Grief at Nearly Four Months

Writing through the month of November (I completed a draft of a novel for @NaNoWriMo) allowed an outlet for processing the loss of my mother. Writing about building community allowed me moments to reflect on how good my mother was at that, and the value she passed to me about community. Writing about memory was a way of thinking about what an odd and critical thing memory is.

December has been different. I'm still writing every day in memory of Mom, sure. And I'm honored to have passed the practice on to a friend, who is taking on her own practice (not with writing) in memory of her father who died near Thanksgiving. That sharing of grief has been powerful, to me.

As I went through the first Hanukkah without my mother. She made Hanukkah so special. I feel like Hanukkah was definitely missing something this year, like I was just going through the motions, trying to make it special, but not quite succeeding.

Twenty years ago this month, during the holiday of Hanukkah, my brother died. This year I have thought about him and Mom meeting up in Olam Haba, having a conversation, reconnecting, connecting spiritually perhaps in a way they never could in life. My grief for him was enhanced this year by Mom's death, and my memories of and compassion for her deepened as the two losses mingled in my heart.

Today, as I drove through my neighborhood, I remembered a friend who lived a few blocks away, one of Mom's favorite people in the world, someone special to our whole family. She died a few years ago - I can't even remember - and sadly her husband moved out of the neighborhood before we moved in. Today, I imagined Mom and Lois meeting in Olam Haba. Again, a mingling of losses.

So here's my big confession. With all that, I haven't been crying since Mom died. Maybe the first couple of days I cried a little. I have worried at how few tears I have shed - been embarrassed by their absence. I know grief doesn't happen in a certain way. I know I grieved many pieces of the loss before she died - her loss of voice, a loss of relating on a certain level. Still, even as friends and colleagues have counseled me not to, I have felt guilty about not crying.

Yesterday, I cried. It was a silly thing - a friend's post on FB about a mom being surprised by a son returning home, bringing an adopted child, a grandchild. But there I was, in tears - for a good twenty minutes.

I miss my mom. Terribly. I have a hard time looking at her picture, because I miss her so. Writing helps me to hide my grief, to keep me busy, to get me through, as it were, as much as it helps me feel like I am honoring Mom's memory. Indeed, the honor almost comes out as a bit of excuse to write, where the writing itself seems an escape - into characters, ideas, story.

After nearly four months of grief, I sense I am only just beginning. Yes, I have grieved before - I have lost favorite people - friends, a brother, grandparents. Each loss has been different, and grief comes back again in waves, as it did this week for my brother Ben and for my friend Lois. It is sure to be that way as I continue to remember Mom, through this first year without her and in every year to come. Grief simply is.

(Mis)Translations and (Mis)Quotes - Interpreting and Changing Tradition

אמר רבי סימון: אין לך כל עשב ועשב, שאין לו מזל ברקיע, שמכה אותו ואומר לו גדל

Rabbi Simon said: Is it not so that there is not a single blade of grass that does not have its Fortune in heaven striking it and telling it to grow.

I have long struggled with word changes and misquotes of traditional texts, not to mention incorrect citations.

The above translation is what it really says in the original. And yet, I much prefer the more common translation: Behind every blade of grass there is an angel telling it, "Grow! Grow!"  You can find that quote all over the internet - incorrectly attributed to Talmud. It's really in Mishnah Rabba Bereishit (ancient rabbinic commentary on Genesis), 11:6. 

Just instinctively I prefer the gentler version - no hitting.

Recently, I have seen מכה translasted as "tap" - as though the angels are tapping the blades of grass on the shoulder to get their attention. But מכה is the word for striking, for hitting, for giving punishing lashes to someone (as in the tractate of Talmud, מכות makot, in which we learn that one should never merit 50, so the worst punishment is 49 מכות, lashes.

And then there is a traditional interpretation of the original in which the hitting of the grass is meant to teach us that some things need to be hit in order to grow. Tell me how many heder (school) teachers or parents have used that one through the generations to justify striking a child.

And perhaps "change" is less true than borrowing a bunch of sources and putting them together: while the Midrash is based on a statement in Job, there is no mention of an angel. Where does the angel come from? In Sefer Hasidim (12th c.) it says, כי אין דבר שיהיה מלאך ממונה עליו, ואפילו כל עשב ועשב, "there is nothing that doesn't have a guiding angel over it - even grass." I like this version, though it doesn't indicate that the grass is being told to grow.

