Few people understand passion, either their own or that of others. This incomprehension occurs even between two people who care for each other, indeed, who may care for each other very much. I did not understand Ariela’s passion when I should have. Enlightenment came to me on a bus ride from Beersheba to Jerusalem, over five thousand miles from home, and forty-five years too late to do anything about it. It arrived as a gestalt does, not changing the details of what is seen but rather how one sees them.

#

Last summer I visited my granddaughter who was attending a religious school in the Old City of Jerusalem. Friday evening we ate at the home of one of her classmates. During dinner there was the usual conversation, where are you from, where did you go to school, do you happen to know so-and-so. It turned out that our hostess knew an old friend of mine, Ariela Rose.

“Small world,” I said. “How do you know Ariela?”

“We met in a creative writing program at Bar-Ilan. You?”

“We grew up together in Baltimore; we both went to UMB. After college, however, we took different roads. I went to graduate school in engineering at Johns Hopkins. Ariela moved to Israel. We’ve not kept in touch regularly, but from time to time I hear about her through mutual acquaintances. How is she?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Levine, but we received news that Ariela passed away at her home in Beersheba late this afternoon, just before the start of the Sabbath. You couldn’t know, of course.”

“Blessed be the True Judge. I’m sorry to hear this. Ariela was never robust, even when young, but…well. One never knows. In Beersheba, did you say?”

“Yes, she loved the Negev, something about the simplicity of the desert appealed to her. Her funeral is scheduled for eleven o’clock Sunday morning in Beersheba. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend.”

“I’ve never been to Beersheba. I think I’ll try to get to the funeral, to pay respects to an old friend. We were quite close once.”

“I must warn you. This time of year, the weather in Beersheba tends to fluctuate between very hot and unbearably hot. Hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, cotton clothing, and be sure to drink a lot of water.”

“Thanks. I’m just wondering. Did Ariela ever marry; do you know?”

“No. Ariela had one passion in life—poetry.”

#

Early Sunday morning I took a bus from Jerusalem to Beersheba. The funeral was to be held at the “New” cemetery in Beersheba. The cemetery is not new; it’s just newer than two others in town referred to as the old, and the very-old cemeteries. A taxi dropped me off at the cemetery’s entrance. It was only a short walk to where the funeral was to be held.

Four men carried Ariela’s body on a stretcher from where it had been prepared for burial and placed it on a rectangular marble block centered under a concrete porch. Her body, wrapped in a white shroud, lay beneath a blue velvet covering with a white Star of David embroidered on it. In Israel, there is no coffin—a stark reminder of our return to dust.

Not many people were present, maybe seven, or eight, not counting the cemetery employees. There were no chairs; we stood in a half circle around Ariela’s body. The funeral director asked if anyone would like to speak. A young man standing next to me said that he would like to say a few words.

“I met Miss Rose only once,” he began, “at an informal gathering at her home. Its purpose was to discuss poetry. My name had been given to Miss Rose by my literature professor at Ben-Gurion University. There were, perhaps, five of us in attendance. We sat around a long table in her dining room. She had requested that each of us bring a poem we liked, one that spoke to us. We took turns reading the poems we had brought. When it was my turn, I read Miss Rose’s poem, ‘Never Alone.’”

He paused briefly.

“She asked me why I liked the poem I had read, why it spoke to me. I told her that I liked the idea of the poem, that as long as one has poetry, loneliness is banished. She came up to me, placed her hand on my cheek and said, ‘It’s not quite right.’ I asked her what she meant, what was not quite right. ‘I should have said poetry,’ she replied, ‘or one of its lovers.’”

There was no breeze. Even under the porch, the heat was stifling. Only two of us accompanied the body to the place of interment—the young man who had spoken, and myself.

We stood beside the freshly dug grave, and after Ariela’s body was lowered into the pit, took turns shoveling earth over her remains. Dust covered our shoes.

I took a midafternoon bus back to Jerusalem. Gazing out the window, I recalled a rainy autumn afternoon in Baltimore that I had spent with Ariela in her dorm room. At one point she opened a notebook and asked if she could read me something. She read me a poem. I didn’t know then that it was hers.

“Why do you waste your time reading such stuff, such make-believe?” I asked. “It’s useless, Ariela. The world is a mess. We need to fix it. We need to focus on facts, not fairy tales.”

Ariela smiled and closed her notebook. She looked at me.

“I understand,” she said. “Let’s go get some coffee.”

– Gershon Ben-Avraham