Today is my father's birthday. If he were still alive, he'd be 112. Asher's last birthday was June 9. If her were alive he would be 38. It's impossible to imagine what he'd have done in the past ten years, if he hadn't died.
Today is also the Ninth of Ab, a fast day in memory of the destruction of the Temple. I didn't fast, though I did go to synagogue last night to hear the reading of Lamentations.
I have started copying all these blog posts into a file, with the ultimate intention of printing them as a book for our family, in memory of Asher.
It's extremely painful for me to reread this material, and I haven't done so until now. Obviously I'll have to edit it somewhat before I have it printed. That will not be an easy task.
My father died in 1991. Fortunately, as it were, he didn't have to know about Asher's death. But he also missed out on a lot of good family events.
Asher died before his sister Hannah got married and had her children. He wasn't involved in the lives of the two nephews and the niece he did know. The youngest probably doesn't remember him at all. I wonder what the older two remember of him.
Not long after Asher died, Hamutal Bar Yosef visited me to console me. Her son shot himself when he was just a teenager, probably 20 years before that. I expected her to tell me that it still hurt just as much after twenty years as it did at the start. But she said that the pain got less acute. At the time, that seemed to me like a betrayal. But she's right.
But it's always there, in the background. Today, when I hear about the untimely death of a young person, or when I think about the killing that goes on all around us, I know how much pain it leaves.
A couple of years ago, by chance, I met the man who was the principal of the elementary school that Asher attended. Asher was a very disruptive pupil, and Shaya, the principle, was understanding with him and got to know him very well. Naturally Shaya asked me how Asher was, and I had to tell him that Asher had died, and of course I started crying. It was as if he had just died that day.
Moments like that, when the wound is as painful as it was when it was inflicted, are rare. But not a day goes by when I don't think about Asher, when I don't go through the same useless mental exercise of saying to myself, If only, if only, if only.
Today is also the Ninth of Ab, a fast day in memory of the destruction of the Temple. I didn't fast, though I did go to synagogue last night to hear the reading of Lamentations.
I have started copying all these blog posts into a file, with the ultimate intention of printing them as a book for our family, in memory of Asher.
It's extremely painful for me to reread this material, and I haven't done so until now. Obviously I'll have to edit it somewhat before I have it printed. That will not be an easy task.
My father died in 1991. Fortunately, as it were, he didn't have to know about Asher's death. But he also missed out on a lot of good family events.
Asher died before his sister Hannah got married and had her children. He wasn't involved in the lives of the two nephews and the niece he did know. The youngest probably doesn't remember him at all. I wonder what the older two remember of him.
Not long after Asher died, Hamutal Bar Yosef visited me to console me. Her son shot himself when he was just a teenager, probably 20 years before that. I expected her to tell me that it still hurt just as much after twenty years as it did at the start. But she said that the pain got less acute. At the time, that seemed to me like a betrayal. But she's right.
But it's always there, in the background. Today, when I hear about the untimely death of a young person, or when I think about the killing that goes on all around us, I know how much pain it leaves.
A couple of years ago, by chance, I met the man who was the principal of the elementary school that Asher attended. Asher was a very disruptive pupil, and Shaya, the principle, was understanding with him and got to know him very well. Naturally Shaya asked me how Asher was, and I had to tell him that Asher had died, and of course I started crying. It was as if he had just died that day.
Moments like that, when the wound is as painful as it was when it was inflicted, are rare. But not a day goes by when I don't think about Asher, when I don't go through the same useless mental exercise of saying to myself, If only, if only, if only.
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