This also brings up the angel bit. In the Midrash, there is no angel - there is מזל mazal, fortune, or perhaps star or constellation. Yes, this is whence we get mazal (mazel) tov - not "may you have good luck," but "what you have (achieved) is a sign of good fortune," a sign from the stars.

Somehow, we get from Fortune to Angel, as well as from hitting and telling to telling (possibly with a gentle tap to get attention).

Perhaps it is a bit like the game of telephone, whereby a teaching is passed from one generation to the next, and on the way transitions in order to remain relevant, to speak to each successive generation.

Indeed, if we didn't need that, we could all simply sit down and read the Torah and never need the Mishnah, or the Gemarrah, or the Midrash, or the commentaries of Rashi, Maimonides, Nachmanides, Gersonides, Hirsh, Hertz, Eitz Hayim, or all of the rabbis and teachers offering Divrei Torah, interpretive words of Torah, in Jewish communities throughout the world.

There are good reasons to consider all words we wish to pass on, and how we choose to interpret them says something about our values. Some people don't want to talk about angels - ancient rabbis as well as contemporary Jews both. I like to talk about them - I like to think about the role of angels in the world, the angels who sit behind a blade of grass and what they do. Maybe, back in the day, they did hit the grass - and maybe, like we now don't believe in striking our children to get them to learn, just maybe those angels have also changed and don't any longer strike the grass to urge it to grow. Maybe they tap it gently, נגע to touch, just to get its attention. Or maybe they just whisper a little louder, or change their words, or step out in front instead of staying behind - just to get the attention of the grass.

With that in mind, I will stick with:
Behind every blade of grass there is a guiding angel whispering to it, Grow! Grow! 

And I will cite its origin as "Midrash, common interpretation."

Where Have I Been Writing?

Where have I been, dear readers? Where have I been writing?

Three months ago tonight, my mother died. In the turmoil of the week that followed, I struggled with remembering her - with honoring her. In Judaism we typically do this by reciting Kaddish daily - and with an effort and support from other I live in a community where I could do that. But the first handful of times I recited Kaddish it just felt ... powerless. The words are all too familiar, the ideas in it archaic, and most of all the way we recite it - quickly and then on to announcements or wishing each other a good day - seemed to draw me away rather than connect me to my mother's memory, God, a spiritual feeling.

Even without my telling her about this, my boss and colleague suggested study in lieu of (or addition to) whatever Kaddish I could manage to recite. This sounded terrific, and I looked at my bookcases and at texts I have interest in - but nothing caught my fancy.

And then it came to me. My mother is a writer. Was. Sorry, I forgot to say "was." It's only three months, you know.

My mother was a writer, and as I considered whether I could actually finish any of her projects (jury still out, by the way), I realized that what I can do, what I am very well equipped for (not that I'm not equipped for study), is writing. 

I am a writer, and my mother was a writer. And I can write in her memory.

Now, I write every day. I journal for 18 minutes every morning, and I write creatively once a week, and I was doing a pretty good job at keeping this blog up. To honor my mother, I felt like I had to add something. So I added 18 minutes a day of writing - memories, fiction prompts, essay-like things.

I know I stopped writing the blog. I was writing, but I wasn't writing anything I felt I could share. I was in a bit of a block on that front. But I was writing.

And then, on October 26th, in response to a fantasy-like prompt from my writing friend, Sarah Mendonca, I hit upon a short story that, over the next couple of days became a long journey. And so, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, began to outline, and on November 1st began to write in earnest. More than 60,000 words later, on this last day of November, I have a complete draft of a novel and seven short stories based on the novel.

And today, I can come back to you and say, what a WILD experience. The words flowed in November - I didn't really have a plan, I didn't know at all where the story was taking me. I learned about mdy characters as I went, and I became invested in them the same way I get invested as a reader - I didn't want to stop writing the way I can't put down a book.

I won't tell you it's perfect - it's not. It needs a lot of work, now. Because I learned more and more about my characters as I wrote, I know I have to go back and correct things. 

But folks, I wrote a book. I did it on my lunch hour, and in my journal writing time, and in my writing-in-memory-of-mom time, and in my blog time, and in my spare time, and in the middle of the night.

I let go, and a book came through me. My husband said at one point - about his own non-fiction writing and my fiction - that it's like Mom is behind us, out there in Olam Haba (the world to come), urging us to write. 

Tonight, as I put the novel and short stories aside, to be revisited in January (I tell you, I can't wait to meet up with my characters again, but I know it's time to put them away), I am wondering what I will write tomorrow, when I wake up and don't write my novel. A week ago, I already returned to journaling in the morning, since the novel was done and I was working on the short stories. 

