Our friend Marsha died just shy of a year ago. Today her family unveiled and dedicated her tombstone, following Jewish custom. My beloved and I attended along with other friends. We stood in the rain as a friendly Rabbi read the simple service. We were altogether about twenty, including Marsha’s small grandchildren who found ways to play in the puddles around us and to enjoy the weather that the rest of us fended off with raincoats and umbrellas.

The service was so moving that I eventually forgot the weather too. The Rabbi, who we guessed knew Marsha well, had written a poem about her, which he read. It captured her well, her brashness, her intellect–Marsha had two PhDs–her deep laugh that we all remembered as the Rabbi spoke of it, the mark of laughter she had need of as a polio survivor and at the end as she battled a liver disease, a lymphoma, and the devastations wrought by chemotherapy.

The memorial prayer the Rabbi intoned afterwards asks that the soul of the departed person be bound in the bonds of life (some translations say everlasting life). This Rabbi, today, spoke of Marsha’s soul as bound up with the souls of the living. As I looked about me at the friends and family congregated around Marsha’s grave, I knew it was so. I threw away my umbrella as I looked for a small stone to leave on the grave marker.