As Expected

Our good friend, a man we've known well since for more than thirty years, a man whose children grew up with ours, a leader in our synagogue, one of the warmest, most generous people I ever knew, a man of great honesty and tolerance, died yesterday of a cancer that was barely detected a month and a half ago. He was, I think, about a month older than I.
We got the news yesterday evening at around six, about a half hour after he died, and about an hour before I was due to travel with other musicians from our big and and appear in a joint concert with a European big band that travels all over the world, bringing the message of (Christian) love and peace through music.
I had twisted my wife's arm, prevailing on her to come to the concert with me, though she really didn't want to. When we heard the news of our friend's death, I untwisted her arm. The last thing she wanted to do was hear big bands. I was ready to skip the concert, too.
The news caught me in the midst of cooking an onion and potato omelet. What could I do? I went on cooking, and Judith and I ate supper together before I left for the concert.
The concert was meant to raise some money for a charity, but the people from the charity didn't make enough of an effort to get an audience, and to say that the concert was sparsely attended would be a severe understatement. The musicians outnumbered the audience. So it was more like an open rehearsal than a performance.
The band with whom we shared the stage calls itself the IHS Orchestra. IHS stands for In Hoc Segno. Though the leader, Lawrence Dahar, refrained from explaining exactly which symbol the orchestra promotes, the Christian evangelical message was ultra clear. Israel is inundated with Christian pilgrims, some of them far more exotic than Lawrence's international band.
Our big band played the first half of the concert, and then the guests took the stage, playing mainly tired old standards like "My Way" and "Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand." But they're good musicians, and they played with a lot of energy. Toward the end of their half of the concert, Lawrence spent a long time telling us Israelis in the audience how much God loves us, which made me squirm.
Before they played the Ellington piece, "I'm Just a Lucky So and So," Lawrence told us that his son, a young man who was confined to a wheelchair all his life and who had played bass trombone with the band when they were in Israel two years ago, had been run over and killed about a year ago.
Another bereaved father.
Then he started telling us how he was sure that his son was in a "better place," doing the things he could never do when he was alive, running around, which was why he was a "lucky so and so." At first I thought, well, if it helps him to believe that... but it's an entirely ridiculous idea.
Why make up the idea of a God who creates a world full of pain and misery, sticks us in it to suffer, and then sends us to a place of bliss after we've been tormented down here? If He could, and, by definition, He could, why wouldn't the Almighty just send us to the place of bliss right away? Why bother with the woe down here?
I'm not prepared to cut religion out of my life. I have some kind of faith. But it sure isn't that childish idea.
After the concert, I went up to Lawrence and told him that I, too, had lost a son, and I could sympathize with him. He wasn't really ready to hear that from anyone. He was still high from the rush of performing. At first he smiled, as if I had said, "You guys really played great!" It took him a moment to realize that I was offering condolences.

Last Night I Realized How Unhappy I Am

Sounds like a stupid thing to say - Didn't I know?
Last night I went to hear a musician friend of mine, Jean-Claude Jones, a bass player, appearing in a Jerusalem club named D. Grey with his colleague, a child prodigy named Ariel. I like Jean-Claude and his partner, Judith Posner, and I ought to have been glad to join them to hear original music, especially since there were other friends of mine in the audience.
However, Judith and I are linked by a double tragedy. Her son Eric was a classmate of Asher's in school, and Eric died about six months before Asher did. When I attended Eric's funeral, I was devastated, as we all were. How could I ever have imagined that I would be burying my own son in the same year?
"I know what you're thinking," Judith said to me, and she was right.
I did enjoy the music. I did admire Ariel's creativity. It was a pleasure to see Jean-Claude respond to Ariel both as a child and as a fellow musician, with tact and humor, and respect.
But I certainly wasn't happy.
The flashes of pleasure I experience are like the rush from a drug: they appear and fade away.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and decided I was feeling sorry for myself, which is something I have never felt.
I have been exposed to metta meditation on some retreats I attended. This meditation exercise always begins by invoking compassion for oneself, and that always arouses resistance in me. But we are taught, correctly, that one cannot have compassion for others without first having compassion for oneself.
Which is not the same as feeling sorry for oneself.
Can I transform self-pity into compassion?
A good friend of mine, whom I have known well for more than thirty years and with whom I have shared many joys, is apparently dying of cancer now. Though we all refuse to give up hope for him, objectively speaking, there doesn't seem to be much hope. Just another thing to feel rotten about.

