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.