Depression is a word that has been cheapened. We forget that it is a diagnosis for a bona fide disease. It becomes a catch phrase for the weighty feelings we experience as we come to terms with life\’s challenges and honor the process of change.
\”I really loved your story,\” Tante Mina said to me in a nearly inaudible gasp. She looked at me and it gave me hope, for her eyes still held that sparkle, that fight, that desire to live. As I walked out of the critical care unit of the hospital to let the next family member into the room, I had no way of knowing that those would be the last words I would hear her speak.
Earlier this month, three California Jews — all of us strong supporters of Israel — established a scholarship fund to honor a Palestinian patriot. He was murdered in the terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan, in November, since which time we\’ve been joined by many other prominent members of the local Jewish community. A lot of people have asked me why I was one of the founders. Here\’s why.
On the day our wedding was to have been, I was intensely aware of the time when we would have been standing under the chuppah, without seeing a clock or watch. My breath stopped, and I stood still, feeling the growing ache in my chest. I spent the day alone, and I cried. And I thought about cosmic meaning and why this was happening to me. And then everything was fine.
It\’s Davidson, as in Ronald Davidson, my stepfather. He died yesterday at 62 and that\’s why I\’m at a funeral home out on Charleston Boulevard in Las Vegas. My mom is here, too, and though there are copious boxes of proper tissue in the place, she is clinging to the roll of toilet paper she\’s had by her side since returning from the hospital with nothing but a bag of Ron\’s stuff: slippers, a stack of Louis L\’Amour paperbacks, his watch.
The funeral took place in Vienna on July 7, 1904. The stunning announcement had come on the 4th: Theodore Herzl, dead at age 44.
Here is Stefan Zweig\’s description of the day:
Again Israel turns to mourning the dead, but this time the list of those killed has been slow in coming. As the bombs used in suicide bombings become more sophisticated, producing deadlier and deadlier blasts, it takes more time to identify the remains of the dead.
Grief erases all regular rules. All the logic that has ever seemed to govern one\’s life suddenly seems useless. More than useless, it seems pointless.
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