It was 5 years ago almost to the day when I visited the home at which Sandy was sitting shiva. The house was full and Sandy and a few of her close friends were looking at pictures in small albums. I lead the davenning that night and spoke about her mother but as I offered her the traditional words that people say to mourners before I left, hamakom yinachem etchem…there was something inside me that sensed that something wasn’t right …. so I sat back down and asked if she was alright when the floodgates opened. What I learned in that moment was the beginning of a very, very difficult story.
Five years earlier, Sandy’s brother, a successful and prominent financial analyst, as well as a wonderful son and brother, husband and father…. had been working for Cantor Fitzgerald in one of the highest floors of the twin tower when the airplanes hit on that fateful day. Her brother’s life was taken. Sandy’s mother wasn’t doing well at the time. She was frail, she hadn’t been feeling very well and Sandy was concerned that hearing the news about her beloved son would literally break her mother’s heart and kill her and so she decided, with support from mom’s nurse, that mom would be better off not hearing the news.
So a day passes and then a week, a month and a year followed by another and another and another and Sandy was stuck holding onto his secret. In the meantime, her mother was devastated. She just couldn’t figure out why her son whom she had been so close with her entire life had suddenly stopped visiting, stopped calling and stopped loving her. Sandy reassured her, of course he still loves you mom…and then she would explain how he had gotten a huge promotion, he was doing a lot of international travelling now in this new position and with the time change and everything, it was so hard to call but he had been in touch with her and constantly sends his love her way. But no words could change the feelings that her mother felt inside….for five years she tried to make sense of what had happened. If she had done something to cause him to walk away from her, to stop caring and to stop loving her. And for five years, despite the reassurances, her heart was not reassured.
When Sandy’s mother died five years later, she carried this loss and the questions with her. And now, sitting in the shiva home, I quickly realized why the pain felt so profound. Because Sandy wasn’t only mourning her mother’s death but also her brother’s death which she hadn’t had time or space to acknowledge or properly grieve since.
Some time later, Sandy and I got into my car and we drove for hours to the cemetery where her mother had been buried with a letter that I had encouraged her to write in hand. I waited in the car as she told her mother everything she had been holding deep inside. By the time she had returned to the car and buckled her seatbelt, the sadness that she had carried in her eyes and in her soul for five years, had been lifted. Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam, michayei ha’meitim…. All I could say was a quiet blessing thanking God for bringing a person back to life. Sandy – in that moment returned to the land of the living.
Now, it’s easy to judge even complicated stories but the truth is that to know Sandy you would know that she is one of the most thoughtful, compassionate people you’ll ever know. And everything she did came from a place of love. She was understandably terrified: She had just lost a brother whom she loved so deeply and now, she thought that the news would break her mothers heart and literally destroy her. She didn’t want to lose her mother, too and she couldn’t bear the thought even of taking such a risk. But what I also know to be true…and what so many of you affirm and reaffirm for me again and again and again is that the human heart and spirit are stronger than we think. The strength and resilience of the human heart is truly miraculous….and we are all so much stronger and more courageous than we ever anticipate. Sometimes, people doubt this. And we bury too many children and adults who give up on life getting better….that lose jobs, that lose spouses, that lose their way and simply can’t imagine in their place of darkness ever seeing the sun shine and the happiness or being able to laugh again. We see this in people who feel like the best of life has already passed them by and as their bodies start to weaken or break down, their independence starts to disappear, their friends are no longer around and their sense of purpose has diminished, they start to wonder, if there’s anything left worth living for. We sometimes see this in the eyes of a widow wondering why years later, things don’t feel any easier. Still yearning for the happier days when your beloved was by your side, kissing you goodnight, calling you special names, when vacations and weekends and evenings were full and exciting. And in those moments….the heart tears, it does, and the tear can be so painful that you don’t think you’ll be able to endure it and sometimes, you might not even be so sure that you want to. And so the psalmists remind us (psalm 30:5): that “weeping may come at night but joy comes in the morning” and in these words is the hope that we need. That if we can put one foot in front of the other…. Push ourselves out of bed one more time and then another…. Find a thing to look forward to, even if it’s half hearted…. Some day joy will come. Yes, there might always be a shadow that stays with you and creates a bit of shade amidst the sunshine but one day… I promise…you will emerge.
