Six Months
It takes nine months to make a baby . It takes six months to make the pain even harder. Missing Judah is like wearing a stone around your neck that grows heavier each day. Forces like pride keep me standing upright, but the stone pulls me down. Some say placing a stone at the gravesite is like removing the stone around your neck, you lighten the burden. I visit the grave every day and leave stones, pebbles, pennies, dimes, nickles, and sometimes on Friday I leave some Challa. I talk to Judah, tell him all the news of his friends, his brother and sister. I tell Seymour the secrets of my heart, and I tell my friends I am fine.
Life goes on. The sun shines, rains come, mail is delivered and the president does his nonesense. Celebrations come too. My father will turn 91 in April and is taking us on a cruise to celebrate. Judah loved his grandfather, they shared a love of art, sex and women among other things. Purim is on Monday night so we will take our Megillah of Esther with us, our noise makers and rejoice. I will try to put the stone down for a while
With much love to you all. Happy Purim
Martha
posted by The Whites @ 6:23 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
There is a seemingly infinite amount of stones in this universe. Few, very few, are cut as perfectly, nor shine as brilliantly as Judah does.
He was, and still is...exquisite!!!
It was then that the fox appeared.
"Good morning," said the fox.
"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.
"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree." "
Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."
"I am a fox," said the fox.
"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince.
"I am so unhappy." "I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."
"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince. But, after some thought, he added: "What does that mean, 'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me..."
"It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things."
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life . I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..." The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. "Please, tame me!" he said.
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me..."
"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me, like that, in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."
The next day the little prince came back.
"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..."
"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.
"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near...
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added: "Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." And the roses were very much embarrassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you, the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose..." said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
We are responsible for the rose of love that Judah gave us all.
much love - paul & family (exerpted from "The Little Prince" by Antoine de St. Exupery)
Smiling can also lift the weight. Your comment about Judah and his grandfather sharing certain interests made me laugh. I know Judah deeply admired his grandfather and was impressed, even awed, by the qualities you mention. I can remember Judah once, during a lull in his love life, complaining that his grandfather was putting him to shame. Ah, Judah, he had a great sense of humor. Keep your head up, Alex
Hi Martha,
I wanted to write you, but I guess I'm not feeling like writing a public note. I have been having a difficult time myself. I know it must be exponentially worse for you and I am not trying to compare our pains, but, I don't know, like you said, it doesn't seem to get better. I'm constantly thinking about him, and I find myself thinking about him in random places and crying when I'm alone. At random times I see you and I see you crying, and it makes me cry so hard. For some reason, I often cry when I'm driving. I just zone out and I'm thinking about him again. Maybe it's because it's one of the few times when I have any privacy. It's probably not very safe, but it's not like I can help it. Even though I didn't know Judah my whole life like a lot of these people, he was a big part of it. I feel like I have a lot of friends, but the friendships for some reason are not as deep. I don't have many friends like Judah, who I bonded with quickly and deeply. My life partner knows that I cry about Judah quite often and he was asking me the other day why Judah and I never dated or something, because it is clear to him that I really love Judah. I thought it was a weird question, but after I thought about it for awhile, it seemed like a reasonable question. I never really thought about it that much. Whatever, the point was I feel like losing Judah is like having an enormous, but delicate part of your heart ripped out. Nothing is filling the void. I can't seem to be able to accept that either. I wish you didn't feel this hurt, that the stone around your neck wasn't so heavy. I wish it wasn't so hard to be strong. You are so strong, Martha, so strong that you're not afraid to tell people how you feel. I'm a coward, I can't even publicize these feelings. I don't know what I'm afraid of. I cry for Judah in secret. I only tell my partner sometimes because he knows when something is wrong. My dog sees me cry. But I can't share it with anyone else, not my parents, not my other friends, I don't know why. I need Judah so much, I feel so lost without him. Maybe it's an unhealthy dependence that I have on him, but I am not sure and I don't really care. I think it's more because he was one of my few truly close friends, he had such keen intuition, he could read me like a book, he was always there 100% when you needed him, and even when you didn't need him. I don't know he was able to give 100% to all his friends. I don't know anyone who could do that. He was so understanding. He honestly taught me to be a better person. Less self-centered. I don't have friends like that. No one comes close. It's really hard to lose someone who holds that singular place in your life. There is no replacing that. I know there is no replacing a child, either, and I hope you don't think I'm being selfish in telling you my feelings. I just need to share this with someone who can understand how heartbreaking it feels to wake up every morning and realize that I still can't call him.
I think I will post this, but not leave my name.
To the person who shared her feelings so honestly - you are not a coward and your feelings are not selfish. losing a child may be what is commonly considered the most tragic loss, but there are many of us who feel a void.
I don't know if we need to compare the losses, but I do think it helps to share and empathize with each other - I think that's what Judah would have wanted from all of us. Judah was special to so many people because he was extraordinarily compassionate - for his friends and family of course, but also for strangers, and that is ultimately what made me fall in love with him. But Judah wasn't perfect either and I think he would have also wanted us to remember him as a special, but flawed person too - a fact that doesn't diminish his great qualities and his effect on all of us. In fact, it may have been his humility and his willingness to admit his weaknesses that drew him so close to people and created that intimacy that you talk about.
So - thanks for sharing your feelings... I hope that you're able to get comfort from memories, and the people that love you - even if they can't match that certain something about Judah. One thing that occurred to me a lot around Judah's death was that ther person who I wanted comfort from the most was exactly the person who couldn't give it to me. This is a sentiment that is expressed a lot when a person's close friend or family member dies, but I imagine that many others felt the exact same way because Judah was a great comforter to so many of us. love, Tamar
I heard the origins of stone soup recently - travelers told a village that they could make soup from stones - and the village came out to watch; in the process, each villager asked to contribute to the soup and brought a vegetable or other offering - and ultimately the entire town benefitted from a very rich soup -that had started from nothing nutritious at all.
In the same way - this website has been a sort of stone soup for the soul - it started with the bleakness of Judah's illness; the heartrending accounts of his valient efforts to fight it to the end; the piercing pain of his finally giving up the spirit; and from striving to find meaning from these stones boiling in troubled waters we've now had the ongoing offerings of consolation, encouragement, love, that has conferred a richness of spirit that I believe Judah would be proud of. Thanks to you all for sharing so much of yourselves and keeping Judah's memory and spirit alive. Love, Paul & Family
This website has been stone soup for the soul.
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