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.
1 comment:
Jeff, I want to tell you that I return to your blog repeatedly, as I have since its inception before Asher's death. While nothing that you share is fundamentally alien to me, you express profound thoughts and simpler ones in ways that grab me in the kishkes and keep me honest. Thank you. In the sea of unspeakable personal and national horrors this week, I crafted my current blog post... as a kind of tikkun.
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