How Strange is Life? – Day 3

3 Elul 5774
By Rosalee Lubell

How strange is life?

We think we’ve learned something of life’s challenges but we’ve only arrived at a dimension of new challenges for which we are unprepared.

A friend is losing physical mobility and memory. She must learn new ways of adapting to the disability that life has placed upon her.

Another friend loses her only child, a loss that should never ever happen to a parent.

A sister is recently diagnosed with a form of dementia. I am there for her. Together we start the process of throwing out clothes, pots and pans, dishes etc. and pack up her belongings of the last 40 years in her house:  the collection of her lifetime. She will have to live closer to her family now.

A daughter braves the constant sirens and barrage of rockets in Israel as she and her husband deal with finding new ways to keep their family secure emotionally and physically.

My heart breaks as I watch the body break, the soul break, the mind break. I want to be there for these individuals but I, too, break as I watch the mental and physical processes spiral downwards.

May I have the strength and courage to support my family and friends with patience and kindness as they continue to fight their own demons in the coming year and as they, too, ask for shalom and courage to find alternate ways of coping.

Amen.
Rosalee Lubell