Our friend, whose daughter died of cancer several years ago, once told us that she never knows how to answer people when they ask her how many children she has.
Yesterday while I was on a hike in the Judean Hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem, one of my hiking companions asked me how many children we have.
About a month ago I went to a John Zorn concert with a friend in Tel Aviv, and I ran into a young man I hadn't seen for a couple of years, a sweet guy in his twenties whom I met when I took a few years of musicology courses at the Hebrew University. The young man asked me how I was.
Do I tell my hiking companion: we had four children, but one of them died in a hiking accident in Peru last November?
Do I tell my young fellow student that I lost a son?
It's a heavy thing to drop onto someone in what is essentially a casual conversation.
I did tell the hiking companion, and I did tell the young man, but I often choose not to tell people.
Sometimes I don't want to go through the whole story again.
Sometimes I don't want my acquaintanceship to rise to that level of intimacy.
Sometimes I don't think the person I'm talking with will be able to deal with the information.
Asher died in a hiking accident in Peru, probably on November 4, 2007, at the age of twenty-eight. This blog chronicles our effort to cope with this loss and our trip to Peru to thank the people who helped us look for Asher and recover his body. Please share it if you find it important. I've posted some of my Peru pictures to a web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/marjef/PeruOctober2008#
1 comment:
Painful parts of my life I choose to share according to how safe I feel — now, inside myself and with the person next to me who is asking questions or conversing randomly. And, if I share, it will be slowly, dropping a word, a hint, even a mouthful. It depends. My antennae probe: Do I sense safety? Are chances good that I will get an authentic, compassionate, respectful response? Or, am I better off hiding, withholding, pretending? When danger lurks in words or actions that dismiss me (or anyone), I permit myself to disregard a question or to answer it without saying a thing. Not all questions merit immediate, honest, complete answers. Thanks for your thoughtful post.
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