Gerald,
We are here gathered together, your wife, children, siblings, family and friends, on your first yartzheit. Although your were mortally ill, your passing was traumatic and sad, your valiant fight for survival against all odds was remarkable, and a paradigmatic example of the forces of life we all are blessed with at birth, knowing full well the inevitable end. Truly, longevity is not the ultimate purpose, but how we spend our allotted time and what we accomplish in this period.
I think the first year of bereavement is the hardest. To try to understand the trauma and hurt of our loss I would like to use an analytical analogy, from the world I live in, using your, Gerald’s analytical approach, which you taught me. Just as after a myocardial infarction or heart attack there is damage and dysfunction of the surrounding heart muscle, general depression of heart function, there is over time recovery. Depending on the severity of the initial attack and rapidity of treatment to reinstitute blood flow, the initial damage resolves and often there is complete recovery without scar formation, muscle death.
Gerald, your passing is a scar in our hearts that will never disappear, however over time our function will improve. Your presence and legacy is with us and will strengthen us. You are here, and I can vividly see you standing before us and asking: “What is the big fuss? I had a melanoma, I was given the best and most up-to-date treatment, but that was not sufficient, and inevitably, I succumbed.” For us, it is hard to come to terms with how you were plucked from a life of contributing, volunteering, freely dispensing you analytic reports, tending to and nurturing your wife and offspring. Your charismatic presence and inner moral fiber, your inability to understand deviation from the truth affects us and makes us ponder about ourselves, how to attain some of your qualities, especially now in the month of Ellul and the approaching Yom Hadin. You remain a help and strengthening, for the comforting of your wife, children, family and friends.
יהי זכרך ברוך