SHARP EDGES OF LIFE

     Yesterday was a day of contradictions, a day where sharp edges of life kept hitting each other, turning from laughter to tears in an instant, sometimes both at the same time. It was a roller coaster, frightening and invigorating at the same time. Particularly when one compared different eras to and with each other and wondered - if, will it, won't it....questions without assured and definite answers, only hopes and dreams.
     Of late, we have been delving deeper into family background, what happened to large families that disappeared without a trace. Families in Europe began to disappear in the chaos  of mass movements during and after WWI when the war, the fighting, the border changes, the ethnic violence, changed the world. People were left bereft of family and many never were to be reconnected. Not even two decades later, beginning officially in 1933 with the takeover of Germany by Hitler and the Nazis, the stealing of the Sudetenland, and the acquiescence of the world, mass movements began again. Terrified people were beginning to run for lives or were being forcibly removed, even from countries where they had lived for centuries.
       After the slaughter was officially over, though killings continued even afterwards as many people refused to return property, real and/or personal, to surviving and returning Jews, there was a search such as never had been before. So many were just gone. Nowhere to be found. The numbers, the overwhelming numbers of the dead, the murdered, the lost, became too hard to bear, even as frantic searches went on, desperate searches trying to find a sibling, a parent, a child, any cousin, a friend, a neighbor, someone - but often in vain.
      The chaos continued even as people tried to rescue children hidden in private homes, abbeys, orphanages, monasteries, convents, wherever, an effort to reclaim the lost of the Jewish nation, to reclaim a future for these children, some of whom did not even remember anymore who they were, where they had come from, whose parents were forgotten. Then the Iron Curtain began to draw closed and refugees returning from Russian slave labor camps where they had been imprisoned during the Soviet invasions and paranoia, and they too began to search. But the times defeated those efforts, the confusion, the chaos, the tumult, all came together with an evil synergy that prevented reunions, prevented hopes, dashed dreams. So people gave up on searching and tried to rebuild broken lives.
    Decades later people began the search anew, often by members of the next generation who wished to know more of the past in order to live the present and plan for the future. Who were they? Who were their ancestors? What were they like? Were there burial sites? Some even began to dare to think, to hope, that possibly, against all facts and known data, some long thought murdered, displaced forever, had actually been lost in the shuffle, never able to have made the connections in that unrivaled sea of confusion, taken to Sweden or Switzerland as they feebly tried to make up for their sins of the war, their hateful behavior with Jewish refugees running for their lives.
     Tentative, very tentative and often shy and timid reach outs began. Organizations grew and over this past week we have found the lost, survivors and descendants, or hopes of survivors based on pictures we were able to  find. Enormous archives have been releasing transcribed records and searches have gone deep and wide, almost desperately so, as the searchers seek desperately to tie the links together, to find the remaining remnants, to be with family once more, to honor those of their living families who had felt the loneliness of being the sole survivor of huge families.
     We are among those who now have the time, the resources, the knowledge, to go forward, slowly, carefully, to find the past and bring it to the now and the future. We have succeeded to a partial degree but are hopeful. The sharp edges of discovering how many, including my namesake, my Bubby's siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, branches of the family from the countries of Europe, how many were slaughtered; well, these edges hurt. Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, Ghetto Lvov, Ninth Fort, Ponary Forest, the ravines and forests of Lithuania, the streets of Amsterdam - all now had pieces of my family, ashes and bones, memories, all gone in wisps of smoke, in rivers of ashes dumped in water and on farmland as fertilizer, buried and shot along roads to more death - and we wept. We cried at the loss. We cried at the family resemblances seen, so obvious. We cried at what could have been, what should have been. We cried at the inhumanity of man and the fact that it still continues. 
     Mass slaughters are continuing in this world of ours. For what? Why? For different names we call the G-d we worship? For different skin tones? For different looks or language? For different cultures? For simple greed and innate nastiness? For scapegoats needed by evil men who wish to rule and dominate? For more mothers to parade on the streets of Argentina and Mexico, other nations calling for the desperacidos, the disappeared?
      So where are the sharp edges of joy, those edges that smooth the pain of the cuts of those harmful edges that never seem to dull. For me, yesterday, it was a fake call to come to the computer to see whatever, and to find a screen full of smiling, laughing, excited, loving faces, kids, grandkids, all shouting Surprise! Happy Birthday! Wish we were with you came over loud and clear. One child says when asked what Tata does best  answered - "Hugging me, giving me hugs." Another says, "just being there, helping us, talking with us, listening to us." And so in the midst of laughter came the tears; I miss them so. The hugs and kisses. The memories and laughs as we gather together. Even the squabbling over petty peeves from long gone childhood! I miss it all. So very much, deep within my very bones, deep within my heart.
      Hours later, when we all disconnected, I wondered, when, why, how, will we ever get together again. Is there no way to safely reunite, to physically hold on to those beloved people, to feel the future hopes and the determination to never allow the past to return, to teach them their history, their traditions, to take pride in where they come from, to discover the link of generations and the dire necessity to keep those links smooth and strong, to disallow any more cuts and destruction of and by sharp edges.
      And so the next year of my life begins. It has me wondering what will be over its months, even over the next few weeks. It is a world with cracks and resemblances to times of danger, of a rising and feverish hatred permeating the air. But there is also the rising hopes of those who have had enough, who will fight this hatred wherever it appears, who will speak out, those who will finally find the moral courage to tell it like it is rather than cowering behind a fear based on their own built up cowardice.
     The world needs to remember the past, its glories and its errors, the consequences of it all. Only then, as many historians warn us, continue to warn us, plead with us, only then, if we remember that past and endeavor to avoid the errors, only then can we hope to build a world where all will be safe, stay safe and well, and move ever forward in a world replete with family and friends, a world where hands are stretched out with kindness and care, open wide, rather than clenched in a fist.
      Am I returning to an idealism of my youth or am I speaking these thoughts aloud in the hope of convincing myself that there is a future for all of us? Dare I believe that there will be a world where all will be able to live in peace, a world where we respect each other and the Creation of the Lord, where we give the earth the respect it needs and deserves, even if for selfish reasons alone. We cannot live in a world ravaged of trees, of greenery, destroyed by the raping of the land, the polluting of the air and water, the knees on the necks of all those not numbered among the uberwealthy. Dare we hope that we can erode the sharp edges of life into a patina that goes deep, lasts forever, a patina of generosity and love? I hope, I surely do. In any case, Don Quixote awaits. Together the two idealists will ride, hoping that we will find other dreamers to join with us.