Gloria Mundi

Sometimes, after my daily dose of radiation, I would stop at a small bath store near the hospital to buy a bar of soap, perhaps, or a bottle of bath gel. I liked the little shop; it was holding its own among the retro hippie emporia of the neighborhood, no hint yet of tea tree or patchouli or tie-dye.

Looking back on that time now, I wonder whether I was drawn to soaps and gels because, unlike, say, a belt or a pair of shoes, they could be counted upon not to outlast me. I don't know; I didn't go in search of a belt or shoes, and was in no mood for metaphors of mortality.

Down in the radiation suite, beyond natural light, it was as if a scrim had been lifted, revealing a just perspective on everything. I would look with keen interest at the other victims, wondering whether, like me, they had come to a new understanding, an acceptance—at times, even a celebration—of the temporal nature of all things.

Which was not to say I had not always known that nothing lasts. My twelve years in an Anglican school in South Africa had built in daily reminders of the impermanence of the things of this earth. So, too, did the poetry we read, the histories, the Bible itself. I would listen, I would read, I would understand. And then, when school was over, I would go back into my life, feeling immortal.

Still, as a Jew, I rather envied Christians their faith in an afterlife. Every morning, in prayers, we sang hymns, glorious hymns, Heaven all around us. "Everything shall perish away," sang our Zulu maid, daughter of a Methodist minister, with a lusty cheerfulness that made perishing away seem like joyful anticipation.

But for me, peddling off to Hebrew School three afternoons a week, there was no such assurance. Jews, as I came to understand it, didn't pay much attention to Heaven; when we died, it seemed, we disappeared. What did matter was to remember our earthly history, to observe our laws, and, never mind what the Almighty allowed to happen to us, to praise, glorify, exalt, and extol Him regardless—He-whose-name-was-so-terrible-it-was-never-to-be-uttered.

Meanwhile, my mind would wander away into the future, that time that seemed so slow in coming, when all this would be over, school and Hebrew school both, and I'd be free. But to be what, I would wonder? And where? And how? And even though I knew that the Almighty tended to smite those who disobeyed His laws, being smitten didn't worry me too much, sitting there on that hard bench with other fractious and smelly children, all of us worn out after a long day of it.

So, I would stare out the window in what I took to be His direction and implore Him to get me through this and out into the real world as quickly as possible. If He did, I promised, I would praise, glorify, exalt, and extol Him every day of my life. Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.

But then, out of nowhere, could come a thought to make my heart jump in terror: at any moment, death itself might snatch away my mother or my father. It had happened to others, it could happen to me. And for this even the thought of Heaven would provide no comfort. I wanted both of them here, on earth, alive, and if someone had to die first, I wanted it to be me. Then, at least, there would be no question of being left behind.

And so I kept a firm eye on them, taking comfort from their insouciance in the face of life's terrors as I saw them—doors left wide open to the night, windows too—and even from the way my father drove, like a madman, cornering on two wheels, pushing the old DeSoto to 108 mph on the open road.

When, finally, he did die, not in a car crash but, at the...