How many children do you have?

Last week was the first time since Avi's death that I faced that question.

I had three before February 23.

I still have three.

Avi can never stop being my child.

Avi vs. Microsoft's Internet Explorer

I came across this item today on an IE development blog:

Please implement display: table/table-row/table-cell, if not CSS2 in whole.
Friday, February 03, 2006 4:54 PM by Avi Lapidus
Why have you slowed down the progression of the web by not fully implementing CSS2?

You double my workload as a web developer because I refuse to use table layouts, and am forced to work out the many bugs and incapabilities that are caused by IE. My website has conditional comments that contain table tags, which generates extra bandwidth and slower rendering speeds for even my site's visitors that use Firefox and Opera, browsers that have supported CSS2 for years.

If IE7 will not fully support CSS2, I beg you to please, please, please support display: table/table-row/table-cell by IE7's release. And on behalf of the entire standards-supporting community of web developers, I demand you to fully implement CSS2 as soon as possible!

PS. Please respond whether or not you plan to implement the CSS display properties by IE7's official release. Thanks.

If the Internet Explorer developers had followed Avi's requests, which would have cut down his web development workload by 50%, do you think that he would have used the extra time to catch up on homework?

Of course not!

I need his help!

The network connection on Avi's computer went down this week. Avi would have been able to restore it within seconds.

Another reminder of who is missing.

"Read my lips!"

My post tonight on my other blog reminds me of Avi playing the part of Pres. George H.W. Bush in his first-grade class's Salute to the Presidents presentation. His former teachers still recall how Avi amused the audience with his rendition of "Read my lips!"

"...but David's place was empty."

A group from my synagogue studies the Book of Samuel every Shabbat afternoon.

This past Shabbat, this verse caught the attention of Susie and me:

And the king sat upon his seat, as at other times, even upon the seat by the wall; and Jonathan stood up, and Abner sat by Saul's side; but David's place was empty.

We had the same thought:

David had a fixed place at the king's table. His vacant seat made his absence conspicuous. Avi had a fixed place next to me at our Shabbat table and next to me at the synagogue. The emptiness of those two spots matches the void left in our family.

The word translated as "empty" is ויפקד - vayyippaqed - in the original Hebrew.

Jews all over the world every Rosh haShanah read a related word found in Genesis 21:1: "And the LORD remembered - פקד (paqad) - Sarah..."

Rabbi Adler noted the connection between the two word forms: the emptiness of a customary seat at the table causes us to remember the one who is absent.

His empty seat at the synagogue, his empty seat at our Shabbat table, his empty seat by his computer, and even his empty seat near his older brother watching an NBA championship series remind us of Avi's absence and of the empty spot in our lives.

A Prayer for Avi Inserted into the Kotel

This is a photo of Hillel Adler inserting into one of the cracks of the Kotel the note containing my family's prayer of remembrance for Avi.

Please see my April 30th entry for the background and explanation.

Bookmark

Rabbi Daniel Loew, the principal of HHNE, in his devar halakha (a few brief words on Jewish law and custom) prior to the start of the morning service, explained to his students the practice of not merely discarding used or damaged ritual objects - even things that are permitted to be thrown away like a torn fringe from a tallis - if they can be used for something else. A torn fringe, for example, may be put to use as a bookmark.

A couple of weeks before Avi died, I had updated the synagogue's file box of Hebrew names and I had made a card for Avi. I showed it to Rabbi Loew after the service and I told him that I have been using the card as a bookmark for my siddur.

Left Further Behind

Today is my daughter Chana's 17th birthday, a happy time for all of us...

...but when I'm alone, I can't help thinking that with each of his siblings' birthdays, Avi gets left further behind.

Model Student's Note to the Hebrew Academy's Office Staff

(To see full-size images of the above and of all other JPGs on this site, simply click on the pictures.)

(I revised this entry from an earlier one posted March 7.)

