Mumbai reverberation

Last week, Melina, Akiva's wonderful sitter/friend as well as Shutaf's educational supervisor came in the house without her usual sunny expression. Melina is always happy - she has the sunniest disposition and really understands how to spread that feeling to people around her. It doesn't hurt that she's just lovely to look at as well and has that joie de vivre/warm blooded nature of someone who grew up in a sunny climate ( Buenos Aires - despite economic collapse and anti-semitism).

This was right after the Mumbai event - I'm thinking of the Hebrew word used for event, אירוע, which is used for anything from an evening wedding to a bombing. Sort of strange, no? We all were feeling somewhat blindsided by what had happened, even though I often feel that I'm inured to bombings in that part of the world - I feel pained but not surprised when I read of them in the newspaper. Melina told me that where she works - a home/school for kids with significant disabilities, many whom will not survive childhood - housed the Holtzberg children, sons of Rivki and Rabbi Gabi, killed in the Chabad house last week. Their older son, died of Taysachs a couple of years ago and they have another child who's at the end of his life, also Taysachs, and now there's little Moishe, not to mention that Rivki was 6 mos pregnant when she was murdered. Melina said she had met both of them - they usually traveled in on their own to visit their son and she'd played with Moishe on a recent visit with his mother to the school. Melina said that both parents were lovely - young, of course, 'younger than me,' Melina mused, and that the school staff enjoyed spoiling Moishe on his visits - he was of course, healthy and both parents must have enjoyed that in ways that none of us can imagine.

And now, they're dead. It's just so depressing and sad. And as always in this small country, as Yehuda Amichai put it best of all, the 'diameter of the bomb' is very small, unexpectedly close, unbearably so.