Tonight, I return to the blog. I want to tell you I will keep up with it, but I don't know that I will. I want to think you care about this post, that it is meaningful to you. It is meaningful to me - I have been on a journey with my characters, and this blog didn't know. And this blog is a part of my journey as a writer, too. Perhaps I will blog again next week. Or perhaps I will be writing something, somewhere else. I can't promise which. 

I can promise that I will be writing. I am a writer, and I am writing in memory of my mother, Julia, who was a writer.

My Mother Was A Dream Interpreter

Last night I dreamed I was sitting at a table with my mother's "Writing Sisters," a group of women she loved, with whom she workshopped writing, and especially with whom she share a passion for writing.

My mother was a dream interpreter. Like the biblical Joseph she could sometimes be blunt in her interpretations. I can't tell you whether she thought much about her interpretations first. As a mother myself, I can say that she probably didn't - she just spoke the truth that came to her in the moment, when I came to her with my dreams, often waking her from her own.

One particular dream I remember, I must have been eleven or twelve, came after one of our rabbi's rousing, demanding, terrifying sermons against nuclear proliferation (I had several dreams/nightmares after his sermons). 

We were walking in a wasteland, along a bar of sand raised above more sand, as far as the eye could see, to the flat horizon. Only the ridge stood out, and maybe a few broken pieces of metal machinery. I was with my parents. At this point I can't remember whether my brothers were also there, but I think not.

Up over the horizon a few large missiles, blue and silver, rose, veered towards us, and landed - one nose down, tailfins jutting up in the air, very near to the ridge; the next nosecone piercing the ridge we were walking on. I was, naturally, terrified. I guess I turned to my parents for reassurance. My dad said, "it's just a test, don't worry. We are okay." My mom said nothing.

I woke from the dream terrified. I went to my parents bedroom, this time looking for reassurance in a waking state. My mom came out and sat with me, and I told her my dream.

"Oh, that just means he will be in your next life, and I won't," she said, as if it was the truest, most obvious thing about this dream.

Had I asked her why she didn't say anything in the dream? I don't remember. Either way, to this day I find her interpretation not in the least bit reassuring.

In these first few weeks since Mom's death, I have thought often of this dream - and her response. Did she really believe this? In these past years when words were absent from her mouth due to a stroke did she remember, and know how close her interpretation was?

My dad and I carry on. Mom is gone to Olam Haba, and we are here, in Olam Hazeh. For nearly three years, she was unable to speak much, and for the last year really not at all. 

My dad and I live on. We speak to each other. In some ways her loss of speech opened up pathways between him and me that somehow stayed narrow in the time that she and I developed an incredible friendship, starting right after my high school years. 

And now my mom is gone. And in some ways it is like my dad and I are forging a "next life" together. We reassure each other. Is this a test? No - this is life. Eventually we all lose close family 

I'm not sure what Mom would say about last night's dream. Still, her voice lives on in my memories of her, and in her writings - personal and professional. And I will continue to listen, to seek connection to her through those writings. Maybe, just maybe, that's what last night's dream was about - that I, as her writing daughter, am thus kin to her writing sisters. May the Sisters and I continue to write, to honor her memory, and to follow our own passion.

From Shiva A Beginning

Moshe received Torah on Sinai and passed it to Joshua.
Joshua passed it to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and they to the Men of the Great Assembly. And they said, "Don't judge in haste, raise many disciples, and build a fence around Torah." (Avot 1:1)


As I sit in the week of shiva following my mother's death last Monday, I have had many recommendations, and many thoughts, about how to keep time during the process of mourning. Shiva is obvious, mostly - seven days mostly at home, letting community surround me and my family. And I must say the community, composed of people I know who knew my mother, and of people I know who didn't know my mother, and people I hardly know who did or didn't know my mother, has been incredible. I feel comforted. I feel met and honored in my place of mourning.

The custom of saying Kaddish daily is likely to be difficult, given the lack of daily minyan and the inevitable busy life I will be returning to. Someone suggested study, particularly some piece of Torah or Mishnah or other traditional text, as a daily practice. This would surely honor my mother's zest for learning.

Today, though, it came to me. My mother was a writer - and writing is for me a core part of life and living, a passion my mother passed on to me. Recently I read in one of her journals her words praising a piece I had written. Writing is a way to honor my mother's memory - and writing daily with this purpose is also the best way to avoid one of the pitfalls of grief that I could easily fall into - a sort of writer's block.

