In the Chill of Winter, We Remember Them

I am sitting in Suburban Temple Kol Ami, the sanctuary where our two daughters stood on the bima, read their Torah portions and became bat mitzvahs. Me, Episcopalian mother of Jewish daughters.

“Does it bother you, Mom, to say prayers that aren’t your prayers?” one of the girls asked long ago on a Friday night Shabbat service. 

“No, I don’t think God minds where I am.  I’m in a sacred space; it doesn’t matter which one.  I’m here because you’re here.”

I liked that our girls wanted to explore their faith; I liked watching them move through their preparation and study and face the congregation as young women.

Today, another wintry day—as it was nine and eleven years ago for their special ceremonies, it is snowing lightly, the skies gray, the landscape muted. 

Inside the temple, I sit, alone, hearing the hum of voices rise as more people greet one another.  Today, I am here to represent our whole family.  The girls are far away in New York City, Seth far away in Manhattan, Kansas.  I am here for them, for Sara, who is saying goodbye to her father, the incomparable David.

In the moments before the service begins, I think about my own father, gone just eight years this week.  I think about being both mother and daughter, being in the middle of my life.  I was lucky to have my parents until they were 89 and 82, but their deaths still felt too soon—for them to go, for me to be left.  If I live to be 89, that’s only thirty-two more years…Atticus will only be 45 and it’s a big if…better not to tempt fate. 

I shake my morbid thoughts away, gazing at the beautiful copper curtain that forms the Ark for the Torah.  It shimmers, intricate, as if it has been knit on a clever giant’s needles, full of different stiches, the oxidized green color of the walls complementing the burnished stitches. A pinecone, glowing russet, is suspended in front of and slightly above the Ark.  Pine cones, I research later, are a symbol for enlightenment.  For me, they are a symbol of the natural world, too, of the cycle of life and death.  Birth is a beginning and death is a destination.

The family processes into their seats.  I ache for Sara. She is the eldest, stepping into the role of guide for my girls when they elected to “become” Jewish.  They are devoted to her, and she to them.  It has been a privilege to watch her care for them, their devotion to her and to Mark.  To have someone who is not a family member love one’s children unstintingly is a great gift.

Rabbi Vann begins the service. Through the tenderness of memory, we will remember David, she explains.  I feel comforted by her calm; she is sad, clearly, but she is doing what she knows how to do, shepherding us through this ritual with compassion, with love.  The cantor sings the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew, and then we say it together in English.  Here, I am on steady ground.  There is more music and the Jewish equivalent of what I know as a homily.  David, Sara’s father, was a Renaissance man, expert in his craft, committed to his community, urbane, wise, elegant, irreverent.  He began his schooling at the Park School, an institution shaped by Dewey’s progressive philosophy that puts the child’s curiosity at the center.  I know this because I sat beside David in Sara and Mark’s elegant home the night after Thanksgiving.  While my son and Kerro and the girls chatted with Mark and Sara, I sat with David, talking about school.  I had the sense that I was in the presence of greatness, gentle greatness who didn’t suffer fools gladly.  I was jealous, that night, of Sara’s dad, of the fact that she still had him, of his grace and style.  I knew his health was fragile.  Mark walked him home before we left, and that tenderness made me think of my husband’s solicitous care for my mom.  We are never too old to be without our parents.

Rabbi Vann reminds us of stars—though they are far away, we can perceive their brightness.  I think about how often I look up at night, looking towards what I grew up understanding as heaven, imagining my parents, my brother, others…this piece of being a grown up, of having to say goodbye and to keep going is relentless. 

How do we want to be remembered?  I want St. John’s in the Wilderness in summer.  I want the hymns I loved as a child.  I want poetry.  But those hymns and prayers mean nothing to my Jewish husband, to my Jewish daughters, to my son. I do not know what Seth wants.  Nothing, I suspect.  But neither of us will be around to direct or instruct.  I wince, thinking of the flat stone, underneath which my father rests-- though we all knew he wanted an upright stone. 

Across the aisle, I notice a pulse beating in a gentleman’s head; it’s a beautiful, unusual sight. I feel like a voyeur.  The space between a discernable pulse and a stopped heart is no time at all.  I watched the breath leave my mother’s body. A flutter--then nothing.  The space of an instant.

A student of mine and I have spent some time together this year talking about grief.  She, too, lost a brother.  I feel helpless, of very little use as I listen and murmur.  Reminding her that the ache of loss will never disappear but will be able to be endured feels essential to me.  I want her to know that she will remember—always.  She worries that she has forgotten details.  I have, too.  Yet there are moments that float back, unbidden—my father reciting Longellow; my mother laughing on the porch; my brother on a sailboat, leaning back to balance his Sunfish. 

Rabbi closes the service with a blessing I find many versions of on the Internet, this one attributed to Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer

In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
we will remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
we remember them.
In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
we remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
we remember them.
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
we remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
we remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
we remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart,
we remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
we remember them.

So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us,
as we remember them.

In the entryway, I hug Sara and Mark.  My daughters call Sara their Jewish mother; they have exquisite taste.  She is rich in love, generous, funny, wise—like father, like daughter.