A mound of dirt

Back Blogging

After Liam passed away and after we sat Shiv`ah, I didn't lose appetite for writing, but I did lose appetite for thinking.  And when I don't think, I don't think I can write.  Well, the well is not completely dry, so every now and then I'm hoping to post something.  This blog will stay alive, although maybe not as frequent a when Liam was still here.  So here we go again.


A mound of dirt

My first ever visit to a cemetery, if you can really call it a visit, was when I was in 5th grade or so.  Well, maybe it wasn't my first visit, just the first visit worth remembering.  Eh, I meant the visit that was difficult to forget.

It was a dark night in the northern Israeli valley where I grew up, like most nights in this agricultural region.  We
made our way through the alfalfa field.  Night activity was something we did as young kids on a regular basis.  Parts of it was fun and interesting - like identifying other settlements in the area based on their lights or learning the stars, sitting by the bonfire and singing songs.  But other activities were scary and in retrospect, plain stupid.  They tried to make soldiers of us at a young age and prepare us for never-ending war situation.  Anyway, I'm getting off the subject here.  On that specific night we made our way through the alfalfa field (which was full of snakes) to the edge of the cemetery.  The assignment was to enter the cemetery, two by two, and "observe the ghosts".  I'm pretty sure that no ghosts showed up that night.  While we were scared as hell, nothing really happened (DOH!).  Just a bunch of boring graves.
In later years I passed in or next to the cemetery many many time.  I was there either to bury someone from the community or simply because I passed there on my tractor as I was working in a nearby field. Even though I knew most of the people buried there, I could never feel any emotions when visiting there. The tombs were always the same, silent, boring.

Even before Liam left us, we started discussing the funeral.  I was for cremation.  Liam is in my heart, I said.  I don't need a meaningless, cold, slab of stone.  And on top of that, in a Jewish cemetery.  (Which begs the question:  Why us, the still living, "paste" our religion to the dead?  Why put a cross or a Magen David on the tomb?  When somebody picks a religion, he/she does it from a point of belief.  And belief is a matter of the heart.  Well, what if the heart is not pumping any more?  Who gave us the right to make a choice for the deceased? And, what if the deceased was not following a certain religion in the first place?  Wait, I think I got it:  the rabbis, priests, imams, etc. can only lure you into their religion if you believe them.  If you don't believe, nothing would help them.  But the dead, they don't argue about the religion any more.  They're too tired.  So the religious preachers get a freebie. In other words, when my time comes, go ahead and cremate me.  I don't want to give the religion "pasters" this pleasure.)  The number one reason I'm happy with Liam's new residency is that just outside the cemetery gate is the location of Nuevo Laredo.  (Poor girl, taco was one of her favorite foods...now all she can do is smell smell smell.)   Are you still following?  The subject was burial versus cremation.
But thoughts and reality are two different things.  Recently I visited Liam's grave - just a small mound of dirt at this point - for the first time since the funeral.  As soon as I entered that section of the cemetery, I was taken by emotions.  It was as if I was right there at the funeral.  Gone was the one month of "recovery" and all the dry-by-now Kleenex's.  Just a mound of dirt.  Strange.


A cup of coffee
A piece of cake.  A glass of beer.  A football game.  Gathering with friends.  All represent enjoyable things.  Things that bring us pleasure and costs us no effort.  Many of them we just take for granted. Liam, too, loved the good life and enjoyed food and friends like the rest of us.  The difference is that for Liam, even the most elementary things took a huge toll of effort on her side:  feeding herself with a utensil, playing on the computer, driving her wheelchair, baseball - just to name a few.  If you think about it, Liam's life was one big effort - from her first breath to the last.  No exaggeration.  Liam, however, despite the fact that she invested huge amounts of energy in every small hand movement that the rest of us take for granted, did not see it that way.  She simply enjoyed the minute, the food, the bite, the song.  She didn't think about the future or the past; she made no comparisons; she lived the moment - every moment. It's an important perspective to all of us as we stir the coffee.  One sugar, a lot of milk, please.