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Tia Asks Why: A CBC Interview with Rabbi Grimberg

11/12/2018 01:30:58 PM

Dec11

Thai Asks Why: What happens after you die?

Tai Poole is trying to find answers to life’s biggest questions – and he’s only 11 years old!

So when the CBC asked if Tai could interview me (along with other clergy) about life after death, it was a request I could not refuse. So I agreed, but with a heavy heart. The interview was conducted in the first year after my husband’s death.

How do we talk to children about death? Because, if we can talk to them about this impossible subject, then we can talk about it to ourselves. Every conversation about death is a conversation about life. Death is an ultimate question. It is a question we can only answer through living.

What did we learn from the lives of the ones we have lost?

When our turn comes, in turn, what do we want to leave behind?

How does death change us, and can it change us for the better?

I believe that people are wrong in thinking that death is the end of the conversations we have with those we have lost. For many of us, it is only a beginning. I always felt that the cemetery was not a quiet place of rest but the loudest place on earth.

As we stand over the grave, every promise, every secret, every apology, every story hovers, flapping their strong, loud wings. In turn, we pray that they become white doves after we leave.

My time with Tai was not only meaningful and thought-stimulating, but also deeply moving. I hope that, by the end of the conversation, he and I and our quiet listeners were moved towards life, taking our dead with us.

Fri, 29 March 2024 19 Adar II 5784