Hierarchy of sorrows

It happens not infrequently that after services, someone I don't know will ask me for whom I'm saying kaddish. When I say my father, the next question is often "how old was he?" When I answer "90," they usually say something like "well, he lived a good long life." That's true. Life expectancy in the United States currently stands at 78.6 years, and, for men, 76.1 years. (For women, it's 81.1. Interestingly, life expectancy rates have declined for the last two years, perhaps because of the opioid epidemic. https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/us-life-expectancy-study/index.html)

Of course, no matter the age of your parent, his or her death is, in most cases, a life-changing and devastating event. It's true, however, that I can take some comfort in the fact that he did live a relatively long and certainly full life, maintaining his critical faculties until the end. It's not like the parents of friends of mine who died tragically in the prime of their life, of sudden heart attacks or cancer. My father had a heart bypass operation at age 60 which saved and his life and prolonged it for many years. While he never expected to outlive my mother, who died age age 79 of pancreatic cancer, I am beginning to feel a sense gratitude that I had him for seven more years in relatively good health and spirits.

Last week a met a man in shul who was also saying kaddish. The gabbai (synagogue leader) asked me if he could take over the davening (leading the prayers) at Ashrei, the psalm that begins the concluding portion of the morning service. I was more than happy to oblige. After the service, the man held a small kiddush with cake and scotch--both very tasty. I learned that he was observing the shloshim (30 days after burial) for his son. The loss of a child. The ultimate tragedy. The unthinkable. The sorrow of all sorrows.

It turns out there's even more to the story. His son lived in the same city as my parents. His son led prayer services during the high holidays at the same synagogue as my parents attended. My parents knew him, or knew of him. He and I are connected not only in the present, through our shared kaddishes, but also in the past, through the link between his son and my father. Not all sorrows may be equal, they lead us to the same place: to shul and kaddish.