At a wedding last month, we met Johnny, the groom's uncle, who lives in London.
We sent Asher to study stage management in London after he finished high school. He was a very young and inexperienced adolescent then, and the school management did little or nothing to help him find his way in that unfamiliar place. We, his parents, hadn't realized how much Asher would have to fend for himself, and I don't think I did enough to help him. But in fact he managed and matured significantly in those two years.
I never even went to London to visit Asher at his school - a sign of the distance there was between us at the time. I must not have felt that he wanted me to come. But at least we were able to put him in touch with Johnny, who was generally nice to Asher and advanced him some money for us - the banking was surprisingly cumbersome, and it was difficult and expensive for us to transfer funds to Asher.
We had never met Johnny, and when we did, at the wedding, my first impulse was to thank him for being there for Asher, but I realized that I couldn't, because then he would have asked, "How is Asher?" and I would have had to tell him what happened.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
A Friend's Response
I am sure I wrote before that one of Asher's high school classmates took his own life about a year before Asher died. Not only were we devastated by that suicide, it also made us fear that Asher might have done the same thing - purposely leaped off the edge of a canyon.
Asher and that friend of his had some kind of adolescent fight in high school and never drew close again, but we have remained friendly with his mother, never thinking that our friendship would include supporting her in her grief and accepting her support for us in ours.
Just today she wrote to me in response to an earlier post of mine:
It means so much to hear people recall specific memories of Eric, even if some of them are not always entirely positive. It is as though they acknowledge that "he was here" and he was special. When people are confused and sometimes silent about our loss because there is such fear about touching it or bringing on our bad feelings, I wish we could just tell them that we are thinking about our loved one all the time. So it is only comforting to know that someone else is thinking about them too. Their avoidance is only alienating and isolating.
It's true that even negative memories of Asher are important to me. He was intense, rebellious, and sometimes extremely rude. I don't want to remember him as a little saint. That's not who he was. I would be glad if Eric were alive and, at Asher's shiva, had told us how nasty Asher was to him - because that, too, would be a living memory.
It's true that we're always thinking about our loved one, and having someone mention him is no sudden reminder of something we'd shifted to the back of our mind so we could ignore it.
Asher and that friend of his had some kind of adolescent fight in high school and never drew close again, but we have remained friendly with his mother, never thinking that our friendship would include supporting her in her grief and accepting her support for us in ours.
Just today she wrote to me in response to an earlier post of mine:
It means so much to hear people recall specific memories of Eric, even if some of them are not always entirely positive. It is as though they acknowledge that "he was here" and he was special. When people are confused and sometimes silent about our loss because there is such fear about touching it or bringing on our bad feelings, I wish we could just tell them that we are thinking about our loved one all the time. So it is only comforting to know that someone else is thinking about them too. Their avoidance is only alienating and isolating.
It's true that even negative memories of Asher are important to me. He was intense, rebellious, and sometimes extremely rude. I don't want to remember him as a little saint. That's not who he was. I would be glad if Eric were alive and, at Asher's shiva, had told us how nasty Asher was to him - because that, too, would be a living memory.
It's true that we're always thinking about our loved one, and having someone mention him is no sudden reminder of something we'd shifted to the back of our mind so we could ignore it.
Plans of Action
In September we are going to be in New York to hold a memorial ceremony for Asher, and in October we are going to Peru to oversee the disbursement of money we have raised in his honor. My wife Judith has been planning these trips intensely, and it hasn't been easy for her. A lot of people are involved (Judith and I, our two daughters, our son-in-law, our three grand-children, and our surviving son), and a lot of dates had to be juggled.
In both trips, we are going to have to deal with a lot of painful emotion.
Just accepting the condolences of our American friends and relatives is going to be difficult, and facing a gathering of some sixty people, to memorialize Asher rather than celebrate his engagement or marriage or the opening of his restaurant will be deeply painful - in fact my imagination recoils from grappling with the event.
In Peru (without our married daughter and her three young children) we will see the place where Asher died, meet the men who searched for him and, finally, recovered his body, meet the man who found his body, and see the places that Asher managed to see and some of the places he was planning to get to. We will be coming with generous contributions both to the High Mountain Rescue Unit, whose under-equipped men risked their lives looking for Asher, and to the school in the village where the man who found Asher lives.
I never had much interest in going to Peru, and, seeing how unlucky the place was for Asher, I have even less interest in going there now - but I know that I have to, and I'm speaking for the rest of the family, too. It will take courage, but it will be important to all of us to know that we have that kind of courage.
In both trips, we are going to have to deal with a lot of painful emotion.
Just accepting the condolences of our American friends and relatives is going to be difficult, and facing a gathering of some sixty people, to memorialize Asher rather than celebrate his engagement or marriage or the opening of his restaurant will be deeply painful - in fact my imagination recoils from grappling with the event.
