Digesting

 I had attempted to write this post yesterday but I deleted that attempt because my writing was, as they say on "The Great British Bakeoff" claggy and undigestable. So, I try again.

Growing up as a rabbi's child there were times, especially when we were about to go away on vacation that my mother would worry and fret. My mother would be worried about the congregants who were as my mother called it, "In the pipeline." or in standard English about to die. My mother would pack our luggage all while muttering hoping that Mrs.____ or Mr. Y_____ would have the strength left in their bodies to allow us a few days away.  Often we would arrive at our destination only to have to turn around so my father could conduct a funeral. 

Children of accountants live in fear of the weeks before April 15. That was just part of our lives.

During the past few weeks, we have had three people in our lives "in the pipeline".

The daughter of a  friend was found unconscious in her apartment after choking on a piece of food. She was on life support for several days. She was buried last week. 

When I first moved to New York in 1982 my synagogue was made up of old folks and young folks. The old folks were the remnants of the old formal congregation of seemingly uptight German Jews. The young folks were counterculture Jewish intellectuals with their hippie lives not very far behind them. there were lots of people in their late twenties and early thirties, there were lots of people in their sixties and above, and very few people in between.

One of the people in that demographic hole was Mayer. Mayer was born in Alexandria, Egypt in the 1930s, and in 1956 was told that it would be a wise idea if he left the country the next day. Meyer's family then hurridly dispersed to France and to New York  He did eventually end up in Israel and served in the Israeli army. Mayer reunited with his family in New York. 

On a hot summer day, he sat next to a mouthy beautiful sixteen-year-old on Manhattan beach. Mayer was twenty-seven. Mayer married that mouthy beautiful girl three years later. 

If Mayer met you at synagogue or on the 104 bus or on the subway he would sweep you up into his vortex of friendship. He would invite you to dinner, or to his country house. If you were a demented old lady he might visit you regularly and also take care of your paperwork. Mayer would hand your child a giant chocolate bar in synagogue.

Mayer and his wife bought a house in the country. They made a housewarming party for about a hundred people(catered by a Sefardi caterer in Brooklyn with food cooked on grills by women in African dresses under a hastily put up tent). Mayer bought a bunch of mattresses at Costco ( 10? 20?)so people could sleep over and then enjoy breakfast on long tables in front of the house facing the pond.

Mayer was a man of radical hospitality and friendship. We buried him yesterday his big heart just no longer had the strength to keep going.

When my father was dying he was interviewed by a reporter for a local newspaper. After my father died the reporter wrote to us and he described my father as walking in the valley of the shadow. This is where my dear cousin David is right now. If you are in touch with me in twenty years I will probably be on either side of a stroke---either a small one or a big one---because that is what fells the people in my mother's family. 

David suffered a major stroke and is now walking in that valley. David was such a ray of joy when I was little. I realize as an adult that the years before and after I was born were filled with the deaths of people close to my parents. Some years there was more than one death tragic and difficult. There were terrible illnesses, tending to frail elders. It was hard. There was an emotional cloud that just hung over life.

David was in college when I first had memories of him. He would arrive at our house with his guitar and tell us stories with a musical soundtrack. He played with us. David was cool beyond cool to us. We kids adored him fiercely. 

David has lived in Israel for most of his adult life. We have spent little time together for decades. But I think of David as I did as a little girl.  

After my friend Herta was widowed  I asked her how she was doing. She said that she was deeply sad, but not depressed.  That is pretty much where I am. I am digesting this sadness, these losses.