History is for the living

A rabbi once told me that, though every physical remnant of my Jewish history was burned in the Holocaust, the lost stories lived in my bones.

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were already present in the ranks of our ancestors. . . . Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character. . . .We have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wider violence the farther it takes us from our roots . . .

Today, most of us lack the direct experience of being witness to a meaningful and family-centered dying process. We have outsourced the washing, dressing, and burial of the body of our beloved. Furthermore, just as grief is too often viewed as an illness to overcome, death, too, is seen as something to “fight.”