May His Memory Be for a Blessing

A friend of mine died yesterday. He was fifty-six years old and I can’t make sense of the world right now. Job asks ‘why?’ and God tells him not to ask. Spinoza says that only the free man is not afraid of death. I am not so free.

Well, I thought of him as my friend even if he didn’t think of me as his. No matter, really. I liked to talk with him, and at times I liked to think he enjoyed talking back with me. We shared an interest in music, and especially in Bob Dylan.

I know there is this idea that death is hardest on the living, but I don’t hold to that belief. Oh, for those who awake the next day, the pain is sharp and boundless and overwhelming. When my own father died in 1999, I described the pain as exquisite. The loss is irredeemable and almost unbearable. But it is the dead who will not again see the sun shine, or watch the moon wax and wane. It is the dead who will not see the child’s growth, or celebrate his Bar Mitzvah, or . . . or live a fulfilled life. The dead cannot put his arm about his child and dry the tears cried from a broken heart or a broken arm. The dead will see no more movies, hear no more songs, enjoy art never again.

Death doesn’t always come too soon, but it does always come, and sometimes it is too soon. "Because I could not stop for death/He kindly stopped for me." That’s Emily Dickinson. I like Dylan’s: "But the bottles are done/We killed each one/And the table’s full and overflowed./And the corner sign/Says its closing time./So I’ll bid farewell and be down the road.”

I’m going to miss you, Bob.