A Beast Would Mourn Longer: ‘My Child! My Child!’
“A little month… O God! A beast that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourned longer.” – Hamlet, I.2, William Shakespeare (1601)
Every parent’s worst nightmare is losing their child. Whether due to illness, drugs, suicide, crime, war or terrorism, tragically, we all know someone who has.
It is so ubiquitous some modify the traditional blessing “May you live till 120” to “… or the day before your first child dies.” I have noted [Echoes in the Wells of Silence: “Aaron was Silent”, January 5, 2026] mourning a child is torturously antithetical to mourning a parent.
Commonly, Jewish law reflects verities of grief (e.g., immediately post loved ones’ deaths, Aninut, we are exempt from praising God.) Yet, post parents’ passing, we mourn a full year, post children passing, we are directed to cease after “A little month”?!
That’s madness, the cruel edition!
As Shakespeare pointed out, animals mourn the loss of their children longer. The most intelligent, chimps, baboons, orcas, dolphins, continue to posthumously physically hold them for weeks, even months. Elephants, giraffes, birds, horses, cows, dogs refuse to leave their side.
Are they more humane than we?
Didn’t our “Sages” realize losing a child creates a vacuum in our soul for the remainder of our lives? Didn’t they hear the unbearable pain when a bereaved parent wails “My child! My child!”?
How sage were they?
Two answers:
Cynics claim religious tenets reflect the desires of the authors, i.e., fathers. That is why we are commanded to respect our parents, not our children, why children who strike, even curse their parents, received the death penalty, whereas corporal punishment of children was traditional.
Growing up, we were hit by our parents, Rebbes, teachers, even bar mitzvah tutors. In those days, a “Pach” was a rite of passage.
(Feminists observe that is why we bless God for “not making me a woman.”)
A more compassionate explanation is that the directive is precisely designed to ameliorate that eternal vacuum.
Parents spared the rituals of mourning an additional 11 months are sooner able to resume their lives, as best they can. Their loss is so devastating, it would be cruel to force them to confront it beginning every day for those additional 11 months.
No one knows the true answer.
Here is what I do know:
“My child, my child” is the most precious possession any parent will ever have. And yet, our children are not our possessions. When I bless my children every Friday, I am fully cognizant how preposterous that is.
Me blessing them? They are my blessings.
When I pray for them every day, I know, and God knows, they are far holier than me.
God created beasts, and humans, and everything else under the sun.
The most divine thing He ever created however, for chimps, baboons, orcas, dolphins, elephants, giraffes, birds, horses, cows, dogs, and humans, was “My child. My child”.
