Re: “Sad Memories and Happiness Compete for Primacy”
Gratefully, members of the same family react widely differently to the death of a loved one.
Following Mom’s merciful death after a painful 2½-year struggle with cancer, an observer might have been surprised/disappointed by Pop’s overt response. Unflappable as ever, Pop soldiered on as he had for the 43 years of their marriage, never cracking, never revealing even a corner of his emotions, of the heavily weighted sadness that was haunting him. How did he do it?
When my wife died last year after three years of challenging ALS, I crashed. Everyone within range knew what and how I was feeling.
And then there is the author Dr. Rosemary Hartounian Cohen, a teacher for us all.
Dwelling on powerful ironies locked into the Jewish calendar, she has been recounting memories of her living daughter and her deceased daughter here for the past three days.
Nearly 25 years ago, unlike Pop and me, Dr. Cohen lost her younger daughter, Liana, with heartbreaking, unrecoverable (?) suddenness.
On the night before Liana was to leave for college, the Cohens and their four children were returning home from Shabbat services at their synagogue. A drunk driver ploughed into them. Everyone escaped except Liana. She was killed.
The tender, deeply committed, iron-willed manner in which the grieving mother, Dr. Cohen, has aggressively lived in front of the whole word is a model template for everyone who has lost or will lose a loved one.
I have known Dr. Cohen for 20 of those years, and my observation is that her grieving subsides only when she is asleep.
Two immutable factors have elevated Rosemary Cohen’s life from the shocking depths of instant death to the loftiest level available:
- Channeling her fondest memories of her high-achieving daughter who held world-changing promise into copious writings of personal and history books. Unerringly, her books reflect the values of a wife/mother/grandmother who is living exactly as G-d intended, and
- Living out her unquenchable faith in G-d through the comforting portals of Judaism.
Her post-Liana life is worth pondering, studying. Google her works. You may profit.
Ari Noonan can be reached at anoonan@thefrontpageonline.com