In Peru (without our married daughter and her three young children) we will see the place where Asher died, meet the men who searched for him and, finally, recovered his body, meet the man who found his body, and see the places that Asher managed to see and some of the places he was planning to get to. We will be coming with generous contributions both to the High Mountain Rescue Unit, whose under-equipped men risked their lives looking for Asher, and to the school in the village where the man who found Asher lives.
I never had much interest in going to Peru, and, seeing how unlucky the place was for Asher, I have even less interest in going there now - but I know that I have to, and I'm speaking for the rest of the family, too. It will take courage, but it will be important to all of us to know that we have that kind of courage.
Reincarnation and Other Comforting (or not) Beliefs
The late Harriet Mann had a deep influence on our lives. Judith and I met her in Cambridge, Mass. in the early 1970s when we were newly married graduate students, and she was eking out a living by running a small boarding house while trying to write a book about psychological types. Not only did Harriet introduce us to several other people who have remained important to us (and who in fact shaped our lives in ways we could never have predicted then), members of Havurat Shalom, a counter-culture Jewish study commune and spiritual center, she also taught us about ourselves and helped us understand each other better - she was a Jungian clinical psychologist.
We remained in close touch with Harriet. She spent a few years in Israel with her baby daughter, and the two of them were a part of our family. After she returned to the US, where it was easier to earn a living and bring up her daughter, we remained in close touch, and even when a long time went by without any actual communication, we always felt in touch - strong love moving in both directions.
In the last twenty or so years of her life, Harriet became so deeply involved with Tibetan Buddhism that she eventually retired, sold her belongings, took vows, and joined a Buddhist monastery in northern India, where she died during a long retreat.
Harriet strongly believed in reincarnation. She thought that people keep being reborn in each other's company in generation after generation, sometimes as spouses, sometimes as parents and children, sometimes as friends - until they finish their karmic business with one another.
I can't say I believe that, but it does "explain" why it is that some people are drawn to one another, while others aren't, why it is that some people you've known for decades remain simply people you run into now and then while other people immediately become part of your life. Perhaps it even explains love at first sight.
Okay, maybe it doesn't explain that quality of relationships, but it does express their depth in symbolic faction. Harriet may not have been my mother or sister in an earlier incarnation, but the kind of closeness I felt for her is like the kind of closeness I would have felt for someone who had been close to me in another life.
Obviously this is connected with Asher's entry into our lives and his exit from them. He had some karmic function in the life of every person he touched, and he fulfilled that karmic function, in part by dying young and leaving us so bereft and sad.
Perhaps this thought is comforting. In my next life I will be with Asher again. I say "perhaps," because "I" won't know it then any more than I know now about lives that my soul my have lived in the past. The only evidence for such a belief that I am aware of is the strong wish for it to be true.
Ethically speaking, however, the idea is important, because it means that we have to take very seriously the people we encounter in life, because, if you think that way, nothing is casual or meaningless.
We remained in close touch with Harriet. She spent a few years in Israel with her baby daughter, and the two of them were a part of our family. After she returned to the US, where it was easier to earn a living and bring up her daughter, we remained in close touch, and even when a long time went by without any actual communication, we always felt in touch - strong love moving in both directions.
In the last twenty or so years of her life, Harriet became so deeply involved with Tibetan Buddhism that she eventually retired, sold her belongings, took vows, and joined a Buddhist monastery in northern India, where she died during a long retreat.
Harriet strongly believed in reincarnation. She thought that people keep being reborn in each other's company in generation after generation, sometimes as spouses, sometimes as parents and children, sometimes as friends - until they finish their karmic business with one another.
I can't say I believe that, but it does "explain" why it is that some people are drawn to one another, while others aren't, why it is that some people you've known for decades remain simply people you run into now and then while other people immediately become part of your life. Perhaps it even explains love at first sight.
Okay, maybe it doesn't explain that quality of relationships, but it does express their depth in symbolic faction. Harriet may not have been my mother or sister in an earlier incarnation, but the kind of closeness I felt for her is like the kind of closeness I would have felt for someone who had been close to me in another life.
Obviously this is connected with Asher's entry into our lives and his exit from them. He had some karmic function in the life of every person he touched, and he fulfilled that karmic function, in part by dying young and leaving us so bereft and sad.
Perhaps this thought is comforting. In my next life I will be with Asher again. I say "perhaps," because "I" won't know it then any more than I know now about lives that my soul my have lived in the past. The only evidence for such a belief that I am aware of is the strong wish for it to be true.
Ethically speaking, however, the idea is important, because it means that we have to take very seriously the people we encounter in life, because, if you think that way, nothing is casual or meaningless.
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