IN GOD’S EYES

They settle around the small oak tree shielding themselves from the 90+degree heat and humidity of the hot Calverton sun. Program mates, housemates, and staff people all came to say a final goodbye and to view the unveiling of her stone. In the Jewish tradition when one is buried a rabbi on the gravestone performs a ceremony where the stone is uncovered after 1-year internment. The Kaddish is then said as all there who are gathered follow this tradition and law. This is the “unveiling”.

The Kaddish or Qaddish is a hymn of praises to God in this graveside service. The idea is that the magnification and sanctification of God’s name are celebrated.

She was a trusting soul, living under the canopy of state and voluntary largesse, supporting her with the benefits that others have contributed to give her life a meaning, since in the eyes of God, the Jewish and Christian as well as Muslim God, all lives are sacred, all life is sacred.

Legally I am her parent as her guardian. I helped her when and where I could through the committee and the wonderful people who dealt with her day-in and day-out. The two wonderful service coordinators who give so much of their time and effort, let alone comfort were there with her for her every need, attended to with the love of these wonderful people.

There were her housemates and program mates all gathered to say goodbye and it touched me as I listened to the Rabbi pray so beautifully and yet with reverence to God on her passing. As I looked around the vastness of the cemetery and then the small enclosed group of people, the ailing, the lame, the disabled and my Jewish brothers and sisters, I couldn’t help but wonder about the ugliness in this world. Of Jews hiding and protecting one another against the ugliness of the Nazis, huddling in fear for themselves and their children because they were born Jews, Persecution of the disabled because they were considered flawed and had to die, I think of the insanity that prevailed so many years ago, yet the lessons learned have not yet been read!

The cemetery itself was rather interesting in its vastness, where there are no stones but plaques that identify the dead as they press the earth. As you look at it you see only grass, unless you stand near a grave.

She is at rest now, I won’t mention her name though I fought hard that she be noticed, in death, she should have privacy and dignity, the dignity she was denied by many in her life. We are all imperfect, perfected by God’s hands and diminished by ourselves and this thing we call life. Her life was precious and now sanctified by her faith.