Better than the back of the cereal box
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11/22/06:
My grandmother finished dying yesterday. It had been some time in the works, and when she finally closed her eyes, it wasn�t much of a surprise. Hardly unexpected.
It was the cancer that got her. Her stomach had been slowly turning into something not like a stomach at all, sort of leathery and indolent. At the end of her days, she looked more like a skeleton than like the Savta I remember from times past. She hadn�t eaten a meal in weeks � maybe months � hard to tell with her. She didn�t talk about it if she could avoid it. Often she couldn�t. Her tears gave her away.
Truth be told, I�m not so sure that the cancer was to blame. At least, not fully. The doctors probably have �cancer� penned up and down their charts on this one. But I think really her husband bears at least as much responsibility, if not more. You see, he died first.
Saba too was afflicted with cancer. He died two months ago after a more aggressive battle with it, including chemotherapy and other like horrors. They worked for a while. Not forever. His death marked the turning point for Savta. Seems she didn�t much want to be here without him around.
This reality was something of a revelation to me. I was a witness to their relationship for a few small chunks of my life. Their relationship, it always seemed to me, consisted largely of her yelling, criticizing, and berating him, and him silently accepting it. He never answered the phone when she was home. He never opened the door. He always did as she said. I guess that�s love for you.
I remember how my grandmother looked the day of his funeral. She was the prototypical widow. Thinned out (already), garbed in black, sporting sunglasses over her reddened eyes. She looked as if she didn�t know what world she was in anymore. Her world for the past fifty-some years, after all, was half him. I don�t think I�ve ever seen grief like that. Maybe in a movie. She was the very essence of grief. She wept and cried out, gasping for breath, whimpering, supporting herself entirely on the arms of her two daughters. She bent over his body on its way to the grave and kissed it with the love of half a century. It was the last time I saw her walk on her own.
Yesterday I stood in the very same place where we paid our last respects to Saba. Now Savta was the one being carried. Savta�s sister was present, hunched over and stricken. Savta�s daughters, bearing this awesome tragedy with tremendous strength, rent their clothes and blessed their Creator. What a curious sight to be so familiar with. We all walked the bier to the grave. It was cold already, and getting colder, even though the sun had not yet set. It was nearing the horizon, painting the land gold and throwing long shadows about our feet. The small desert yishuv that was home to one daughter, and now Savta and Saba too, spread out humbly behind us, the striking desert scenery before us, cradling this little cemetery in its rolling mountains and sprawling sands.
The grave worker slid Savta off the bier and into the grave. I stood by my mother, holding her tightly. Every now and then she shuddered in silent tears, tears earned far too well. As Savta was lowered ungracefully into her grave, Mom looked on, making sounds like an old factory, whooshing and wheezing. That was the whole world for a moment � me, my grandmother, and my poor, bereaved mother.
I recited kaddish. I wish it was not something I could recite by heart. The rabbi grabbed a shovel and began covering the grave. The other men gathered followed suit, filling it in short time. Then, in probably the day�s most haunting moment, Savta�s aged, frail sister hobbled up to the grave, bent over, and wailed �Faigie! Faigie!� at the top of her lungs, then slowly righted herself and was helped away by a granddaughter. Just like that. Twice her departed sister�s name, then silence.
People started to drift out. Hugs were exchanged. I think people were doing a lot of talking, but I remember silence. Big silence.
Everyone left the graveyard. Savta stayed there. I think she was happier there, anyway. Since Saba died, she never really wanted to be anywhere else.
8/8/06:
Well, I�ve certainly been neglectful of this page, haven�t I? Life is very different since the whole married thing. Learning at yeshiva is a very different too now that I don�t live there. Time is a lot less, well, around.
First off, I should mention that Chana and I are perfectly safe. In Jerusalem you hardly feel anything at all regarding the war. Life goes on as normal. That�s Israel for you.
Looking back at the last update I see there�s a whole lot missing. Goodness. We�re going on four months now (I know, crazy). Mostly I get up, pray, go to yeshiva for ten hours, then come back home, where Chana has cooked me a delicious dinner, then we go to bed and start over. It�s really a good life. Better than good, I�d say. How about �real good?�
I can�t think much what else to tell you. We�re enjoying a little routine after a crazy month or two around the wedding time. Chana�s started a sushi business. I learn. She makes me cookies. I� I learn. I get paid for it, too, which is really quite swell. Um� and that�s really the load of it right now. We�re enjoying life, routine, each other. That�s the news.
5/6/06:
Well, this seemed like a good place to start a new page. Been married for four weeks now, or something like that. Read in the metaphor for yourself. Everything�s kind of blurred together. Hard to keep track. Don�t tell my wife that. Between the marrying and the leaving Machon Shlomo where I�ve been for two years and completey and irrevocably changed as a person, I guess it seemed appropriate.
We�ve been doing a whole lot recently. I�ll convey some of these things but probably not in order because I don�t think I could do that. We got a new apartment in Givat HaMivtar, which is near Ramat Eshkol. We�re very excited about it. It�s a really sweet deal. It�s open and spacious and nice, 1 bedroom with two bathrooms, but it also has a garden because it�s really the basement of a villa instead of a squashy apartment, and the landlords are the folks who live upstairs, and they really very nice and they�re a young American religious couple, which is much better than a jerk Israeli who speaks no English, and it�s $700 a month including water and taxy things and stuff but not electricity, and on the whole we�re very very pleased.
Just to change tacks for a moment, the wedding was widely acknowledged as the best wedding that anybody had seen in a long time, possibly ever, thanks largely to the excellent coterie of friends I have. Pictures will soon be up at www.photonachas.com (though it seems you have to be invited, so the link is actually some wonky link I put in there, not the clean nice one you see before you), which is different than the old site because there�s a photo place nearby where I took my CDs and they uploaded them for free there, so that was good.
Other things we did recently that were exciting� the apartment is mostly furnished, which is more good, but we got a dining table and a bookcase for it also at a secondhand shop in Meah Shearimg for about $138 and that was pretty sweet too. Saw my buddy Neal from the old days here in town. No crazy dancing (see old yahoophotos page), but good times nonetheless.
These days I�m sniffing around Aish HaTorah and seeing how that�s going to work for me. I�m hoping to learn there next year but in what capacity exactly is taking a little figgerin�. Meanwhile Chana is searching for a job that will be both satisfying and lucrative and is also researching options for the master�s degree she wishes to pursue.
I�m writing this in my little studio apartment in Har Nof, but will only get to post it when I get to the yeshiva (Machon Shlomo) at some point for an internet fix. We�ll have internet in-house in Givat HaMivtar. Yummy. Haven�t had a connection like that since college.
That�s not nearly all the news that�s fit to print, but as my brain is in poor organizational condition right now, I�ll leave it there and try to pick up my regular postings again soon. Much love from me-plus, and keep in touch!
Two years of yeshiva behind me.
