Nobody hugged them goodbye.

I’m listening to my Eh-Pod.
Schindler’s List.
The violin. This is more beautiful than any other instrument, jerks the tears out of my eyes.
We went there. Not back in time, but close.
The Holocaust museum in D.C.
We signed up early. Me, the uber-planner and strategist.
Good thing, too. It seems as though millions were eager to witness the unthinkable. The annihilation of a populus.
You cannot know how this experience has touched me. Touched me to my core.
There is no God big enough to be the cause of such misery and despair.
I saw it all. The whole nine yards. Did you know about the “shoe room?”
The room that had my stomach heaving. The room that made me run. It wasn’t at that moment that my compassion began.
I try to recall the exact moment. But it escapes my recollection…

…It was, perhaps during an Hitler program on PBS. That moment. That instant. When the big-ness of another’s life sunk in.
The shoe room did me in. The last in an order of madness. I left.
Couldn’t endure one more second of it.
The Museum itself is spectacular. Built-in ghosts are everywhere. I felt them. They meant that, I’m sure.
Shoes, shoes and more shoes. A whole goddamned room full of them. Stolen.
Stolen from the Jews.
I hid that day. Hid so fast and far from my emotions. I felt such a connectedness to those people.
Those names that never will cross another’s lips…

…And all the while I’m thinking: “Nobody hugged them goodbye.”
If God would come here now, to my apartment in J-Ville, and ask me what I desire,
I’d say,: “To hug those human beings goodbye.”
Every single one of them.
Somebody needs to, time is running out.
And I can’t run fast enough to catch it.
No one can.

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