The Second Week

By Susan Esther Barnes

On Monday evening I got the call, “The burial will be on Thursday at 11 a.m.”

Finally, I was able to make some plans and take some action. I notified my sister, my husband, my synagogue, and the folks at work. Time, which had been moving so incredibly slowly for the past week, suddenly snapped back into a normal pace.

On Tuesday morning I spoke with the attorney’s office that will be handling my father’s estate, and made an appointment to meet with them on Wednesday afternoon. Then my husband and I packed up the car, I sent an email to my father’s widow, Chris, to tell her we were on the way, and we headed out for the approximately seven hour drive to Mammoth Lakes.

We arrived at the hotel and I checked my email, but I didn’t have a message back from Chris. I was anxious to see her and to speak with her about what would happen at the burial. I sent her an email to let her know we had arrived. We tried to call her a couple of times, but her phone was busy.

The next day, there was still no email or call from Chris, and her phone was still busy. My husband and I drove by the house to make sure everything looked okay, which it did, but we didn’t want to just knock on the door unannounced.

Instead, we drove to the cemetery. It is very small. We tried to find where my father’s grave would be, but there was no hole dug yet, and it was impossible to tell.

I called the synagogue to test the phone reception, which was good. This was important, because in order to say the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, it is required to have at least ten Jews. I knew I wouldn’t be able to gather ten Jews at the cemetery, so we planned to do the next best thing. Nine of my friends were going to gather in Rabbi Lezak’s office the next day to say Kaddish with me over the phone.

We continued on the Bishop, where we had lunch and met with the attorney. He explained that because of the long processes involved, including three weeks of newspaper notices before I can be appointed officially as the executor, as well as four months for any creditors to file claims against the estate, there is no way the estate will be settled until some time next year. At least that means there isn’t anything much I need to run out and do right away.

We tried to call Chris again, got a busy signal again, and drove back to the hotel. We left a message at the hotel desk for my sister to call when she and her family arrived, made a few more unsuccessful calls to Chris, and settled in to wait.

When my sister, her husband, and her older daughter arrived (her younger daughter chose not to come), we went to her hotel room to discuss what we ought to do. Why wasn’t Chris answering her emails, and why was her phone busy? Did she just not want to deal with us? Was she okay? It seemed unlikely that she had suffered a heart attack or stroke or something, but it wasn’t completely out of the question.

Finally, we decided we would all drive over to the house to see what was up. She came to the door and welcomed us in. We told her we had been trying to get ahold of her. She looked surprised, picked up the phone, and discovered she had no dial tone. She didn’t know her phone had been out of order.

We all went out to dinner, and I sat next to Chris. I told her about my plan to say the Mourner’s Kaddish at the burial, as well as to ask her, my sister, and my niece to read something from the rabbi’s handbook. She said that was fine; she didn’t seem to care one way or the other. At least she didn’t object, as I had feared she might.

On Thursday morning, Rabbi Lezak called my cell phone just as we were arriving at the cemetery. He said some comforting and rabbinic things but I didn’t take any of it in; I was too keyed up.

The people gathered in his office introduced themselves so I would know who was there. I walked to where my father’s coffin was poised over the open grave that had been dug sometime after we had visited the previous day. The rest of the family in attendance arrayed themselves in a line to my right, and were joined by a neighbor who had unexpectedly come as well.

I said the Mourner’s Kaddish. It was hard, and I stumbled over the words in some places. Hearing the voices on the other end of the phone saying it with me was of incalculable value. I’m not sure I could have gotten through the whole prayer without them sustaining me. Afterward, they told me they loved me, and I told them I loved them too. It was a huge, huge deal.

Chris looked so alone, so I went over and I held my arm around her as the coffin was lowered into the grave. It is Jewish tradition that the next of kin be the first people to toss dirt onto the coffin. I didn’t want the first dirt to be thrown onto the coffin by strangers. At my direction, Chris tossed some dirt onto the coffin, then my sister did, and then I did. I should have asked my niece to toss some dirt in too, but I didn’t think of that at the time. I don’t know why. I regret it.

There is something final about the sound of dirt hitting the top of a coffin. I had never heard it before, and it is not a sound I will forget. It is an effective way to drive home the notion that all this is real.

