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May 9, 2003/Iyar 7 5763, Vol. 55, No. 37
Life's losses - and gains
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
"Your writing is getting better and better."
The whispered remark from a longtime acquaintance seemed incongruous. We were standing at graveside, part of a crush of family and friends gathered to bury a dear friend who had died too young, left us too soon.
"Thanks," I mumbled from behind a crumpled Kleenex, shaking my head as I dabbed at my eyes and wiped at my already reddened nose. "But I think I'm just getting older."
The mourners lined up, each to help fill the grave with a shovel full of dirt, burying a bit of themselves as they buried the deceased, numbly confronting the reality of the loss.
I looked around at the crowd.
So many were old friends. We had carpooled together, sent our kids to Hebrew school and Jewish summer camp together, celebrated at bar and bat mitzvahs. Now we were dancing at our children's weddings and sharing the joy of brit milot and baby namings.
My last conversation with the friend we were burying had been about my daughter's wedding plans.
And we had also shored each other up as we dealt with the vagaries of life, of illness and loss, of disappointment and frustration, of changes and aging - our own and our parents.
The bad joke was that we often saw more of each other at cemeteries than elsewhere. How many had lost a parent in the past year, how many had lost a spouse, a friend? I had been at far too many funerals.
And yet, I drew comfort from the thought that we had been there together, been there for each other, as mourners, as friends, as community. I knew full well the comfort that comes from the communal outpouring that accompanies a loss. The food, the hugs, the words of condolence. Those who appear like clockwork for a daily minyan. Those who call in the days and weeks after a death just to check in.
Rabbi David Wolpe in his book "Making Loss Matter" writes of the innate potential for meaning that loss can provide. "There is no magic answer to loss," he writes. "Nothing, not even time, will make the pain completely disappear. But loss is transformative."
He goes on to write of how loss can free us from preconceived perceptions about ourselves. And he writes of how loss can provide us context and perspective, creating a piercing awareness of life's very evanescence, its precious precariousness making us ever more cognizant of its innate potential for joy.
And so, getting older means confronting life head-on, knowing the possibility for loss is always around the corner and allowing that knowledge to open us up to life's pleasures.
And so, my writing may not be getting better. But I am aspiring to living better.
And that means dancing at as many weddings as I can.
Contact the writer at vicki_cabot@jewishaz.com.
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