[Avodah] avelut after 12 months

[via Avodah]

From: Eli Turkel via Avodah _avodah at lists.aishdas.org_ 
(mailto:avodah at lists.aishdas.org) 


>>The gemara says that Yoseph was certainly alive because  Yaakov mourned 
him
the whole time while we know that the dead are forgotten  after 12 months
(memory of the bet hamikdash is different)

I have a  personal problem with this statement. To my sorry I know of
several people  who have lost children especially in the age of 18-25. One
thing I have  learned from these people is that one never forgets a child  
<<


--Eli Turkel

 
 
>>>>>
 
My grandmother had a baby daughter who died at the age of five months, and  
fifty years or more after that, I once asked her about the baby she had  
lost.  She started to cry as if it had just happened, and described the  baby 
in detail -- what she looked like, what she could do at five months and so  
on.  So I learned the lesson that a parent never forgets a lost  child.  
However, she only cried for a little while and then returned to her  cheerful 
self.  I'm sure that in the year after her baby died, she was not  cheerful.
 
I don't think "gezeira al hameis" means the person is  literally forgotten, 
but that the degree of mourning becomes less  intense. Initially the 
bereaved person, especially a bereaved parent,  simply cannot believe the child is 
gone, and constantly thinks and even dreams  about the child.  With the 
passage of months and years, the knowledge that  the child is truly gone is 
assimilated and the parent goes on with life, even if  a heaviness always 
remains somewhere in the background.   
 

--Toby Katz
t613k at aol.com
..
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