered similar losses, and they told us never to expect the wound to heal. In fact, I would think of myself as unfeeling and shallow if the wound ever did heal. I don't want to stop feeling sad about the loss of my wonderful son.
I concluded the eulogy with mention of a prayer that observant Jews recite every morning, one in a series of morning benedictions, beginning, "Blessed are You, O Lord, Our God, Who gives the cock intelligence to distinguish between day and night."
I had stopped reciting those blessings for a long time, but before the funeral, I said them again, and I got to the one that says: "Blessed are You, O Lord, Our God, Who prepares a man's steps," and I thought that, in Asher's case, it didn't work. Asher's steps led him to his premature death. What is one to think? That sometimes God watches your steps, and sometimes He doesn't? That He watches some people's steps and not others? That He meant Asher to fall? Or that it would be great if He did watch out steps for us?
I have religious friends who lost children and spouses to cancer, and the prayers say that God heals the sick. Not easy to say for a person whose loved one wasn't healed.
Strangely, I'm not angry. I'm not angry at God, whatever that might mean, for letting Asher fall, and I'm not angry at Asher for taking the wrong trail and not turning back when he got to a tricky place. While we were in doubt, I sometimes looked angrily at someone Asher's age and said to myself, "Why aren't you missing, instead of Asher?" But I don't want anyone to be missing. I don't want anyone to die young. I don't want to deepen the sadness of the world.

So, I've reached the end of the eulogy. In a week we'll reach the end of the thirty days of deep mourning dictated by the Jewish tradition, but we haven't reached the end of anything.