Perhaps In Time

Everything that follows this paragraph was written on Monday. It's now shortly after Shabbos. I am in the comfort of friend's home. Just had a lovely Shabbos. Learned. Heard Rabbi Abraham Twerski speak. Spent time with old friends, and and and (in a good way). I had envisioned the post below as being longer. I wanted to write about my childhood friend Tammy's (during shiva for my mother) asking if I was in touch with Scott. I wanted to write about quoting him (on the day I got the news of his death) in a true moshol about tafasta merubah lo tafastah. Perhaps, in time.

A friend told me that it was good that I wrote about zoning out for Kaddish because it's one of those things that happens to everyone but people don't admit it. I was going to post the question of what to do when you come home feeling tired and wiped. Then I had a long talk with a long time friend and answered my own question. In the wake of Scott's death there are emails shooting around about a high school reunion. There's a date and everything.

There's so much about aveilut I don't get. I think I'm skipping my school dinner even though I would like to be there for the honorees. A dear friend is getting married soon and I don't know if I will go. A colleague feels strongly that our faculty should hang together more. I've long thought we should have a get together not during school hours. But for the next year I don't know. I just sighed. This reunion would be nice. The main organizer has been respectful and kind in his correspondence with me: "Sorry about your loss… Of course we would love to have you @ the reunion. If there is a way we can help you out, minyan, dvar Torah, etc...please advise."

I just got a beautiful email from Scott's sister. Scott. Two weeks ago for Parshat Bo I gave out a Dvar Torah sheet of this essay (please take a look and read the give and take in the comments), containing these words:

Words of Torah are described as placed upon our hearts. The Kotzker Rebbe explained that words aren't always taken inside a person's heart. Once stated, words rest atop the heart and when the heart opens they will be there to go in. This is why children were taken to the Beit HaMikdash for the Torah reading of Hakhel. This also explains why a day school education is so important even if it seems ineffective.
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This approach may help with my childhood friend Scott's haunting lament that Yeshiva taught him Gemora and Chumash and Tefila but not love of Torah. Perhaps the answer is that the best anyone can do for anyone else is put words in ears or on hearts. The absorption of the truth and goodness of Torah is a private process and a personal responsibility.