Oy vey, we're all gonna' die

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Oy, Vey, We’re All Gonna’ Die

When my brother and I were young we would stay with my grandparents for a few hours after school. As we left my grandmother would bless us. 

"You should live and be well," she said. 

Powerful stuff, that. 

I can't remember if she put her hands on our heads while saying it— it's been a long time— but I have a vague visual memory of her face, her mouth, and her housedress. We are at her front door, leaving with our mother to go home for dinner. Gramma says these words, “You should live and be well.” Every. Single. Time.

What, from her own experience? Did she watch people die? Or did the words come from her grandmother’s hands?  Gramma passed away at 91.

But, as we say in my tribe, most of us are not on her madrayga. (rhymes with ha-tray-la). It is the Hebrew word for step or level. She and my grandfather only survived a pogram because the Czar let the Jews go on Yom Kippur, assuming they could afford the passage to America.

At the end of our visit, when my patients ask how I'm doing, I sign off by joking;

"Oh, you know. Just waiting to die." 

It always gets a laugh. It's the elephant in the room. I'm older than my grandmother had been when she blessed us. I'm in that vulnerable demographic. And people die from this virus.

I can say what I want about how healthy I am, how fit, how I can breathe as well as your average yogi-in-training (swimming for years has served me well), but to be honest, in my most rational heart of hearts I ask:  Am I, though? Will it be enough? What about that bronchitis last year?

But hopefully, yes, it is. And quarantine should help. So I tell them: You’re not in the office. I’m in WFH, work-from-home. We’re good. I’m not afraid (yes, I lie! I lie all the time!). We’ll get through this. 

In my community I'm not feeling the optimism. Like the rest of society they are hoarding food, and it is worse because of Passover. Passover has always been a time for making sure there is enough food that has no chometz, leaven. Passover preparation moves the needle for the rational and the anxious alike. Everyone is in the same rush to get ready. But we can’t even rush about from store to store as we once did, hunting down what we need for the holiday.  And we don’t like sending our children.

But back to the catastrophic expectation. Those of us who aren't worried about running out of food so much as dying think: It's that six degrees of separation thing. That's what triggers the fatalism. We know someone who had contact with someone, who had contact with someone else—  who tested positive!

Sometimes it's only two degrees of separation. But those words, tested positive, are foreboding, no matter how many degrees away.

As in, You’re next. 

When my sons were about 14 they were in Yeshiva, the local Jewish high school. Faculty and students did not speak Yiddish, not usually, but Yiddishisms can be heard in the hallways and these trickled home. My adolescent twin sons came home one day singing a Yiddish song they had translated to English.

Oy vey, we're all gonna' die.
Oy vey, we're all gonna' die.
Only Torah and only mitzvahs
Are gonna help us now.

The tune is catchy. My partner and I just recorded it, if anyone’s interested.

The boys had been learning a tractate of Talmud Berachot (A gemarah, legal book. Parsing it out berach rhymes with prof, chot with moat, hard ch) 

Again this is my recollection. Within the holy book we find the words, we're all going to die. It is something the rabbis talk about.

I'm sure I responded to the kids by saying  You don't need to be a talmudic scholar to know this. 

And yet, they sang the song over and over again, laughing until they cried. It is one of those tunes, quite frankly, that becomes an ear worm, catchy, contagious.  Pun intended.  

File singing, and yes, facing the catastrophic expectation, under Coping.

You should live and be well,

Linda Freedman

*mitzvahs  The good deeds commanded by the Old Mighty (my grandfather’s name for his Higher Power. There are 613 mitzvot in the Torah. 

PS   I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest this post by a blogger at Chabad.org.  (They would appreciate the song)  Check out 10 Things I've Learned About Life in the Midst of the Corona Crisis

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