Susie visited the administrators and secretaries at the Sigel Hebrew Academy office a week or so ago to return abook. The people there showed her a bulletin board with all sorts of notes, including one sent last year by Avi, which they are keeping posted in his memory.

In his notes and emails to the faculty and staff, Avi frequenty - if not always - wrote "(Model Student)" underneath his signature. That apparently was his running, inside joke with his teachers, who loved having him in class, his intelligence, his quick sense of humor, and his personality, but who were challenged by Avi's not doing his homework, at least not in the subjects that disinterested him - all the secular subjects except for math.

Although his Hebrew Academy classmates last year were amused by his notorious accumulation of "missing homework" slips, his teachers evidently were not, so Avi became a regular in the school office, where he enjoyed chatting with the people while making up his work. His use of schooltime evidently was part of Avi's plan to free up time at home to pursue his computer programming education...among other pursuits.

If you have read my March entries, click here and click here, then you already know just how advanced he was, in the eyes of the pros.

In a successful (eventually) effort to encourage him to complete his assignments at home and maintain his grades, I would ban Avi from the computer. My belated apologies :-) to the folks at Digital Pandemic, LUE2, GameFAQs, et al. who had to wait for Avi's online assistance. The delay would have been longer had he not discovered my passwords and outsmarted me...for a while.

Had I appreciated at the time his advanced Internet coding skills, I still would have insisted that Avi complete his assignments, but my approach would have been different.

I wish that I had the need now to figure out that approach.

...I am reminded of that.

Because Avi was too young to have sons of his own, and because he did not have a younger brother, I am obligated to recite Kaddish in the presence of a minyan (quorum) for him at least once a day - or, preferably, at least once at each of the three daily prayer services - for a period just shy of twelve months.

My community like many others often has a problem gathering a minyan, even though there are enough Jewish men available in the area.

Avi's last Sunday morning alive found us one man short, so I called home to rouse Avi out of bed. He came and made the minyan.

I can't have Avi accompany me to minyan anymore.
I can't telephone him anymore when we are short.
Every time that we fail to get a minyan, I am reminded of that.

Things like this aren't supposed to happen to us.

Until last February 23, I was living these fantasies:

Outside of cancer, genetic diseases, birth defects, trauma, overdoses, fires, drownings and injuries - doctors and hospitals in America will cure all sick children. When a child enters an American hospital conscious and talking, he's supposed to leave conscious and talking.

And...only other people's children can die.

Would Avi have eaten the cake today (Israel Independence Day)?

Probably only the students and faculty of the Hebrew High School of New England, and a handful or so of other people, will understand the question ... and the ironic humor.

(I'll leave it at that, vehaMevin yavin.)

Thank You Notes

We are finally getting around to sending thank you notes to all those who extended their kindness to us, whether in the form of meals or other food, condolence notes, or donations. The delay is not from any lack of gratitude, but rather from the sorrow that gets re-enforced with each note we address.

Shopping

Whenever Avi needed to order an item like a computer part or accessory, he knew - sometimes to his frustration - that I would not purchase it immediately, not before I had done extensive comparison shopping on the Internet.

Now, I'm comparison shopping again for Avi ... for a monument.

I visited the cemetery yesterday in Wethersfield after work to recite the El Malei Rachamim prayer and to survey the variety of monuments. Reading the advanced ages of the other people interred, I could only say, "Avi, you don't belong here!"

There he was, a 15-year-old buried amidst people who had died in old age. It would have been worse had I spotted graves of other young people. I visited many cemeteries in my years as a congregational rabbi, and it always pained me to pass by the grave of a child, any child.

So how am I supposed to reduce Avi's existence to a granite stone, one that will be just among many and virtually indistinguishable from the rest and disappearing into a sea of dead gray? What am I supposed to have engraved on that insensate rock - Avi's name in Hebrew and English, and the usual vital statistics and stock phrases like "Beloved this" ... "Forever that"?

There is no "Forever" anything. Monuments give the illusion of eternity, but they too will succumb to the elements and perish long before the earth itself is consumed.