Omer. Day Seven

I was at a yizcor service yesterday. It was sweet. Here on the North Shore, there's not always a guarantee that we'll get a minyan, so a handful of synagogues band together on these festival celebrations. Each of the synagogues plays host in some kind of rotation, but all of the rabbis and cantors show up, and we congregants (those who can, those who need). We get a decent showing, all of us together.

I like that: all of us, together.

We rise, we pray, we sing. Probably less davening than in my Zayde's day, but there are more women than in his day as well. At least - more women praying and singing and being, right along with the men. Here, we women count. Here, our voices are heard. We are all a community, and we carry one another. And so there are enough of us all, to ensure that no one mourns alone. I like that, too.

This was the 26th yizcor service since my brother died. I didn't realize just how huge that number is until I typed it out just now. Twenty-six times, not counting all the kaddishes I chanted during the first year after his death.

Twenty-six festivals have passed. In the beginning, I wasn't sure I would get through one. Not that I thought I would die! Not that, no - but I didn't think I could make it through a memorial service without my knees buckling and my throat tightening and my sorrow threatening to dissolve me. And in the beginning, all those things happened, knees and throat and sorrow huger than anything I could bare. And every time - every single time - no matter where I was, there were hands that reached out to hold me, arms that wrapped around me.

I stuttered out the words of the mourner's kaddish - harsh, foreign, not even Hebrew, but Aramaic, so that I almost knew what they meant, almost could say them with ease - and I would hear all around me, the answering amen.

Amen - a word that has its roots in both faith and truth. The rabbis attach considerable power to this tiny (and, alas, often thrown away) little word. Rav Meir believed a child immediately earned his/her place in the world to come upon saying it for the first time. Rashi believed that all the gates of heaven open to one who says "amen" with all his strength. Most of those rabbis agree that no benediction should be orphaned. no prayer should go unanswered or unframed, as it were.

We have a lot of rules about "amen" - when to say it, when not to say it, who can say it and who can't. Of course; we're Jewish. Why wouldn't there be a host of rules? I don't know them all. I know some, mostly in the way we all know a lot of rules - I observed, someone told me some stuff and I think I read something somewhere along the way, and no one is telling me I'm wrong, so I must be right, right? That kind of way.

So, I'm not too sure of the "why" of it, but I think I have the mechanics of it down. The words of the Mourner's Kaddish are said by the mourners; the congregation responds amen - so be it (in faith, in truth, let those words be a testament).

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash shmei rabba - Glorified and sanctified be God's great name.There can't be silence here. This phrase must be answered. And so the congregation responds, as we have been taught: amen.

And so it went, from festival to festival: I would recite the words of praise to God (because that is the essence of the Mourner's Kaddish - not about death, but the glory of God), and the congregation around me would hold me up, and hold up the words of my prayer, and they would say "amen." Or, at least, if not "they," then someone. My relationship to the prayer changed over the years. How could it not? I went from raw and desperate grief to various shades of sadness.

Then there was a time, not too long ago, when there was no answering "amen." A space of silence before everyone continued on. What? Where was it? Why didn't everyone - anyone - stop and wait and offer? Why didn't I? I'm in mourning, dammit! I have grief. My brother died. Isn't the congregation duty bound, to be present for the mourners, so that no one grieves alone? I was carrying the dead, all of them, and they were getting heavy. I deserved at least that tiny amen to lighten the load, at least long enough to get to the next festival, the next yizcor. Right?

Yeah - I heard it: that whiny, screechy voice that demands constant attention and worship. I so love my self-righteous narcissism. It's attractive, isn't it? That shook my world, more than a little. Who the hell am I, to think I am the one, the only one, to carry the dead? Who even said I had to carry them?

That's the moment it all changed for me. I can carry memory, without having to carry the dead. I can carry those in my community, lift them and lend them strength in their grief, even as I am lifted. I love those who have died no less. I don't need to prove it to them, to myself, to the world around me. I can be kind and generous, just as there were so very many who offered me kindness and generosity. I can be one within my community, no more, no less.

I can answer a benediction. And so let us say
Amen.


In honor of my brother, Randy (z"l)
If you'd like to read about my journey through the first year after his death, saying kaddish, read my essay, Joy in the Empty Spaces)

A Mourner's Kaddish: a response to desecration

Your fingers are warm
under the coldness of this stone

that once marked the final place
of someone's loved one,

that stood guard over time-
worn mounds and still-life flowers,

but now guard nothing,
criss-crossed granite toppled by hate.

