I know this sounds dramatic, but I’m reading this week’s parashah at my desk and crying. 

The Torah portion opens with immense detail for a “chukat haTorah” (ritual law) about finding and ritually slaughtering an unblemished red cow to purify oneself from encountering a corpse. Impressively enough (huge thanks to the Torah for being weird), that’s not what’s disturbing me. The piece of this parashah that upsets me the most is that Moshe loses both of his siblings one right after the other, and just thinking about losing my sister is heartbreaking, but the difference in how Miriam and Aaron’s deaths are talked about is hurting my heart. 

The first line of Bamidbar/Numbers chapter 20 says: 

וַיָּבֹאוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל כָּל־הָעֵדָה מִדְבַּר־צִן בַּחֹדֶשׁ הָרִאשׁוֹן וַיֵּשֶׁב הָעָם בְּקָדֵשׁ וַתָּמָת שָׁם מִרְיָם וַתִּקָּבֵר שָׁם׃ 

The Israelites arrived in a body at the wilderness of Zin on the first new moon, and the people stayed at Kadesh. Miriam died there and was buried there. 

That’s her one-liner, followed by the community being without water and rebelling/contending with Moshe and Aaron. Then, at the end of the chapter, God says to Moshe and to Aaron: 

יֵאָסֵף אַהֲרֹן אֶל־עַמָּיו כִּי לֹא יָבֹא אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל אֲשֶׁר־מְרִיתֶם אֶת־פִּי לְמֵי מְרִיבָה׃ 

“Let Aaron be gathered to his kin: he is not to enter the land that I have assigned to the Israelite people, because you disobeyed My command about the Waters of Meribah… 

Moshe, Aaron, and Elazar proceed to go up Mount Hor, Moshe takes of Aaron’s garments and he dresses Elazar in them, and then Aaron dies at the top of the mountain before Moshe and Elazar come down from the mountain. Then it’s written that the whole community saw that Aaron had passed away, and they cried/mourned him for 30 days.  I know these blurbs are supposed to be short and sweet (and this one’s already longer than it should be), so my request is just that you take a few minutes to think about the differences between what was said about Miriam’s death and Aaron’s death. There’s a Jewish idea that someone’s soul hangs out keeping us company until the last person forgets their name, and I think about that all the time – it’s one of the reasons I tell stories about my grandparents, share random memories with my friends, and ask people about the people they’ve lost. This week, I hope that you can think about one person you love who has died. How did/do you mourn them? How do you talk about them? How do you keep their memory alive?