So I begin a practice today, on the 5th day of sitting shiva for my mother, in which I will write for eighteen minutes -- memories of life with her, reflections on her life and things she taught me, and, when I get stuck, finding a text to learn and reflect on in her memory. This in addition to journaling daily and any other writing I might do.

Today, I begin in reflection on Avot 1:1 (above):

My mother gave me Torah -- she and the people she surrounded herself with.
   She gave me Torah by choosing Judaism for herself and for me.
   She gave me Torah by choosing to send me to the Seattle Hebrew Academy
          for my early education.
   She gave me Torah by joining and becoming an active member of Temple Beth Am, 
         and by joining the choir and being in the synagogue for Shabbat and 
         other events throughout the week.

My mother gave me Torah by pursuing her graduate education, 
         especially because it was in the field of Jewish Studies, 
         but also because it was the pursuit of ongoing, ever growing knowledge.
   She gave me Torah by celebrating Jewish life at home, weekly and through the year, 
         and at personal moments along the way.

My mother gave me Torah by pursuing justice, through giving to diverse organizations,
         and by being an open and gentle and generous person to whomever she encountered.
   She gave me Torah by living her life with verve and with dignity, from difficult beginnings
         as a war orphan to the very end through adversity and illness.
  
My mother gave me Torah by loving me, from the moment she gave life to me, teaching me
         to walk through fears and to face life head on.
   She gave me Torah by holding on tight to life, and by giving to her family in the moment
         she finally let go of her place in this physical world.

Mom. Ma. Ima! I have called you many names. You gave me life. You gave me Torah.
   Your memory will always be a blessing, sweet on my tongue as I share with friends
         with family, and especially with my son.


I invite my readers to write your own reflections. Think of someone who has taught you Torah - who has taught you about life. Maybe this person is deceased, like my mother, but maybe they are still alive (too often we reflect only after someone has gone). How did this person teach you? What did they teach you? What have you received?

Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma: Elul and Death-Bed-Side Musings

Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma... *
NOTE: This entry was written Saturday, 29 August 2015. In the wee hours of Monday morning, 31 August 2015, my mother died peacefully. I am so grateful for all of the readers - friends and those who don't know us - who honor her and my family by reading this.


My mother has been one of my greatest teachers throughout my entire life. For years, since I got my first email account, twenty-five years ago as a college freshman, my mother and I had a nearly daily (and sometimes multiple times a day) email correspondence. In time, this became a sharing of struggles and mutual support. Always, she shared insights -- about her life, the lives of people we know, and life in general -- that helped me to grow and change inside. Nearly three years ago, that correspondence, and our ability to talk on the phone (we definitely needed bulk long distance in the days before cell phones), disappeared in an instant. She was in the hospital, I called to talk and comfort her, she picked up the phone, and -- with my dad and the doctor in the room there, she suddenly couldn't speak.

Since then, despite her inability to speak, my mother has continued to teach me, day in and day out, about the strength and will to continue to live, to always strive to move forward, to get back up on one's feet literally and figuratively.

And so it breaks my heart that this past Thursday my dad and I finally had to be the ones to say "it's time to let go." She knew, too. I'm sure she did. In her last conscious moments, she looked deeply at each of us gathered in the room. My dad**, my brother, my husband, me.

We continue to watch vigilantly, as her body pulses on.

"If I have done anything to harm you in the past year, please forgive me." My mother taught me to always ask these words out loud, each year in season of Awe. We have usually asked between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

"Repent one day before you die," taught Rabbi Eliezer (Avot). There is no time like the present. I don't expect my mother to live to see Rosh Hashanah, two weeks from now. Right now it is Elul, the month preceding these days -- and a time of preparation for those upcoming days of awe.

Last night I sat by my mother's bed and asked her forgiveness. This is the hardest year, yet. Did I imagine the slight raise of eyebrows, or a minute squeeze from her hand?

I sang to her from Psalms:
עשה עיני אל ההרים מעין יבוא עזרי
I will lift my eyes to the mountains from whence my help comes.
(among others)

 and also from the prayers of forgiveness:

 סלח לנו מחל לנו כפר לנו
Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
(among others)

My mother has taught me to live tradition, not just to know it, by living it herself.

Any sins I commit, by omission, by neglect, or by intent, are my own. And I have plenty.

It occurred to me last night when I returned home, and was trying to find sleep, that there is another way in which my mother has lived that I have not fully lived up to.

I have never once heard my mother say "I don't want to...."
(There is one exception, and it is only in the past year when she has been entirely dependent on other people for nearly every aspect of her life from access to food and entertainment to personal hygiene, and I do not count this as a lapse, but rather as a part of her ongoing desire to have some control and sense of safety in her fragile life during this time.)