Can we Resume Normal Life?

Last weekend the State of Israel and the Jewish People celebrated Purim, a carnival-like holiday. Children and some adults wear costumes, and we read the Book of Esther in the synagogue in a particularly raucous manner, making noises to drown out the name of Haman. The consumption of alcohol is sanctioned. The staid Jewish world is stood on its head.
For that very reason Judith and I were rather unenthusiastic as the holiday approached. And let's not forget that it was on Purim that Dr. Baruch Goldstein massacred Muslims while they were at prayer in Hebron, a crime that had dampened out enthusiasm for Purim long before Asher's tragic death.
My wise wife took the initiative and arranged for us to spend three nights in the Turkish resort of Antalya instead of staying in Jerusalem for Purim. We had a relaxing time in a five-star hotel, spent hours in the sauna, did some tourism (the local archaeological and ethnographic museum is rich and fascinating), and took time for ourselves in what Judith called a neutral place.
Before we left, I got a phone call from Ariav, a man whose son died in a rafting accident in Peru. His response was to create an organization to help parents in that situation. He and other people from his organization have been very attentive to us, calling us, coming to the funeral and the shiva. He said that we'd find the holidays to be the hardest times, which is why, though he didn't say so, he called us before Purim. When I told him we were going away, he congratulated me: a great idea.
Our charter flight back and forth from Tel Aviv was full of vacationers of all sorts, including a rather large number of Israeli Arabs, and the hotel had a large and noisy group of German tourists. There was another Israeli couple our age at our hotel, pleasant and interesting people. We talked with them a little, but we didn't exchange names or make an effort to socialize with them. Partly that's always been our pattern when we travel. We're not the kind of people who pick up other travelers and hear all about their lives. But in the case of the pleasant couple from Tel Aviv, the fact that we were taking our grief with us to Turkey was another barrier. I wanted to tell them: I'm not unfriendly, I just can't open up to a stranger now. There's been a tragedy in my family.
Was it right for us to go off and enjoy ourselves in a luxury hotel?
Often, since my superego is on the hyperactive side, it tells me: you should be feeling this; you shouldn't be feeling that; you should be doing this; you should be doing that; you should be sadder; you should be crying more. And when I can't fall asleep at night or wake up before dawn, my superego says: Good boy, you're really grieving!
But I have received excellent personal advice from friends who also happen to be psychologists: don't think that way. Let things happen the way they happen. Don't even try to control them. Just keep in touch with your feelings.
Long ago I learned from the novels of Aharon Appelfeld that the problems and difficulties that one had in life before one was stricken by tragedy remain in place after the tragedy. The tragedy doesn't solve the old problems, though maybe it places them in a new perspective. Some of my misgivings about patronizing a luxury hotel have nothing at all to do with whether it was appropriate for bereaved parents to pamper themselves. I never believed in pampering myself, and I never even enjoyed the idea of luxury hotels (actually the one we were at in Antalya was relaxed and informal, not really a luxury hotel of the old school). So permitting myself to enjoy the decadence of a Turkish bath was as much a victory over my schoolmarmish superego as a way of palliating my general unhappiness.
I don't know what the stages of grief are supposed to be, so I can't tell whether I'm going through them properly. As an adolescent, under the influence of an advanced French literature course in my senior year of high school, I was an Existentialist. I believed that one chose to be what one was. Asher's death proves the falsity of that premise. He certainly didn't choose to die at the age of twenty-eight, and I certainly never asked to take on the role of a bereaved parent. There's no particularly good way to play that role, as far as I can see, except to be a good person if you have it in you - and I didn't have to lose a son to see the need to be good.

