fragility

Sam died last Tuesday, March 11. He was in his early eighties and was the sextant (shammas) of our synagogue for forty years. Although you might think that his death would be more understandable than that of my young colleague Joel ("Anger", November 23, '07), I find Sam's death baffling for its own sake. Sam died of Pancreatic cancer, certainly the most deadly cancer I know. But Sam was a survivor of the Shoah (the Nazi genocides of World War II), and made it through a concentration camp. Did we somehow hope that Sam would beat a deadly cancer like he beat the Nazis?

I guess in a small way, I did. Of all the people I knew, it seemed that Sam had a chance to beat death. Maybe Sam had enough piss and vinegar to survive a cancer whose average diagnosis-to-death time is less than six months. Ultimately, he grew frail and worn and died quietly. In his humble manner, he waited until his last guest left, and then died alone. The Conference of the Birds, a 12th century Sufi poem, says that even if you lived a thousand years "Still you would have to die when death appears."

Our rabbi, Daniel Shevitz, says that death is awful, but it would be far worse if some people just didn't die. That is, it's the consistancy and regularity of death that make it bearable. Imagine if there were a lottery, and some people didn't die at all. Still, the fact that some people die young and some die old seems random enough. What I've been having a hard look at is the fragility of it all: It's hard to accept that in the end, you or I have very little control over our fate.

My friend and his wife had a clear awakening to this when they tried to have a baby. Although they were young and did not expect to have any difficulty conceiving, the process proved incredibly challenging, frustrating and disappointing. After a long and complicated ordeal, they almost gave up on trying to have a biological child, and considered other options. At the last moment, his wife got pregnant. Last month, they gave birth to a healthy girl, and named her in praise of God.

As he said to me quietly, the experience was a shocking realization of how little control one really holds in the world, even over one's body. Of course, he said, he'd always known that he was not the master of his destiny, but hadn't realized how much. In this awareness of the fragility of our bodies and selves, and the slender thread of control we have in our lives, how can we conduct ourselves?

I often think of Moses' death, just within reach of his goal. He dies outside of the promised land, his life's dream unseen. Although the sages and early rabbis vividly imagine Moses bargaining and cajoling God to let him in to the Land, in the Scripture Moses dies without complaint. Moses' life was long, 120 years, but it too had a conclusion. As a professor said, There's only one end possible, but it always takes you by surprise. I've never heard anyone say that their relative lived too long - every death feels like it comes too soon. I guess the best we can hope for is to live and die with humility and quiet grace.