Owning and Grief

For a long time, before Asher's death, I had been thinking about the strangeness of idea of ownership. I would look at the stone walls of our house and wonder: what does my ownership of this structure mean? Ownership is a legal concept, but I think that's the least interesting aspect of it.
In English we say: I own this. In Hebrew and French one says says: this belongs to me. So is ownership a property of what is owned or of the owner? Depends what language you speak.
People used to be able to own other people routinely, as part of the social order. A slave could purchase himself from his master. Does that mean we own ourselves? Then who are the "we" who are separable from the "selves" that they own? Obviously one does not own one's life, because when one is dead, there is no one there to own the life that is gone. Being alive is one thing, not two: living is not a predicate. Once Asher, or anyone, is dead, he or she no longer owns anything. Can we even say that Asher's body or his grave are his?

When we visited the grave a week or so ago, after our friend's funeral, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that he couldn''t possibly be there. Whoever he was and whatever he was is not connected with the remains under the stone. The corpse has to be dealt with somehow, in a respectful way, but you can't pretend that it's still the person who died.

Next Saturday night is Passover. For years we held a Seder in our house, sometimes with more than twenty guests. This year we knew we couldn't do it. Close friends have invited us to their Seder.
Passover will be especially hard for me, because that was the last time I saw Asher. He came for a week, helped Judith prepare the meal, and fill the house with his spirit and vitality. I had to face another hard moment last week. We went to the wedding of a woman who was with Asher in daycare when they were two or three. We've stayed close to her family all these years. It was wonderful to see her and her husband, to take part in the ceremony, to be inspired by the faith these two young people have placed in one another. Yet, of course, it was sorrowful for us to know that we'll never be attending Asher's wedding. Given the kind of man he was, there might have been more than one wedding over the years!

Long ago, and today still in some cultures, a man's wife was his property - so I've brought this in full circle back to the question of ownership. The theme of the Passover festival is redemption from bondage - but paradoxically, Judaism has made the obeying of strict religious law into the symbol of that redemption. I might say that I'd like to be freed of the bondage of being a bereaved parent. I'd like to resign from that status. The only way out of it is to acknowledge that there's no way out. The challenge is to take the bondage out of the situation. It's too early for that.