But your fingers are warm
and I see your breath hang for a moment

in this almost-warm winter air,
and my breath puffs out to meet it.

This stone of soft edges and blurred
letters hides your face, but our breath meets.

I don't know if you wear a kippah
or a hijab, or nothing at all but hair; I can only

feel your fingers, warm, and see
your breath hang in frozen wonder, and mingle

with my own, as we lift, together
these stones to mark again the lives of my people.

Yitgadal v'yitkadash, shmei rabbah.
Exalted and hallowed be God's great name.

Joy in the Empty Spaces

31 August 2011/01 Elul 5771

I miss my brother.  It has been almost a year now, and still, there are times when missing him threatens to swallow me whole.  In an instant, grief comes racing in from nowhere, and I am wrapped in solitary and breathless sorrow.  Mostly though, it is a gentle missing, filled with love and soft regret-- that he is gone, that my hand is halfway to the phone before I remember that he won't answer, that he will not see his nephew make that sometimes graceful, sometimes gawky leap from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, that there is a small emptiness where he once stood.

And what if he suddenly appeared, filling that empty space?  What would I say?

I have no idea.

I'd like to think that I managed, through grace and luck, to say everything I needed to say before he died.  Words like I miss you and I love you skitter through my head, fleeting as a summer shower.  All our words, all our thoughts:  spoken and unspoken, whispered and trumpeted in our pain and our hope, they were all woven together into the tight space of his hospital room, connecting him to us to God in some eternal tapestry of unutterable and awesome beauty.

I think.  I hope.

I pray.

I've prayed a lot this last almost-year.  I stumbled into that sacred dance of mourning, a stutter step of hesitation, growing in surety and ease, reciting such ancient words to the exaltation of a God who seems both near and far, present and not, just and merciful and cruel.  In the beginning, I wept-- great wracking sobs that stole my voice and my exaltation.  I wept-- and there were hands that reached out, in comfort and with grace.  And when I could not pray, could barely manage to say my brother's name, there were other voices to carry me, to lift me and sustain me and let me find my way.

Reciting Kaddish is no longer a staccato pulse, insistent and harsh and pounding.  Now there is a quiet grace note, starting low, gaining in depth and richness as I stand with eyes closed and fingers laced around my prayer book.  There is such power in this prayer!  I can feel my brother, close as light, as heat or love.  My sorrow washes over me like water over stone, clean and pure, no longer pooling, dank and cold at my feet.  I can feel God again, holy and waiting for me to start the dance, ready to catch me should I falter.

Just about a year.  It has taken me just about a year to find my way to this place of-- if not exaltation, then certainly of celebration-- of my brother, of God.  Even of God.

And now it's time to let my brother go.

Not his memory, or my love for him.  Not even of my sadness.  All this time-- of sorrow and grief and learning to find laughter and joy and hope again, I thought this was his last gift to me, a last lesson: learning to find joy in the empty spaces.  Every day, for eleven months, I have recited Kaddish.  I have stumbled and stammered my way through these words to honor my brother and his memory, to find grace and healing, to rest again in the palm of God's hand. 

Almost a year later, and I finally get that this has been about his journey, not mine.

For these eleven months, our mourning has allowed us to share in his soul’s journey, to help him find his way.  Now he must find that last bit of eternity on his own.   This is about his soul's journey-- to God perhaps, or to Home, or Heaven.  Perhaps everywhere all at once.  But it is his way to find.  We release him, in love and faith, into the sacred space of remembrance.  

We say zichrono liv'rachah: may his memory be for a blessing. He touched the hearts and lives of so many, and the world is different-- better-- because he was in it.  His memory will surely be a blessing.

But there is one other thing.  More than a blessing, let his memory be for a prayer: zichrono li't'filla.  Let his memory teach us to reach and strive and praise and celebrate and hope and love.  Every day.  Even as we mourn, perhaps because we mourn, let his memory be for a prayer--- of comfort, whole and holy.  

What would I say to my brother, if he appeared, if he paused for a moment just before he soars and leaps and dances with God?  I would say I love you; I miss you. And finally--

Let your soul find peace on your journey.

Let your memory shine as blessing and prayer.

And let us say: amen.

Zichrono liv'rachah v'li't'filla