This summer, we called Triple A to help fix one of our cars. The kids and Rafi headed to the pool and I had the opportunity to wait for the AAA man who was running a bit late which I didn’t mind (as I loved the alone time). When he arrived, he was thoughtfully apologetic explaining that he had received seven calls in the last hour. And then he quickly walked around my car heading to the door and mentioned on his way that our registration was about to expire. I told him, I’d let my husband know, it was his car. “At least you have a husband” he said wistfully. “Did you recently lose your wife?” I asked as he took out his tools… She called me this Wednesday after 15 years of marriage and let me know that she would be back at the house on Friday to pick up her things. She was leaving, she had met someone else. “ I breathed deeply….”what did you do?” I asked. “I took a razor and I threatened to kill them both. And then I went into my bedroom, locked the door, curled up on the floor and contemplated taking my own life. The swat team came and I kept trying to figure out what to do but eventually I unlocked the door”…. feeling angry and betrayed and like every last bit of dignity was robbed from him, my triple A man was escorted out of his home. “Wow. I said. You are amazing! That was eight days ago and you are here, back at work, fixing cars and living again. By this time, my car was fixed, and my family was probably wondering where I was, so I gave him his tip, wished him strength and perseverance and saw him off. And then I thought about the strength of the heart and the spirit. Here, this man had gone from a crumpled up mess of a man in the floor, sitting in the darkness, contemplating killing and eight days later….he was back at work apologizing for being late. Baruch Ata…michayei ha’meitim… Praised are you o’ Lord our God for bringing him back to life.
Yesterday, I was in New York where I officiated at my own grandmother’s funeral. My grandparents are amazingly blessed. They shared a beautiful marriage and at 99 my grandfather is sharp as a tack, exercising and playing cards each day and just this past month at 99, he got his first cell phone. He has also been taking care of my grandmother with loving devotion for the past five years and even with her dementia, she always remembered that he was the love of her life. As we drove back to Baltimore through the night last night, I thought about my grandfather…. Sitting on the couch in his old home in Westchester which he hadn’t been home to for so long because grandma was no longer able to make the trip…. I thought about his friends the Katz’s who had managed to come visit, probably the last of their circle of friends still around. My brother and I both brought our young children to the funeral. I knew that they would all be well-behaved and I wanted our kids to hear the eulogy and the stories that would be shared both at the graveside and in the shiva home, I wanted them to experience the loss of their great grandmother within the context of the extensive family that she created, to be with their cousins, to cry their tears, to ask their questions and to help to honor her through burial. And as our 3 year old daughter Maya lifted that big shovel with my sister in law it truly was m’dor l’dor – one generation following another. But most importantly, the other reason that we brought our children and my brother and sister in law threw their children into the car and embarked on an 11 hour mini-van ride from Detroit because we had hoped that for my grandfather, their presence would remind him that he still had reason to live. Because in his words, “he’s starting to get tired”.
But at 99…. when almost everything you’ve lived for is gone, what keeps you going? How do you have hope that life is still worth living? Where do you find that hope?
In the Torah reading that we read on Yom Kippur, Moses’ brother Aaron faces the most profound loss imaginable. He loses his two sons, Nadav and Avihu and he walks into the inner sanctum of the Temple and finds them there, dead, no explanation, no way of making sense of their deaths. And to make things even worse, we have no pause for grieving, we hear no words of comfort, instead God tells Moses to tell his brother, Aaron to keep on working – to keep fulfilling his roles and responsibilities. Every year when I read this story, I can’t help but think about how hard this day, the day of YK must have been on Aaron – to have to keep returning to the scene of his greatest tragedy year after year after year – suffocated in the memories of that day and of his loss. And yet, I also am inspired by his story in that he somehow found the strength deep within himself to do this. I imagine that there wasn’t an hour of his life or certainly not a day when he didn’t think about his boys. And yet, he miraculously endured.
