Keeping the Fabric Together

We held a ceremony to honor Asher's memory in my cousin's apartment on 81st Street in Manhattan on September 14. It was attended by about sixty people, and it left us with a strong feeling of satisfaction: we saw a lot of people for whom we feel great affection, and we met some people we didn't know at all, who felt affection for Asher.
At the ceremony Judith and I both spoke. We showed a short film that Asher had made during the year he was in film school, about Miriam, a contemporary of his, whom he had known all his life, a young woman with cerebral palsy. The film demonstrates Asher's strong rapport with Miriam, his ability to look at her condition without averting his eyes and to relate to her with warmth. The first time we saw that short film, which we also screened at the ceremony we held to mark the thirtieth day after his funeral, we were shocked, because, though he is off screen, his voice is a constant presence in the film.
Then Judith surprised all of us by screening part of a video of Asher's final presentation in the restaurant management course that he took before leaving for Peru. There was Asher, vital and enthusiastic, a person who never should have died. As painful as it is to see him as we will never see him again in life, this record is precious for us.
Then we screened a rather long film made by Ofer, our son-in-law, and Lael Kline, a video professional, about the search for Asher in Peru, a film that is incomplete, because we are going to Peru soon, and we will have much to add to it.
Although it was extremely hot and stuffy in the room where we screened the films, people paid complete attention - I know because I was watching their faces, not the movie, which I had already seen two or three times.
I had planned to speak after the screening, but, although we had spent a few hours the day before preparing everything, for some reason the projector didn't work at first, so I decided to speak while my cousin was trying to solve the technical problem.
I said that anyone's death makes a huge hole in the lives of those who loved, knew, or simply knew about the person who died. Jewish mourning ceremonies are all centered on bringing bereaved people back into the community. It is a religious duty to attend funerals and to visit the homes of the bereaved during the first week after it: the shiva. The mourner is supposed to attend services and recite the mourner's kaddish every day. He or she is with a community of worshipers. Then a ceremony is held on the thirtieth day after the funeral, the shloshim - again attended by relatives and friends.
Everything forces the bereaved people to be with others. Otherwise, because of the huge hole that has been torn in our lives, we might withdraw into our grief and isolate ourselves.
I didn't add that Asher's death made me feel rather indifferent the prospect of my own death - not suicidal, just apathetic. Only one's feeling of connection with others keeps one from slipping into the abyss in the wake of the person who has died. If I weren't important to my wife, my other children, my grandchildren, and my friends, it wouldn't matter very much to me if I knew I was dying.
What I did say was that ceremonies like the ones I mentioned before and like the one we were holding just then cannot close up the hole that has been torn in the fabric of our lives, but they can keep the rift from spreading.