"Take your hats off", I said,
so as to take a good photo of all four,
while they stood around my "Grave of Grace".
The girls guessed a different reason for this instruction, and put on the saddest of faces.

The fact is, that I don't know,
why I came to call this a grave.
Exactly a year ago, when I started to go to the pool
and to work on the path through the wadi,
which later I came to call "Wadi of Compassion",
I was irritated by a grave-like hole,
which somebody had carved out and left empty.
I decided to fill it up, but only with the stones,
that would loosen themselves from the path,
which would be a handful twice a day.
It has been a game of patience ever since...

When the white brick, on which I had written
"Nakhal Khaemlah" , Wadi of Compassion,
and set up as a path-sign,
was moved again and again and finally smashed,
I put the rest of the brick with the word "Khaemlah"
in the middle of the almost filled-up "grave".
There it has been safe, so far...

Only after the funny funeral with the children,
did I connect my routine of picking up loose stones
with the Jewish habit of putting a stone or two
on a grave of a deceased person.
We did not mourn "compassion",
but those who do not receive or render compassion!