Seven Days- Part I
Day One
The sun rose over Miami, Florida but in the mind of one Joshua Kleiner it would never rise. The fox was a high-powered executive working at your typical multi-national corporation based in the Sunshine State, with a lovely wife and two beautiful children. But all that was rendered as naught the day he found out that his brother had passed away after a long battle with the disease that crippled him when he was about fifty.
"What's the problem with David?" he asked the doctor after he was reported to have collapsed at a local delicatessen and was rushed to a hospital.
"We don't really know how long David has left to live," the lion would tell him "It's canid myelin degeneration, a very common ailment of canids from Eastern Europe. My brother-in-law also was claimed by it. You know that in nearly every creature, there are neuron encased in myelin, like the plastic around wires. Well, in David's case the myelin is decomposing and his brain is losing the ability to send impulses to his body.
"David will lose his ability to move and be paralyzed and then one day, he won't even be able to breathe," the doctor said, a low voice of defeat, low by even the standards of the lions, emanated from his muzzle. The way he said those words was indicative of someone who had tried everything to save Joshua's dear brother. But it was all unfortunately too late. So when the phone call came, dreaded as it was, he knew that he would have to return to his brother's home. David, who lived alone in a single-occupant household was nowhere near as successful as Joshua, having to rely on financial aid from both his parents and brother. He was unable to hold down a job and many felt he had mental issues, though he would never discuss with a doctor.
As soon as Joshua came to the old house which his brother lived in, he was amazed at the austerity and the smallness of the house. Unable to do even the simplest tasks of house-cleaning, the entire house was filled with a disgusting aroma that commanded Joshua to open the windows and take out some of the trash. The smell was overpowering enough to a normal person but to a fox with a heightened sense of smell, it was unbearable. He knew full well that once the funerary period was ended, the Seven Days of Mourning would officially begin. He would not be allowed to leave the house as the other mourners came, for the next week, Joshua would shower only in cold water so as not to derive pleasure in any way. He was not to cook but was to rely on food given to him by the mourners who would come and visit him during the week. He needed to carry a suitcase with clean clothes there as doing laundry was also forbidden during these days. Joshua could not shave, could not do anything work-related, and his reading material was limited to the prescribed readings or anything in the deceased's home. (And there was nothing in that but dusty, long-neglected books, hardly legible.)
The last proscription hurt Joshua the most- in a small house like this, threadbare down to the black-and-white TV which had no vertical hold, he needed something to distract him from the pain of losing his brother but there were no books readable. The only ones he did find of any recent publication were filled with the odd-shaped wedges that Joshua recognized as Hebrew but during his time pursuing his dream of selling real estate had neglected to learn. This was of course, a far cry from Mr. Kleiner's usual mansion-like home with its entertainment systems and video game consoles and wide library filled with all kinds of treasures. Instead, here the fox would wait for hours in this dimly-lit shack which, had no air conditioning to protect its occupants from the heat. 'At least he died in the winter months', thought Joshua.
KNOCK! KNOCK! He heard the knocking on the door and saw his father standing there, wearing what appeared to be a very expensive formal jacket and Joshua well aware of the tradition, ripped a hole in the collar of the jacket- the tearing representing the ancient custom of rending clothes when heart-broken.Aaron was carrying the home-cooked meal for the two of them to share- it was to be the comforting meal for the first day of mourning.
"May He who is in all places comfort you among the other mourners," Joshua's canned, almost emotionless reply was to his father. Aaron could sense this and was quite amiss at his son's total lack of sympathy. He had already seen traces of it when he took a half-hearted and weak approach to shoveling dirt on David's coffin.
"Why do you show no sympathy to your brother? Isn't in written that we should be our brother's keepers?" he asked as they moved to the small windowless room where Joshua and his father would sit and talk.
"But you yourself even called David a liability financially and you made it sound like it would be better if you and Rachel had never conceived him. He was always the runt of the order and you knew it. So don't be so shocked that he was the first to go," Joshua started his red face even more red for the anger of this loss. Not even his hunger could get the better of him at this moment.
"Just becuase he cost us money doesn't make him any less in the eyes of the Almighty. This isn't about who was the more successful brother but whose memory we are honoring. You still have the greatest blessing on the earth which is life. But you must use it to help others more than just yourself."
Those words struck Joshua in the secret places of the heart. The fox had gained money to build a kingdom, a kingdom of real estate in Miami, but one whose foundation was rubble and sand. "But don't I give freely a generous amount to the temple? Have you seen how much I give to Sons of the Covenant?" he struggled weakly to find a way to justify his greed and shallow behavior by his mighty donations.
"And yet you couldn't give your brother so much as the opportunity to die in one of the mansions you sold, let alone your super-mansion built on those massive profits. Do you realize that someday you too will die and whetehr you lived in a ramshackle or a palace will mean nothing. No one should have to expire in a place like this," his father told him sternly as Joshua buried his head in his paws.
"Remember all those days after Saturday school, I told you about the Two Conditional Questions." And Joshua knew what those questions were, though he had not spent much time contemplating them himself.
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?" he said aloud, if only to placate his father who was accusing him of his lack of generosity. And the most harmful part about what his father was saying was that it was true, all true.
"You built an empire for yourself because you knew no one in the world, not even me or Rachel could provide success for you. But you treated your brother with contempt, because you felt he was 'flawed goods'. You were only for yourself, so then the question is 'Who are you' "?
At that moment, Joshua burst into tears, red in the face. Joshua had been exposed by his own father as being tight-pawed and uncaring for the ones who had little.
"Ok, I'm a monster. I'm a cheat, I'm a liar and I really don't care about others," he would shout.
"And... and I can't even talk to my own father without being humiliated. And all I want to do is change- change who I am as a person. I'll actually attend temple services and stop working on Saturdays if that would make you happy," the fox said to his father, now bawling into his old man's thousand-dollar suit.
"It isn't about making me happy or yourself, for the matter. We have a moral obligation to do what is right for us, our friends, society, and for the world around us. When we do these things, we spread goodwill, and when we spread goodwill, we can repair the world. Atonement is painful and repentance is not easy. They had to be torn down and built back up. And I'm sorry too for being so sharp with my words."
"It had to be done, Father. I see now the tradition of the sitting shiva. But where do I start in meding my ways? We don't get professional grief counselors or psychologists for this ordeal- we only have each other." The tears had finally stopped flowing as he began to eat the meal of comfort, which consisted of a beef sandwich. After you go, then it will be my mother, your wife Rachel, then his sons and daughters (David had sired children decades before being declared a vegetable), my other brother Isaac, my sister Esther, and then his estranged Gentile wife, Rosa?"
"Well, yes, I know it's an odd family, I know he married outside of the faith, outside of his species even, and we didn't like him for that but who are we to judge now? Joshua but they were who we have to go on. I just only hope that maybe it was all a part of a divine plan to make you stop being so self-centered. And also to bring us together at this sad moment in our lives."
And with that, Aaron left his son, still chewing on the sandwich as well as his former actions. Perhaps there was more to his brother than he would have thought but his heart was still not softened enough to admit it. David would always be the runt of the order, teh disgarce to the family. Or maybe, perhaps there was more to him than just a mentally-regressed cub in an adult body that Joshua wasn't aware of... yet. In the days to come, there would be other mourners associated with David to come and knock on the door. And Joshua still had much to learn.