West Magazine, San Jose Mercury News. published February 9, 1997
My children have discovered death. No one close to us has died, thank goodness, but at seven and five years old, they have begun to ask questions. It’s always hard to think about dying, and it’s even more painful to consider how it may someday affect my own kids, who seem too young to be concerned with this topic. They are just beginning life—busy growing and blooming—and they fill me with such joy that sometimes my heart hurts.
They ask me if they will die, and I say yes, everyone dies. Why? they ask. I don’t know, I tell them. That’s just the way it is in life: everything is born, grows and dies. Plants and animals, too.
When? they want to know. Hopefully, not until you are extremely old—so old that you are very ready for something else besides living. Of course, I add, some people die young, if they do stupid things like run out in the street without first looking for cars or smoke cigarettes. But if you use common sense and have some luck, I assure them, you’ll probably live as long as you want.
Usually they’ve lost interest in the subject long before I’ve finished my treatise on recklessness and tobacco, but thoughts of death linger on in my mind. Even though the children’s questions so far address only their own mortality, I worry that should something happen to me or to my husband, they might feel betrayed or abandoned. Is there something else I should explain, or would any more just frighten them?
I was about their age when I had my first brush with death, and it disconcerted me, just as it now does my children.
It was the evening before my older brother’s bar mitzvah, and sabbath services had just ended. It’s curious which memories a child records. The strongest image I hold from the experience is of the long, dark benches that filled the small chapel behind the main synagogue. I remember rubbing my hand along the wooden surfaces and feeling their hard smoothness and stability. I remember detecting the faint, familiar smell of furniture polish emanating from the benches and filling the chapel air.
In back of these smooth, hard benches, a sliding wall separated the small chapel from a social hall, and for the festivities in honor of my brother, the sliding wall had been pushed open, doubling the available reception space.
Relatives and friends milled around, wandering between the social hall and the bench-filled chapel. They ate cookies, drank coffee, and visited. What joy my brother’s bar mitzvah occasioned, what a happy event! Who would’ve imagined, some said, we would all live to see this wonderful day! Some guests had flown over 3,000 miles to join us, and Grandpa Herlich, my mother says, burst with happiness and pride.
I ran through the rooms and the front courtyard playing tag and hide-and-go-seek with the other children. At one point I sought refuge behind Grandpa, wrapping my arms around his short, stocky legs and wedging myself in between him and the backside of the last row of wooden benches. The wood felt cool and solid against my back and contrasted with the warmth of Grandpa’s squat, stubby-fingered hands as he absentmindedly stroked my curly hair. Soon I was off playing again, running and laughing, periodically stealing back to the refreshment table to reload my fingertips with pitted black olives, shoving one over each digit like fat, round thimbles.
Then suddenly, from the back of the chapel near the entrance of the social hall, came a loud thud, a heavy body falling flat onto wooden floor. A few cries, a few hollers for help. Call a doctor!
They tried to hurry the children away, but in the chaos of the festive atmosphere, even Grandpa’s heavy, still body on the chapel floor did not frighten us. Scoot, they told us, clear away. Grandpa is sick; a doctor is coming.
The air held a strange mixture of excitement, tragedy, and panic. The children shouldn’t see, they repeated, but what was it we shouldn’t see, I wondered.
Again they tried to herd us off, but I knew all the nooks and crannies in the building, and I knew how to make myself invisible to adults. I wound my way around knees and elbows, then slithered on my stomach under one of the long, skinny benches. From there I could peek between the suited pant legs and thick-stockinged calves surrounding my grandpa.
He lay motionless on his back, eyes facing the ceiling, open, staring. They said he was ill, but that did not make sense to me. He was too quiet. It occurred to me he might be dead, but this idea had little meaning. I watched the frozen body for a few moments, then I scooted away, confused, uncomfortable, oddly exhilarated.
In this climate of crisis, suffused with the intensity of something both traumatic and exceptional happening, the adults pretended calm. Back in the social hall I tried, without success, to make sense of the now-muted, whispering voices. Within minutes I felt compelled to wriggle my way back to Grandpa again.
Again an aunt tried to shoo me away, but she, like the other adults, was too preoccupied to make a concerted effort to get rid of me. Besides, I was too quick, too small and too determined. I snuck back several times. His gruff, heavy, bear-like body lay there so still.
The ambulance arrived, spraying its eerie red lights on the trees in the front courtyard. Within minutes both the lights and Grandpa had disappeared. The next day the long-awaited bar mitzvah took place, solemn and quiet. Before the service began, my mother explained that Grandpa had had a heart attack and “passed away.” She told us to be “brave.”
I was not upset; it did not occur to me that “passed away” meant dead. I assumed he had “passed away” to the hospital, and I thought being “brave” referred to the degree of courage necessary to behave all the way through an inevitably long and boring religious ceremony. It meant I dared not wriggle or talk or pull toys from my pockets during the service.
Only long after would I realize that Grandpa was really gone. I would realize it in the way my mother’s voice got stuck in the middle of a word when she talked about him. I would realize it through my grandmother, whose eyes grew dull and body rapidly withered. I kept tripping over his absence; where were his warm hands and wide lap?
When I learned what “passed away” meant, the euphemism disturbed me. It seemed to shroud dying in vague terms, as if it was dirty or ugly or unmentionable. It disguised death as something far worse than simply the end of life. It implied a sneaking off, a mysterious “passing away” to who knows where without proper farewell or explanation. I felt deceived and afraid. The term scared me in a way I could not explain.
Only now, almost 40 years later, with children of my own, do I wonder if any of my childhood discomfort or fear could have been avoided. Probably not. I was not ready to understand; Maya and Miles are not ready, either. Now issues regarding death concern me more. As an adult, I find myself inching slowly toward a begrudging acceptance of mortality, but as a parent I am still in complete denial. One wants so badly to protect one’s children, to shield them from pain and guarantee their happiness. That this is not always possible also makes my heart hurt. Only now does it dawn on me that Grandpa’s heart could, and indeed did, burst with emotion.
How the Ball Bounced, by Nancy Nerenberg 