When I got up today I was looking forward to the first annual Breast Cancer Awareness Walk that was held in Ra'anana in honour of two wonderful local women who succumbed to the awful disease in the past few years. Now that the walk is over, all I can remember is how sad I am.
The first woman honoured today was Mindy Greenberg who died at 43, four years ago. I didn't know her very well but everyone who did liked her a lot. The first time I met Mindy she called me to ask me to please have my son Zeve stop trying to drown her son Noam when they played together in the local pool. At the time I was mortified because we all know how much everyone loves getting calls from strangers telling them that their five-year olds are potential murderers! The biggest irony of that call was that pretty much ever since then, the boys have been very good friends. Such good friends in fact that Mindy commented on it to me about a week before she died.
The second woman was my very good friend Diane Taragin. Diane died almost a year ago and not a day goes by that I don't think about her. She was a special woman -- she was very serious about her Judaism but you could always count on her to say such outrageous things that you thought you would choke with laughter. Of course, all those outrageous things were probably things that the rest of us were thinking -- she just had the guts to put her thoughts into words and throw them out there for public consumption.
There's so much I miss about her that I couldn't make a list even if I wanted to, but the one thing I want to mention is that not long after her funeral I was back in the Ra'anana graveyard again for another funeral. On the way out I stopped by her grave to leave a stone and on the way into her row I noticed that very near by was the grave of one of Israel's most notorious mobsters who had, just prior to Diane's death, died when his car inexplicably (?) blew up on the streets of Tel Aviv.
I burst into laughter because all I could think was that if Diane knew that such a dubious character was in her hallowed row she would have started a campaign to have him moved elsewhere. And if she had come across him in the Netherworld (which I guess would have been unlikely since she is with the good guys and he definitely is NOT), she would have given him a piece of her mind about his behaviour and its impact the country.
And that's why I came home today much sadder than when I left. I don't want to talk about these women in the past tense. I don't understand why, despite their access to excellent medical care and their families' willingness to do anything to help them, there was nothing that could be done. I don't understand why bad things happen to good people. I don't understand why good things happen to bad people. There's a lot of things that I just don't get.
However, since there probably are no satisfactory answers to these questions, those of us left behind will keep telling stories, laughing at the memories, and walking to find a cure.
No comments:
Post a Comment