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.