Choices

I know I wrote this before, closer to the event, when I was still in the grip of the emotion. But I've lost it and I have to reconstruct it as best I can – Diane S. Frank

I make a point of noting the happy events that I've been included in, occasions and happenings that have enriched my life and demonstrate the possibility that there is some sort of life beyond bars and clubs, something approximating normal life. So I've written about weddings and bar mitzvahs, parties and outings and plays and friends and babies. But today I take note of a funeral for someone who wasn't quite a friend, but who was more than an acquaintance. I’ll say friend here, but I think what I’ll tell will make things more clear.

Of course it was snowing, and cold and the temporary tent with space heaters did only a little to cut the cold wind. The plain, pine box in the ground held all that was left of my friend, at least until a few devotional objects were laid on the coffin at our Rabbi’s direction. I last saw my friend after providing a ride home from services or some other temple event. I hadn’t learned of the death or the funeral until the day before the funeral. The coroner had held the body for a month and a cause of death hadn’t been determined. There were no relatives who would claim the body, and so it fell to our Rabbi. I wonder if she thought she’d officiate at funerals when she accepted the part-time position. Given that it is a GLBT congregation and that people still die of AIDS with some frequency I have to imagine she had.

You don’t learn a whole lot more about some people at a funeral. Maybe you meet someone from another part of his or her life. And maybe you simply know they are there, your eyes meet and that’s all. So, there being no relatives to sit Shiva with (a Jewish custom of helping the family of the dead deal with their grief), a few of us went to a nearby deli for a nosh, to talk and get in from the cold. I knew that I wasn’t the only person who helped with transportation, and I was a bit surprised to find out who else went a little out of their way.

One person had been close with the deceased. "Had" as in not recently. I knew my friend had a difficult life. Health issues abounded. And transition wasn’t easy. There were joys such from Temple, and playing French horn in a semi-pro orchestra. But there was poverty, and isolation and perhaps a bit of madness as well. It was said that my friend was wounded as a child of 5 and spent the next 45 years dying of the wound.

I learned of a grandfather who abused children. A grandfather who skinned rabbits in front of young children and said that would happen to them if they told. I learned of the sister who died, possibly murdered by that grandfather. None of the rest of us had known. We only knew of conversion, transition, music and hope.

But do I wish I’d done more, gotten closer? I’m not sure. Because the person telling of this life also talked about cost of the friendship, a cost too high to bear after a while. How many times can you hear the phrase "I don’t want to speak ill of the dead". There is enough pain I’ve recounted here that I won’t share what that burden of friendship cost someone. It wasn’t a casual decision to step away. So I’m glad in a way that I didn’t get closer to experience the madness first hand, but I’m glad someone at least tried.

And that I think is a problem we all face in this community. How close do we get, when do we keep our distance. When someone is alive there is always the chance to change things. When they die that chance is lost, and right or wrong we then live with choices.