On Rosh Hashana we focus on birth. We read the stories of Hagar bringing Abraham’s child into the world and Sarah and Abraham finding out that in their nineties, they would soon be parents. We read the story of Penina who brings child after child into the world and of Chana who desperately yearns to create and after years of infertility brings Samuel into the world. We read about new beginnings, about creation. But on Yom Kippur, we focus not on life, but on death…. Remembering Aaron and his sons who died while trying to give sacrifices to God, we dress is white just as we do when we’re buried, we deprive ourselves of all of the things that make us feel alive – food, water, sex, bathing and luxuries… and then we try to imagine ourselves on that luminal line between life and death. The idea is that by coming close to dying, we will be able to realize how precious life is. But the truth is that each year, as we open the ark for Neilah (our evening service that ushers out the HolyDays) as each of you comes forward for your private moment at the ark, sometimes alone and sometimes with loved ones surrounding you, knowing your stories, I am reminded that sometimes, we know instinctively what it means to be standing too close to death. I remember Helen Lifson, being among the first to make her way up to the bimah last year. We had just had a private bat mitzvah ceremony earlier that week in the Gorn chapel when her daughter realized that she probably wouldn’t make it to her grandaughter’s bat mitzvah. As she stood by the ark whispering her prayers, we all knew that this would be the last time she would stand before the ark, would kiss the Torah and would be among us. Person after person followed, and each one had their own stories. Most had endured moments throughout the year that life had felt precarious, cancers were found, cancers had spread, treatments weren’t working, marriages had crumbled, babies had died and hearts tore again and again and again….and yet, with rituals, with community, and with a tiny spark of hope… you continued on your journeys even with your torn heart.
We are all here tonight because in some way, we are hopeful….because consciously or unconsciously we “believe” deep down: We believe that being here, over the holidays has the potential to change us, otherwise, why would we bother? Because we’re hopeful that we will emerge a little more loving, a little more compassionate, a little more inspired, with our priorities a bit changed, our goals a bit clearer, our passion ignited or our slates erased. We believe that if the year that passed was good, if we show up, reconnect and offer even but a moment of personal prayer, that we will likely be given another year. But we also know that just as the tough years pass so too the easy years also pass. And so we savor them. And for those people who had years that you can’t wait to say good-bye to, a new year brings with it the potential of a new beginning. And we hope and pray that a new year will bring us more…happiness, more love, more friendship, more blessings, and healthier days to come.
Each and every one of us knows what it means to lose something or someone that we love, or to lose a hope or dream. Whether it’s a loved one, a marriage, a job, or maybe even something that you used to be able to do or enjoy that you no longer can or something that used to feel that you no longer feel….and on YK we cry for those absences and losses….but there’s a beautiful midrash that teaches us that when the Israelites were about to receive the commandments from Moses at Sinai, Moses was so angry and disappointed with them for building a golden calf while he was busy with God recording the words of the Torah that instead of giving them the gift of the commandments, he instead smashed the tablets as these People were not worthy of such a gift. So what did the Israelites do? They could have hid, they could have made excuses, they could have tried to justify their actions but they didn’t instead, they rushed forward and collected the broken shards of the tablets and saved them. And even when they earned for themselves the next set of Tablets, they kept the old broken shards and side by side they carried them through the wilderness on their life journey. Side by side, the broken and the whole co-existed within the ark.
So too it is with us…. We’re meant to carry our broken pieces and our whole pieces simultaneously within our souls. For without both, we can never reach our greatest potential. And I do believe, from the deepest recesses of my heart and soul that there generally comes a day when we realize….that even when we can’t find hope….eventually hope will find you. It doesn’t happen instantly, it takes more time than we’d like, but if we allow ourselves to take one moment at a time….and we ride the waves of sadness, loss, loneliness and pain of disappointments and unknowns and recognize that like the ocean waves sometimes these tears in our hearts will knock us over and sometimes, we’ll manage to keep our feet in the wet sand…. And then, one day, out of nowhere, we’ll see the sun shine and we’ll feel it’s warmth and we’ll know that we’re going to be okay. That life will get better. That somehow…. hope has found us.
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