The Sky is Crying

Tuesday night. We just came home from paying a Shiva call to our Rabbi whose 19 year old son died in a tragic accident this past Friday night. We went to the funeral yesterday morning. It rained during the funeral, and it is raining now. The sanctuary was filled when we arrived, so we sat in the huge, crowded tent they had erected outside and watch the tv monitors of the funeral. The eulogy was the most beautiful and eloquent I've ever heard. I don't know how Rabbi Billy and his wife and two children were able to sit there and not just break down wailing on the floor. God bless them. It is horrendously, unbearably sad. When the service was over, and they got up to leave with the coffin, I remembered burying my father, and how I felt that I was trapped inside a machine that was made up of the most benevolent and loving people, but people who were setting into motion the burying of my father, and how I wanted to stand up and yell and stop it somehow, and how I couldn't, and how I was forced to do the absolutely completely very last thing on earth I had ever wanted to do. And yesterday, I saw Rabbi Billy get up from his chair at the end of the service, and I knew he was at that point where the rituals are moving forward, and you have no choice but to move forward with them, but all you want to do is yell and scream that this can't be happening, this can't be happening. And mine was my father, a death I had assumed would happen before my own. Not my son. Not a child. No one should have to walk through this. He was so kind to us when we got married. We had a hard time finding a Rabbi to perform the ceremony since I haven't converted to Judaism, but Rabbi Dreskin was so loving and embracing, and has made Dan and I and our children feel so welcome and part of the community. For him, it is all about the spirit, and I love that. I am so deeply despondent about what has happened to his son. If you have any extra prayers, please use them for Rabbi Dreskin and his family.
xo