Missing my mom

I don't come from a normal family, but who does? Below is a picture of my brother Mike. He visited my mom in the hospital immediately following her heart transplant. The doctor who performed the transplant reported that my brother asked him a question that no one else had ever asked, "Can I have her old heart?". Strangely enough he beat me to the punch, I thought it would be a nifty item in a jar of formaldehyde on the mantle. Mike had very different plans.



He had a trip to Israel planned and thought it would be a good idea to bury her heart on the Mountain of Olives in Jerusalem. I asked him later what would make someone want to do something like that. His explanation was complex but heartfelt. I'll try and give you the summery of his explanation.



He explained that each of us were made in G-d's image. And that every bit of our being was a part of G-d. Mike told me that in Israel after a bus bomb or some such atrocity it is not uncommon for all tissue/organs/body matter to be collected and given a proper burial. Evidently in Jewish laws, there are specific rules that help one in their transition to the promised land.

As bizarre is this all seems, I am trying not to trivialize what my brother wanted for my mother's heart.



The doctor gave Mike the heart, which was vacuum packed in formaldehyde. Mike packed the heart which showed us so much love over the years in his suitcase and off he went.

I asked him why it was in so many pieces, he told me that they had to test it after the transplant. . . whatever.



I asked him why he chose that spot to bury her heart. He said that it was one of the holiest spots on earth and that he had buried some of my grandfather's ashes there as well at the foot of the grave of a friend of Mike's.



The Mount of Olives (also Mount Olivet, Hebrew: Har HaZeitim, sometimes Jebel et-Tur, "Mount of the Summit," or Jebel ez-Zeitun, "Mount of Olives") is a mountain ridge to the east of Jerusalem. It is named from the olive trees with which its sides are clothed. At the foot of the mountain is the Gardens of Gethsemane where Jesus stayed in Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives is the site of many important Biblical events.

In the Book of Zechariah the Mount of Olives is identified as the place from which God will begin to redeem the dead at the end of days. For this reason, Jews have always sought to be buried on the mountain, and from Biblical times to the present day the mountain has been used as a cemetery for the Jews of Jerusalem. There are an estimated 150,000 graves on the Mount, including those of many famous figures. Just a few of these include the tomb of Zechariah (who prophesied there), Yad Avshalom, and a host of great rabbis from the 15th to the 20th centuries including Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Major damage was suffered when the Mount was occupied by Jordan during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, with Jordanians using the gravestones from the cemetery for construction of roads and toilets, including gravestones from millennia-old graves. When Israel took back the area, the Israelis painstakingly repatriated as many of the surviving gravestones as possible.



So, there you have it. . . . a story you don't hear every day.