I know that I regularly feel that "I don't want to." When I would express this as a kid, my mother would make me do things anyway -- but she always stood behind me, sometimes literally, as I did them. A silly memory of this is when I went to get my driver's permit. I was nervous, it was a new thing, I didn't know what to ask or how. She coached me, but she wouldn't go up to the desk for me and ask for the paperwork -- she made me do it. Nearly thirty years later, I still remember that moment, and am grateful for it. Her coaching from way back continues to guide me when I encounter new things.

But I can be stubborn, and sometimes it takes me a long time to go up to that desk, to step up to the plate as it were.

As my mother lies unconscious, as we watch her body wither, I cannot help but think how I have already missed in the past few years since she lost her ability to speak and write, and how greatly I will miss, her coaching, her conversation, her stamina.

In my mother's honor, I want to strive harder against the "I don't wanna" feeling in my life.

Don't forget to call, talk with, write to, connect with your loved ones. Don't forget to call your Mamma! I'll be sitting by my mother's side as long as I can. I love her more than anything in the world!



Notes:
* Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma...I Wish I Could Call Mine is the title of a book by Lewis Grizzard.I once had all of Grizzard's books, collections of his syndicated newspaper humor column. I laughed heartily through my late teens and my twenties to his work. This is the only book I have kept through the years, though I haven't reread it in at least a dozen.
** For family, and others who wonder or know, he is my step-dad. See my father's day post from this year.

Wake Up, Elul is Here! -- with Writing Prompts

רבי אליעזר אומר, יהי כבוד חברך חביב עליך כשלך, ואל תהי נוח לכעוס, ושוב יום אחד לפני מיתתך

Rabbi Eliezer would say: The honor of your fellow should be as precious to you as your own, and do not be easy to anger. Repent one day before your death. (Sayings of the Fathers (Avot) ch.2)

Asked his disciples: Does a man know on which day he will die? Said he to them: So being the case, he should repent today, for perhaps tomorrow he will die; hence, all his days are passed in a state of repentance. (bShabbat 153a)

Mindfulness is a hot ticket word in contemporary American culture. It goes along with meditation, yoga, contemplative practices. Some of us may roll our eyes at the term, others may say, "yeah, I do that!" and still others — perhaps most of us — have a desire to increase our mindfulness.

In the ancient wisdom of Rabbi Eliezer we find the call to be first of all mindful in our relationships. Hold the honor of our fellows high, and try not to get angry. And, knowing we will err, as surely all humans do, Rabbi Eliezer offers a way out: repent. Now.

But don't we all get caught up in the rush of daily life? Don't we sometimes rush to grumble about the person in front of us on the road, or in a grocery store? Don't we sometimes yell at our children out of exasperation even when we know it won't help anything (I did that the other day at the park, and I'm still thinking how ridiculous I must have looked to all those — one of my less pretty parenting moments)? Aren't we all sometimes selfish, sometimes abrupt, sometimes hot, sometimes judgmental? Haven't we all acted before thinking?

The blasts of the shofar, from this first day of Elul into the coming new year, call us to wake up, to check in with ourselves and see, just how mindful are we? Just how aware are we in our daily lives? 

Even if we have a daily practice of self-reflection and self-improvement — even if that practice has us turning to those we have been angry at, or have judged poorly, in the process of our daily lives — even so, very few of us don't need a reminder.

Elul gives us a month to reflect on the last year and to renew our mindfulness in preparation for the new year, and another ten days to seek forgiveness before we rehearse our death at Yom Kippur. 

Wake Up! shouts the shofar. Pay attention. How are you being in the world?

One of my spiritual teachers regularly asks the question How be you? Sometimes this sets my inner grammar police wriggling uncomfortably. But just now, I'm hearing it differently. "How are you feeling" is not the question she is asking me. Rather, I am sure, she is asking How are you being in the world? How be you?


And this is the question I offer to you. How are you being in the world?


WRITING PROMPT: If you don't have a journal, find some blank paper. Write down the question, How am I being in the world? How was I in my interactions with people today? Now spend 18 minutes (my timer is set there, but chose your amount of time) reflecting on one or more encounters you had with other people today. Focus on how you were in those interactions; let go of how they were, only judging them with honor. 

Repeat this exercise throughout the week. If there are days when you feel like you don't have much to say, reflect backward; is there an experience from the last week, month, year that you are still thinking about, that is still bothering you in some way? Reflect!