Remembering

**This post is way too heavy for a Friday, but it’s important to remember.

On Wednesday, I went to a double funeral for a husband and wife I did not know.

Robin and Josh Berry were parents at the school I work at with three elementary age children. On Saturday night, while I was laughing with cousins at dinner at the beach in Florida, they were tragically killed on a car trip back from a family vacation in Colorado. They were hit by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel and crossed into their lane. Their three children survived, but are in serious condition.

This family was like so many we know. They were a young couple with three vibrant children. They were runners. He owned a small business. She was an event planner. They vacationed in Colorado as a family and were on their way home, just like I was in Colorado one month ago with my family.

To make it worse, Josh lost his father eight years ago in a car accident, and Robin lost her father in her early 20s tragically too. His brother said he thought their family was immune to tragedy. Bad things don’t happen to the same person more than once.

Our rabbi said we can’t ask “why” or think “what if” because there is no answer. We remember, we help the children remember, and we help them thrive.

The three children will come back to Houston to rehabilitate and live with their cousins/Josh’s brother. Their family of four will now be seven. They have to grieve the loss of their oldest brother and care for the children at the same time.

I didn’t even know this family, but now we all can’t stop thinking about them.

They will be Bar Mitzvah’d without their parents, and start high school and move into college without them too. It’s just too much to think about the sad, so we remember that they have loving aunts, uncles, and family friends to help them.

The light of this story was the four moms who flew to Lubbock early Sunday morning to care for the children. In the hospital with major injuries and no one there for them, they needed advocates. These four women, all moms at our school, left their families on the holiday weekend and loved and cared for those children as their own, all while grieving for their best friends.

Our school and Jewish community has banded together over the summer to memorialize this family, with 1,000 people coming to the funeral.

I didn’t even know this family, but their story has touched our hearts and made us remember to be grateful for every day we have.

More information on making a donation to this family can be found on the Beth Yeshurun website.

The Jewish Herald Voice has done a great job at telling the story.