Chris said she hadn’t brought her reading glasses, so I read the passage I had chosen for her, then my sister and her daughter read the passages I had chosen for them.

I know we didn’t do things in the traditional order. For instance, the Mourner’s Kaddish should have been at the end, but I didn’t want to keep the folks on the phone waiting for an unknown amount of time. I felt awkward leading the proceedings, but I was glad I did, because otherwise nobody would have. It would have been too lonely and sad to just stand there and not have any kind of service at all.

On the way out of the cemetery, I followed the tradition of ceremonially washing my hands, and Chris washed her hands as well. My sister chose not to wash her hands. She said she wanted the dirt to become part of her.

Chris thanked me for leading the service. She said she appreciated that it was short and honest. I had been so anxious that she wouldn’t want there to be any prayers or anything; it was a big relief to know she actually found it to be helpful.

Then my husband and I got into the car and we began the long drive home. The next afternoon, a group of people came over for the traditional meal of consolation. It was helpful to have the opportunity to talk some about what had happened over the last several days, and to say the Mourner’s Kaddish again with a room of people.

I was able to participate in services on Friday night to a much greater extent than I had the previous week. As happened the previous week, on both Friday and Saturday, I was flanked by members of my community who didn’t want me to sit alone.

Traditionally, when we say the Sh’ma, the central prayer asserting that God is one, we gather the fringes from the four corners of our tallit (prayer shawl) into one hand. I did not do so either last week or this week. I still acknowledge that God is one and that everything is one, but right now things are still feeling a bit too blown apart for me to gather all the fringes together.

Still, I know I am healing. It is a huge relief to know that my father’s body is buried and his spirit is free. I know that, slowly, the fringes will start to come back together.

Judaism Creating Connections

By Susan Esther Barnes

On Friday night during services Rabbi Lezak told two stories about how living in Israel means living in an inter-connected community. The first one, here, talks about how the plight of Gilad Shalit, the Israel soldier who has been in captivity for three years, feels personal to all Israelis, since all of them have family members who were or are in the military.

The second story, here, is an amazing true story about the woman who is the mother of the first soldier killed in Cast Lead, who goes to a concert and by chance (or perhaps an act of God) meets a couple who named their baby after her fallen son.

To some extent these stories are possible because Israel is such a tiny country, where everyone (with some exceptions) sends their children to military or other national service. These stories, combined with something else that happened at services Friday night, got me thinking about how the practice of Judaism itself helps to create these connections.

One of the situations Judaism is particularly sensitive about is the death of a loved one. There are many customs and rituals that surround this event, and many of them create and rely on community connections. When a mourner returns home from the graveyard, he or she is not allowed to eat his or her own food. Rather, the community is expected to, and in fact bears the responsibility of, bringing food to the mourner. This not only relieves the mourner of having to think about mundane acts like grocery shopping and cooking when just walking across the room may feel like a monumental act, but it also makes sure the mourner is not alone during this critical time.

In addition, the mourner is to say the Mourner's Kaddish on a regular basis throughout the first eleven months after their loved on has died. And this prayer may only be said when there are at least ten Jews present. Again, this serves to ensure the mourner is surrounded by members of his or her community during the first year of mourning.

After the first year has passed, we say the Mourner's Kaddish for the anniversary of the loved one's death, called the Yarzheit. When worshippers come to services on Friday night they are handed a program that contains various bits of information, and on the back is a list of those in the congregation who have died recently as well as the names of those who are having their Yarzeheit.

On Friday night, I was sitting beside a couple, when another couple sat behind us. The woman next to me was looking at the Yarzheit list, and she turned to the couple behind us. She pointed at the list and said, "I see this person on the list with the same last name as you. Is this your father?"

"No," they replied, "That is our son."

"How old was he?" asked the woman.

"22."

"Oh, I didn't know."

And thus another connection was created, because when you know a couple has lost a son, an incredible tragedy in itself, and further learn the son died so young, it cannot help but create an understanding, a bond, from the acknowledgement that these people have walked through the fire and have the bravery to carry on.

And it strikes me this is one of the ways Judaism seeks to connect us. Yarzheit not only serves to comfort the mourner, but its public nature gives us the opportunity to ask the questions that bind us together, like "Who was she?" "What is your favorite memory about him?" and to make the statements that bind us together, like, "I remember him" and "I miss her too."