Drifting in Time

Bereavement has affected my sense of time. Before this happened, I was well oriented in time. I usually knew within a quarter of an hour what time of day it is, the day of the week, and the date. Now I float in time. If you asked me whether it's three p.m. or ten a.m., I might have to think twice before I answered. I get ahead of myself or behind in the week, thinking it's Tuesday when it's only Monday, or Thursday when it's already Friday.
I'm surprised when dates sneak up on me. What? The first of the month? I even failed to notice February 29th this year, and I always take pleasure in having that extra day in the shortest month.
I always was very jealous of my time, impatient, hating to waste precious moments. Now I'm patient, because I'm indifferent. I don't care much whether the time passes. Just let's get through the day and go to sleep. I have work to do, and I do it, but I take no pleasure in accomplishing things. I enjoy the work, because it makes the day pass.
How long will this apathy and loss of orientation in time last?

Praying

During the Shloshim I was very diligent and prompt about attending morning services in our synagogue, which begin at 6:30 on the days when the Torah is not read, and at 6:20 when it is read (Mondays and Thursdays). I led the prayers except on days when other men had yahrtsait (the anniversary of a family member's death), and I only missed praying with a minyan of at least nine other men on the two days when it snowed in Jerusalem, and a full minyan didn't show up. I was also diligent about praying three times a day, something I hadn't done for quite a while (I went through a long observant period, which has fallen apart in the past few years). I found myself enjoying the fellowship of other worshipers early in the morning and more or less planned to continue.
Do I believe that prayer alleviates the suffering of Asher's soul and raises it up? No. Do I believe that Asher's soul still exists, now that his body is dead - not seriously. Do I believe in a God who will resurrect the dead at the end of days? Not at all. In fact, I barely believe in God. If anything, I believe in the idea of God as an aspiration, a human thought that is an improvement on the real world. So what was I praying for, and whom was I praying to? I was praying as part of my effort to put my world back together after the horrible loss we suffered. I was also praying because it was expected of me by the people of our religious community, and in honor of Asher's memory.
But the continuity was broken, and I stopped attending morning services and more or less stopped praying again.
On the Shabbat after the Shloshim, our daughter was here with her children, and she came down with serious tonsilitis. I drove her home in her car before sundown (violating the Sabbath publicly) and stayed overnight there to help her take care of herself and of the kids. The following evening (Sunday), I was due to have a rehearsal of the big band, the first one I was to participate in since Asher's funeral, so I brought my baritone sax with me and planned to say at least until Monday morning. That meant that I couldn't have gone to services for at least two days. I didn't even take my prayer paraphernalia with me - my prayer book, my prayer shawl, and my tefillin (black leather cubes containing parchments with biblical verses written on them that Jewish men strap onto themselves when they prayer on weekday mornings) - suddenly I didn't want to pray anymore.

Music and Mourning

Originally I had planned to devote a lot of attention to music in this blog, but Asher's accidental death has made it the direct opposite.
One of the strongest restrictions on mourners imposed by traditional Judaism is the restriction against listening to instrumental music, in contrast to requiem masses in Catholicism and New Orleans funeral parades. Musical instruments are associated with the Temple service. The Jews of Yemen never played musical instruments, because they were constantly mourning the destruction of the Temple. Some segments of the ultra-orthodox community of Jerusalem will not have instrumental music at weddings celebrated there, for the same reason. Because in Judaism, instrumental music (as opposed to singing, which is part of the synagogue service, and in many traditional Jewish homes, on the sabbath, people sing special hymns at the table) is associated with celebrations -- weddings, bar-mitzvahs, and circumcisions. Mourners are also barred from taking part in such celebrations.
This restriction was one that I did not observe during the years of mourning for my parents, and I observed it only partially during the month of mourning for Asher. Paradoxically (to digress for a moment), strict restrictions apply to people who have lost a parent for a full year, whereas for people who have lost a child, they apply only for a month. I don't think this has so much to do with the depth of grief one feels for the lost person so much as with the command to honor one's mother and father, though people have offered me other explanations.
During the month of mourning, I did continue to practice saxophone. I didn't want to lose the skills I have been building up for years. I decided to spend a long time doing things that aren't all that much fun. I played a lot of long tones and harmonics, scales, and other technical exercise. I didn't play much actual music, and what I did play was as mournful as possible: the Mingus song in memory of Lester Young, "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," and Ellington's "Mood Indigo." I started associating the Mingus piece with Asher, playing it in his memory.
After the "shloshim" (the thirty days), I resumed my musical activities. I rejoined the big band and started playing again with the improvisation workshop I attend every week.
Music is serious for me, though it's also a great pleasure. Is the pleasure a violation of the duty I have to mourn for my son?
Why did I use the word "duty" just now?
Cultures do impose duties on mourners, like wearing black armbands or immolating oneself on the funeral pyre of one's husband. With respect to the duties that Judaism imposes on mourners, I'm essentially finished with what I owe to Asher's memory. My mourning for him now is not a duty but a constant state of mind, something I couldn't stop if I wanted to, though occasionally I can get distracted, thank goodness.
Even writing in his memory is, partially, a distraction. Music is also partially a distraction but also an expression of what I feel.
My main mood now is apathy and indifference, the inability to get enthusiastic about anything. How can one be engaged in music and indifferent to it?

