There are people who handle the idea with a great deal of grace. I've never been one of those people. When I was twelve and became capable of abstract thought, I wondered one day what happened to us after we die and I didn't sleep for weeks. I was probably the most depressed adolescent at Clark that year.
I have only vague memories of that time. I can't pretend to know why we remember certain things and not others, why insignificant details stand out and large life moments are blurry, but I have to think my preoccupation with death had something to do with it. How could it not? I remember purposely spilling coffee on my world history paper to make it look authentic. I remember Mr. Circo didn't think it was at all cool, and I wanted to scream at him, but I didn't. I remember wasting time in the library during a "research project," going to the aquarium and listening to the voice of the Little Mermaid sing "Part of That World" (she was dressed like a hoochie, I remember THAT vividly. No middle school student should have to bear witness to that much cleavage). I remember in Hebrew School I asked the Rabbi what happened to us after we died and he told us we wait in the ground rotting until the Messiah comes, and then our bodies roll underground to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. "Then what?" I asked. "I don't know. The Messiah's here," he responded. Needless to say, that image did not comfort me. That was the first moment I wondered if the Christians were onto something with this "Messiah" already being here deal.
When my first Grandpa died, I thought about a lot of things. What did grass taste like? Was dirt edible? Why were we putting rocks on that bandage on the ground? (unveiling, so actually, a year later). I was two.
When my second Grandpa died, I wondered if you were supposed to miss everyone who died, even the bad people. I wondered if my mother would miss him. If I ask her and she says she doesn't, I will understand why. At the time, I didn't. I was 14.
When all the people in high school died, I felt it because it could have been any of us. What determines who gets cancer, or gets hit by a car, or drinks himself to death? Was there someone up there playing eenie meenie minie moe? How did I know it wasn't going to land on me?
When our classmate died from a policeman shooting her in the eye with a pepper ball gun during Sox riots, I wondered if maybe we hadn't come as far as we thought we had as a society.
I knew Hal was going to die. Everyone was tiptoeing around him, avoiding the subject, but I came right out and asked him if he was scared. He said no. He had no regrets. He'd done everything he wanted to do, and had a hell of a life. And in his remaining weeks, he was making moonshine in the basement bathroom, because it was never too late to keep doing what he wanted to do. I drank a lot of moonshine that night. I hate moonshine, but when a dying man tells you to drink moonshine, you drink moonshine, and you like it. It was my 22nd birthday. A few weeks later he was gone.
There are two middle schools in my building, mirror image reflections of each other except for the library and cafeteria. There is a 7th grade writing teacher in each building. I am one. When the other one died last year, all I could think about was her beautiful honey-colored hair and her patience. She had patience I aspire to every day, patience I will never match, but patience I will spend my life aspiring to. Her hair was beautiful, and I complimented it constantly, until one day she said, "Okay Leah, you have to stop saying nice things about my hair. It's not my hair," and took off the wig and I knew. It's funny how big important information has a way of revealing itself in interesting ways. I found out about how babies were made by reading a book, because my parents couldn't get me to stop reading long enough to talk about it, so they just put another book on my nightstand and waited. I found out about 9/11 before the rest of my high school because I was in trouble for skipping class, so I was sitting in the guidance office and listening to NPR. I went into American Studies and announced it. No one believed me.
In Jerusalem this summer, I stood looking at the Mount of Olives, picturing us all rolling there, but it wasn't a religious experience. I had, in truth, mostly forgotten about it until that moment, but as I stood there, I could only wonder about the logistics. Where would we all fit? The Diaspora surely would fill more than that mountain. How long would it take to get there? My flight from JFK airport had been twelve long hours. Surely, rolling underground would take fifty times longer, if the MBTA was any indicator. Would we be filthy? Would we show up scarred and bruised, toes broken, shoulders dislocated?
I also wondered about the Palestinians. We were on the border of the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, on our tour of the security fence (which by the way is not that impressive-looking). I wondered: When the Messiah comes, whoever he or she is, will we still be fighting? There were 13 missiles launched from Gaza during the 14 days I was in Israel. Depending on where we're rolling from, will some of us roll under the security fence? Will there be underground security checkpoints?
I know it sounds ridiculous. It IS ridiculous. Who thinks about this stuff? My entire life I've been terrified of death, and going off what the psychiatrist my mother took me to in middle school told me: "Leah, you have to get through the day. You can't spend your whole life worrying about death. You do what the rest of us do: Shove those feelings down as far as you can and concentrate on living." Standing in front of the mountain I'll apparently roll to, all I can think about is if my pedicure will chip on my way there? It's asinine. But maybe after all that time I reverted to the last version of myself that I allowed to spend time thinking about death. After all, those are the questions you ask when you're twelve.
I started off on this train of thought because I just watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I am not always F. Scott Fitzgerald's #1 fan, but in this story, he did me proud. If I had to pick the purpose of the movie, the thing we're meant to walk away from it understanding, I'd say it's that nothing lasts, and you have to make the most of every minute while you can. It's a mixed bag, that one. I've always been a fan of carpe diem, it's been a wonderful way to help myself sleep at night, but I don't like how fleeting each minute can be. I see them as grains of sand on a beach, and we go through life trying to pick up and hold onto as many as we can, but they all fall through our fingers eventually. It seems so futile when you look at it that way. I'll never be able to hold as many moments as I want to, and I don't like to picture them falling away from me. It makes me want to be cremated and tossed on the beach, mixed with the sand, to be as close to those moments as I can.
Benjamin, we're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?
I don't think we need to lose the people we love in order to know how important they are to us. I think we're better than that. I think we can know how much they mean if we let ourselves every day. It's difficult. It's much easier to keep going and going and grading papers and running and boxing and cooking and failing and cooking and sometimes not failing and stringing beads onto wire and watching True Blood illegally online. That I could do forever. Taking a moment to stop and let everything else in is another matter. But I can and will do it. I will appreciate the ones I love while I have them with me. And if I forget, I will be reminded when I crumple to the floor in tears in Market Basket every time my mother forgets to pick up her phone.
Shalom.
PS: He was 44 when he filmed this movie. I don't think he looks a day over Thelma and Louise.
PPS: It's a beautiful film. You should see it. It isn't a tearjerker until the last 10 minutes, but even so, it's worth it.
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