Remembering Grandma

By Susan Esther Barnes

This week I finished taking a class series on walking people through the process of dying, as well as visiting people in mourning. On the last night of class, Rabbi Lezak asked us to tell stories of a time when either someone visited us while we were in mourning, or a time when we visited a mourner.

The first thing I thought was I’ve never received a visit while I was in mourning. We come from a small family, and both my grandfathers died before I was born. The only family members who have died in my lifetime were my two grandmothers and my two Great Uncles. In no case did anyone come to our house to comfort us after their deaths.

The next thing I thought about was how, after my father’s mother’s funeral, we gathered for lunch at the apartment she had shared with her brother, my Great Uncle Mitch. At some point during lunch my father’s wife Sonia said, “One story I remember about Pearl is – “ but Uncle Mitch cut her off. He would not permit anyone to talk about Grandma. I don’t remember anyone in my family talking about Grandma after that day. Whenever I think about that lunch, I feel like I was cheated. How many stories about Grandma would I have heard if Uncle Mitch had let us talk about her? What would I have learned about her that I will never know?

Last summer, I said the Mourner’s Kaddish for the 25th anniversary of Grandma’s death. As far as I know, it was the first time anyone had said Kaddish for her since her funeral. She was too strong a force in this world to be forgotten easily. She is still a positive force in my life. So although I can’t go back to that lunch to try to convince Uncle Mitch to let us speak, here are the stories I want to preserve about her.

Grandma was about five feet tall, in her 80’s, and bent over from osteoporosis. Her whole body shook all the time, like Katherine Hepburn’s does now. When I asked her why she shook like that, she told me a rat suddenly jumped out at her when she was a girl, and it scared her so badly she’d never been able to stop shaking.

Anyone who knew Grandma would immediately know her rat story was a complete fabrication. She might look small and frail, but she was a warrior. She was a woman of action. Nobody would believe something as insignificant as a rat would scare her for long. When she was living in Hungary and Hitler was rising to power, she went to see him speak so she could size him up for herself. She didn’t know German, but what she saw and heard alarmed her. Rather than cowering in fear, she gathered up her husband and son (my father), and got the heck out of Dodge. They would not be among the six million killed.

Grandma was the embodiment of unconditional love. She was a refuge and a protector. That doesn’t mean she never got mad at us. When my sister and I got into trouble, boy, would we know it. Just the look on her face would make the bravest person back off fast. No sane person would ever cross her twice.

She taught me that when it comes for sticking up for what is right, size doesn’t matter. She regularly walked to the Opportunity Shop in her neighborhood, where she volunteered raising money for Israel. She never learned to drive, but she lived in San Francisco, knew all the Muni routes, and had no trouble getting wherever she wanted to go. When she got on a bus and found all the seats were taken, she would stand in the middle of the aisle, look down the length of the bus, and announce in a loud voice hardly impeded by her small shaking body, “As a rule, it used to be that when an old lady got on the bus, a gentleman would give her his seat!” Immediately, a half dozen shame-faced people would leap to their feet and offer her their place. Some of them were so embarrassed they never sat down again even after they realized they could. My sister and I got some good seats this way.

Aside from her unconditional love, the best gift Grandma gave me was a sense of connection to my Jewish heritage. Although we grew up in a secular home, Grandma consistently made sure to write “Happy Hanukah” on the presents we unwrapped at Christmas. She had a hanukiah in her living room year round, and a Jewish calendar in the kitchen. If we wanted a snack, in her home matzo was always available. These may seem like small things, but as I was growing up, whenever I heard someone say the only way to get to Heaven was though Jesus I knew it wasn’t true because Grandma wasn’t Christian and there was no way a fair and decent God would, for even a moment, consider keeping her out.

So this is how I remember Grandma. Every year, from now on, I will be saying Kaddish for the anniversary of her death. And from time to time I will wear something that has Tweetie Bird on it. Because, like Grandma, to the uninitiated Tweetie Bird may appear to be small and helpless, but anyone who knows anything knows Tweetie, like Grandma, is well capable of taking care of himself.

For Pearl Singer, may her memory be a blessing.