My mother's death last year also had a "gathering" quality to it. From the moment of her stroke, loved ones, including many people here and many people far away, came together for her. To witness, to help, to soothe. They gathered in her hospital room until they overflowed into the hallway. They gathered on Facebook, watching for posts like villagers in the square, awaiting the town crier. And when she died, they showed up in Santa Rosa to chant and in Chicago to mourn.
Read moreTreasures, Release & Bucket Lists
I made the mistake of picking up a National Geographic that was sitting in our house the other day. Between the manatees and the mammoth tusks, I found a report on changing average life expectancies in America. The ages colorfully printed on the US map looked like prognoses. No, worse. They looked like destiny. I tried to make sense of the numbers and I noticed that my mother had outlived the average female life expectancy by four years. "Oh, good for her," I thought, as a parent might kvell over a child bringing home an A on their report card. Then after a moment I melted into bitter resentment that she only outlived the average by four years.
Read moreQuick Kaddish in a Dreadful Summer
The words of Kaddish, in the Aramaic that was once our everyday tongue, are words of praise. In the face of loss, sometimes because of loss, we are called to express wonder; we acknowledge that the workings of this Creation are bigger, deeper, higher than we can possibly imagine or understand. But now it is not the lofty sentiment that speaks to us. Rather it is the heartbeat-like rhythm of this prayer - yitbabam v'yitbabam v'yitbabam - that hits us most profoundly, and that we associate not with death itself, but with the Jewish experience of death.
Read moreMy Mother's Words (and Stuff)
Meanwhile, my mother, who hated to entertain, whose anxiety dreams always involved company coming over unannounced or not having enough food to serve on Thanksgiving; my mother would receive gifts over time - wedding, anniversary, business gifts. Trays, punchbowls, coffee service, chip-dip sets. Beautiful items that would mostly stay in their original boxes in the basement, in the hope that there would never be enough guests in the house to actually necessitate their use.
Read moreA Prayer for Healing
Dear God, keep me from ingratitude. Because despite all my complaints, life is precious, and the delicacy of these bodies we live in makes it only more so. And if I feel the difficulty of it sometimes more than I feel the wonder of it, well, we are creatures of earth and our clay concerns us. But really, I am - we are - so grateful to be here in these bodies that have been really much trustier than not. I am grateful for lungs that have breathed through this day, and for this heart that has beaten so many times a minute, over a thousand minutes a day, nearly 20,000 days of my life and counting. I have owned cars both American and foreign, and have seen many finely made appliances and Apple products too and nothing made by man or machine can compare to what you set in motion on this planet.
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