end of memorial

My concluding words were:

And now we are marking the end of the thirty days, as if that were the end of something. But we know it's not the end. We know that the painful hole that has been torn in the fabric of our life will remain forever – forever at least in human terms, in the proportions of the lives of those who were close to Asher and mourn him – I and Judith, Eden and Ofer, Boaz and Hannah, all his friends and our friends, everyone who will remember him till the end of their lives.

From now on we're supposed to return to ordinary life. I'm no longer required to recite the kaddish. We can listen to music and take part in celebrations. But there's something within me that doesn't want to return to ordinary life. There's something in me that wants to remain in mourning for a long, long time. So maybe it's good that Jewish mourning customs require me to stop.

Blessed be the memory of Asher Zeev the son of Ya'aqov Moshe and Yehudit.

***

The truth is that I haven't returned to “ordinary” life at all. Yes, I've been working, seeing people, playing music – but it's all with indifference. I don't particularly care what I do. If I'm no longer in mourning, it's only outwardly.

The Shiva

I'm going on in explaining the things I said at the memorial evening for Asher.

For readers who may not be Jewish or who may be unfamiliar with traditional Jewish mourning customs, the concept of the Shiva is worth explaining. The basic assumption is that a bereaved person needs some time out of his or her regular life, a time to get over the initial shock of the loss. For seven days the mourners stay at home and other people take care of them. They are subject to restrictions that symbolize their bereavement, such as not wearing leather shoes, wearing a torn garment, not looking in the mirror. We say that a person “sits shiva,” because during that time one is not supposed to sit on a comfortable, high chair, but on a low stool or cushion or on the floor.

I have sat shiva before. When my father died in 1991, I stayed with my mother for the shiva period, but we couldn't observe it fully, because my parents didn't live in a strong Jewish community. Family friends and relatives came to visit, but there were no organized prayers, and no one knew that they were supposed to bring food for us. I didn't stay inside all the time. I had to do some shopping.

When my mother died, a year and a half later, we brought her body to Israel for burial, and I sat shiva properly in my home. Because I was the only one sitting shiva at the time, my wife and family could function normally, and we didn't need a lot of outside help. People came, we had prayers in our home, and it was a quiet time of reflection for me. In my late forties, I had become an orphan.

This time we were all sitting shiva, my wife and I and our three other children. The members of our synagogue, our religious community, mobilized to help us, and other friends brought food. People took over our house and our kitchen and would hardly let us do a thing for ourselves. That was hard to get used to.

The love and support that surrounded us during the shiva were overwhelming. Nearly two months have gone by since them, and my gratitude has only grown. From seven in the morning, when we held prayers, until ten at night, when the last visitors left, we were coddled and surprised to find people that we hardly knew took the trouble to come. Sometimes it was too much, and I couldn't respond to people, but that was exceptional.

Two visits left a deep impression on me. A man I have known pretty well for a long time told me that he and his wife lost a child at the age of six months (something I hadn't known), and they've never stopped feeling deeply sad about it. His wife told me that since she lost her daughter, she stopped fearing death. I've been trying to figure that out ever since.

