I murmur a prayer for them all, for the strangers unsmiling, never meeting another’s eye, holding a glance for a moment, for the girl whispering at the corner, and for the little boy, eyes wide and shoulder slumped with a heavy gray backpack, all pedestrians.
We are all pedestrians in this life. Walking ever so carefully, ever so vigilantly on a tightrope, not daring to look anywhere but ahead. We walk, we walk, and we keep on walking, waiting, holding our breaths, to make it to the end. Nobody wants to fall. Nobody wants to die.
It strikes me that death is particularly scary because no one knows what it is. It is intangible, ungraspable, elusive and fleeting – “Death,” John Donne says, “be not proud though some have called thee.” Death is a proud, charming executor. Noble and mighty, in velvet robes and a captivating smile, Death flirts with us sometimes, making our pulse race, and when he wants, smothers us with his love, suffocating every last breath. We know not what Death is.
In Euthyphro and The Apology, Socrates claims that to fear Death is to assume one knows what it is, what it holds. And yet, Jewish ideologies teach us that one should fear for his death every day, because when one dies he has ultimately reached the end of action, and where his soul stands now is where it shall remain.
This being said, how many people can actually claim to understand death, the concept, the ideas? Philosophers will philosophize, and everyone wonder, but one cannot know death until he dies and the number of people willing to take that course of action are few and far. How can we, therefore, understand when someone dies? During this time of year, Sefirah, we mourn the death of 
Rabbi Akiva’s students, and yet, can we fully comprehend our actions? None us personally knew Rabbi Akiva’s students, and although we are additionally mourning their lost Torah, there is still something within us that must mourn the individual, as well.
For a while, this concept was amorphous to me. One can mourn the death of one whom he or she knows usually quite easily. Being upset when someone whom one is close to is niftar is an understandable and even expected emotion. But being upset when someone whom one does not know passes away? That is more difficult, and even incomprehensible, in a sense. After all, if one was grieving every time someone, whether he knew him or not, died, he would have to spend the entire day crying, as death is usually a natural and normal part of life.
I learned my lesson. It had to have been Monday when my friend showed me the New York Times online, news of the Virginia Tech massacre emblazoned. I didn’t take it too seriously; I only read the headline briefly and made a quip about how it could happen here too. I didn’t think about it for the rest of the day. When I got home and read the news myself, alone in my room, it was different. No longer were the victims ordinary victims – they became people.
Often, we view the deceased as simply dead, especially if we do not know them well, and we don’t realize what they were and what they could have been. There was the senior with a 4.0 who was majoring in biology and English. There was the freshman that didn’t know what she was majoring in yet, but was in French class and had just started to make friends in college. There was the professor who stood in front of the door and protected his class while he himself died. How many hopes and dreams dwelled within their hearts? What were their goals? What were their desires? What did they think of before they went to sleep each night?
When one realizes that death is not only the passing of a figure in our lives, remote or close, but also the eradication of dreams, wishes and carefully planned hopes and goals, he senses not only the loss of a person, but the destruction of a world. “What happens to a dream deferred?” asks Langston Hughes. And truly what does? When a dream dies there is no memory left of it, no trace, no visible outline. When a person dies, not only do they join the dead, but their essence, their dreams, join the dead.
What would we do if we knew we were going to die tomorrow? No one likes to think such thoughts, people would prefer not be morbid, but rather to think about more pleasant things like rainbows, unicorns and butterflies, but no one knows when or how they are going to die. No one can choose that, one can only choose how he is now. But so often we take life for granted, life is something we expect and each breath is just another breath. Because we do not know what death essentially is, we cannot appreciate and cherish life. What we do know about death is that it ends our action in this world.
What is most arresting about death is not that it’s over, but that there is no more hope, no more wishes, no more dreams. And what really matters when one dies? It is imperative to live as though one is dying – to spend each day to its fullest, because as much as we are sure there will be a tomorrow, what if there’s not? What if someone brings a gun with him to lecture tomorrow and starts shooting? Who was to guess, who was to know?
We should live our dreams now, and not some day when the time comes, because unfortunately, that time might never come. As Chazal say, “Al tomar li’ch’she’efneh, eshneh, shema lo tipaneh.” And if our dreams die, what are we? Norman Cousins, a famous essayist once said “Death is not the greatest loss. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.” And if we die, our dreams are nothing. We are nothing.
“Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me/ The carriage held just but ourselves/ And Immortality,” writes Emily Dickinson. Who stops for death? Death waits for us and grabs us unsuspectingly, and though we may try to keep walking on that treacherous tightrope, he will pull us into his carriage, and until the day when “Death dies” (Donne), our reason for living must be more than the mere fact that we are awake. We must live for our dreams and fulfill them. “To be,” Kant says, “is to do.”
Sometimes, walking, I want to forget everything for a moment. I would just like to walk and breathe in the smells, touch the noises, feel the colors around me and grasp the world, my world, with all ten fingers. Sometimes I just want to scream to the world that so many things don’t matter so much, and that all the people should just stop for a minute, just stop and breathe and think and realize what matters. Sometimes I want to run, just to feel the adrenaline tingling through my veins, but I’m afraid I’ll fall and hurt myself. Sometimes I just want to walk around holding a sign that says, “People are just people and people are fragile, inside them lie delicate dreams, don’t let them shatter.”
I can’t though. All I can do is dream, decide and devote, building the future one steady, solid brick at a time, because how can one know what will happen in two minutes, let alone two weeks? All I can do is keep walking, keep walking down that skinny, perilous tightrope, going, living, because if I stop I’m dying. Keep going, keep walking, eyes wide open, the burden of the world on our shoulders, we must keep walking, living while we are alive. Because Death, oh, sly, smiling Death is waiting to kill the pedestrians.
Walk.
Bracha Goykadosh has written over a hundred articles for various publications. Her first novel, Footprints in the Sand, was published last December and her second novel, Shadows on the Moon is currently being serialized in The Jewish Press. She can be contacted at
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