A man I know only slightly, an editor for whom I've done translations, a very British, restrained person, came in, visibly shaken, and told us that he had lost a son twelve years ago in fairly similar circumstances. His son, an experienced mountaineer, was leading a group in Bolivia. It began to snow, and they put up tents. He stepped out of his tent in the middle of the night and fell to his death.

Both of these stories of bereavement taught me that I shouldn't expect to get over this loss. When something similar happens to someone else, I'll be hard hit again.

I got a very upsetting telephone call with the same deep message from a childhood friend in America, whose son died of a brain tumor about four years ago. She was griefstricken again by the news of Asher's death, and I felt that she needed consolation almost more than I did, but I was unable to offer her any, because of my own emotional exhaustion.

There are times when I say to myself: I'm tired of this. I don't want to be a bereaved parent anymore. But it's not something one can stop.

The shiva makes you turn the story of your loved one's death into something routine and rehearsed, that you can tell people over and over again, and that's useful to put things at some emotional distance.

When the shiva's over, and your house empties out, and you're on your own, there's some relief. You're ready to begin dealing with the situation on your own.

Moving Through the Stages from Uncertainty to Unwanted Certainty

When I added that Judaism specializes in the division of time, in setting times, in sanctifying time, I was only saying something everybody already knows. But I wanted to emphasize the arbitrary aspect of it all, the fact that people are the ones who counted days and gave significance to the passage of time. The meaning comes from us. We projected it on the natural order.

People once believed there was some compelling reality in the division of time into hours, days, weeks, seasons, and years – that God set the whole thing up – but now we know that, if anything, the process went the other way. The laws of astrophysics determine the way the earth spins and circles the sun, and the way the moon circles the earth, and the laws of evolution set biological and physiological clocks in the world in response to those arbitrary motions. If God set it up, why didn't He do it more neatly, so that the lunar months fit perfectly into the solar year, which would be neatly divided by solar days?

Judaism decided that the period of thirty days after a funeral is a particularly intense time of mourning, setting an arbitrary number to a psychological process that must be gradual. Maybe for some people the intense period is two months, or two years, and maybe for others it's only three weeks. But this isn't the kind of thing that should be left to individual choice, because we need guidelines when we're in the uncharted territory of grief.

Nobody's death follows a neat pattern. Some people die suddenly in an accident or of a heart attack, others take years and years to die of lingering illness, and every instance of death poses a terrible challenge to the bereaved. If a person dies suddenly and unexpectedly, you feel cheated of the chance to part with them. If a person dies a long and painful death, you feel your helplessness, the limits of the comfort you could offer.

Asher's death was sudden, but we didn't know about it for nearly two months, two months that aren't defined in the normal rules that Judaism lays down for mourning. We went through a series of periods between mid-October, when he left New York for Peru, and early January, when we buried him. For nearly three weeks we got regular emails from him, excited reports about what he was doing, seeing, and eating. Then he went hiking in the Colca Canyon, and we knew that we couldn't expect to hear from him for a week or more. Two weeks went by, and his mother became actively worried – two weeks when he was already dead, and no one knew it.

Soon we were all worried.

The following six weeks, until a villager happened to discover his body, were weeks of fear, tension, hope, and despair, weeks of intense activity in the effort to find Asher, weeks when those of us who were here in Israel, not looking for him in Peru, also tried to continue doing the things we always did, to fulfill our obligations, to function as if he would somehow be found alive and well. Perhaps there was an element of superstition in our behavior, the belief that if we gave up hope and acknowledged that he was probably dead, we would be depriving him of the chance to be alive.

Nearly another week passed between the discovery of his body and its burial, another week of activity: our son and son-in-law returned to Peru to arrange to have the body recovered and shipped to Israel, to give a reward to the man who discovered the body, to thank the High Mountain Rescue Unit, and we had to arrange the funeral here, to deal with the Burial Society. That was a week of numbness and tension, of urgent and expensive travel arrangements, of getting used to a new and tragic certainty: there was no more hope.