Category Archives: Bereavement

Jubilee Part Four: Preparing Others for My Departure, Death and Distance

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Moroccan Wall/Gate/Passage
Moroccan Wall/Gate/Passage

I finished yet another fast, from sundown on Monday, August 4th until sundown Tuesday, August 5th. This year, that day was Tisha B’Av. The Jewish day starts at sundown in the evening and goes until the following sundown. “…And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” B’reishit/Genesis 1:5

As my Rabbi Naomi Steinberg says:

“Every year in midsummer the Jewish calendar brings us a challenge – the holy day of Tisha B’Av, the Tenth of the lunar month of Av, the day that commemorates the destruction of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and 70 CE, and also the day when the Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and driven from Spain in 1492.”

It’s a really, really, really bad day. Many years either Hiroshima or Nagasaki day is also falling on or around Tisha B’Av. I used to fast on those days when I was younger, before I ever connected with my Judaism. The thought of eating or drinking on a day when so many innocent people were murdered just has never been something I could stomach. When I learned of the Jewish fast, it was one more link in my chain of connection to Torah and to Judaism.

This is just always a VERY horrific time of year. It has been for Jewish people for thousands of years. It is Now in Israel, it is Now in Palestine, it is Now in Syria, it is Now in Somalia, it is Now in Afghanistan, it is Now in Pakistan, it is Now in Nigeria. It is NOW everywhere that folks kill and maim and wound each other for reasons that have never and will never make sense to me. While I seek out and look for understanding and guidance around death, I have never wanted to encourage or support killing. I am always and still a pacifist.

Even so, death has been part of my journey in life from the beginning. My mother was six months pregnant with me when my almost two-year old sister Paula Andrée Barchilon died. I came into the world with death at my heels and connected to a sister who left the earth before I entered it. We crossed and have crossed paths, all my life, in a liminal space, in an other kind of place.

Maternal Echo by Helen Redman, self-portrait of my mother with me in utero two months after my sister Paula's death.
Maternal Echo by Helen Redman, self-portrait of my mother with me in utero two months after my sister Paula’s death.

So, death has never been far away or to be avoided as a subject of exploration and study. I used to go to the cemetery where my sister was buried as a young girl. It was a quiet and special place for me, almost a secret place because it was never crowded with living folks and it was calm and ordered and beautiful. When I was a young teen my dancing partners and I used to go there in the summers. We would try to restore the graves that had been vandalized. There was a small creek running through the graveyard and idiots would break off grave-stones and throw them in this water. We would be in our leotards which were very similar to one-piece swimsuits and wade into the water and try to heft these pieces of gravestone out of the water. We would then attempt to locate the grave they went with. I remember doing this as if it were yesterday. I also remember sitting at my sister’s grave and talking to her.

I wasn’t born yet when she died, so my relationship with her was completely something happening in my heart and soul. She was my first angel, my first guide beyond this world. This connection to death started in the womb, but has continued in me as a beat that I was tuned to and interested in. All my life I have sought out knowledge and information around death.

I have also studied how other culture’s navigate and approach death and the afterlife. For almost all cultures there is something beyond this world. It is only recently that the Religion of Proof in Physical Evidence has come to the foreground of many folks’ ideas about death. I have no need to change anyone’s mind or convert anyone. People believe and engage across a great divide and along a continuum from absolute rejection and negation of anything Holy or Divine to complete engagement and relationship with Holiness. Death is a part of that dance, regardless of what you believe or don’t believe. We are all going to die as are the people we love and the ones we hate. Death is a sure and constant reality.

One of the underlying reasons for my Jubilee retreat revolves around my desire to prepare folks, as best I can, for the eventuality of my death. I hope it is fifty years from now. I’m in reasonably good health and don’t anticipate leaving this earth anytime soon. Nevertheless, I don’t know the pull-date on the Nicole Andrée Barchilon Frank label.

As I contemplate taking a retreat to look at death more fully and to give folks an opportunity to encounter my physical absence, it is with a heavy heart and a desire to grapple with something completely impossible. I need to have the freedom to yell, rage and engage with the Divine around all of this. I cannot do that with anyone other than the Holy One and I need the space and time, one needs in an intimate relationship, to tackle really hard issues. It’s not a short conversation.

…to be continued….

Nicole writes to you about death and life from her very active home in Bayside, where she will now attend to watering her garden and doing the laundry (two very mundane but solidly of this world kinds of tasks).

This piece was originally published in the Mad River Union, on August 6th, 2014. It has been slightly altered for this post.

The territory of loss, Mourning the death of R’ Meshullam Zalman Hiyya ben Chaya Gittel ve Shlomo HaCohen

Bereavement, Practice, , , ,
Reb Zalman z"l in celebratory prayer from the CU Boulder archives, photo by Marcia Prager
Reb Zalman z”l in celebratory prayer from the CU Boulder Archives Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi Collection, used here with permission, original photo by Yehudit Goldfarb

 

I keep trying to get things done and find myself in a constant loop of looking at all the videos, and obituaries and documentaries and teachings of my great teacher Reb Zalman z”l (may his memory be for a blessing). I am wandering around crying or doing one thing or another for a few moments and then wandering back to my state of mourning. So, I am not getting much done. I am sharing links here to various video of him. This first one is only nine minutes or so of him being interviewed and is a sweet introduction.

http://www.jta.org/2014/07/03/news-opinion/united-states/rabbi-zalman-schachter-shalomi-father-of-jewish-renewal-dies

To understand the depth of my sadness and that of so many others you may want to look at the thirty or more different obituaries of him done around the world, or check out the various links I’m putting at the end of this post here. Some of you may have studied with this great man, others may have only heard of him.

It is through him and those he empowered to be rabbis and teachers that I came into relationship with Judaism, he is my spiritual father and grandfather as he is and was to so very many people. Our tradition has tremendously beautiful and powerful spiritual technology and process around death. When we write the name of someone who has died we do so by adding two letters at the end: Reb Zalman z”l (zichrono livracha (זיכרונו לברכה). The practice of inserting these two English letters Z’L is in abbreviation for the Hebrew words above, which can be translated to mean “may his or her memory be blessed.”

We mark seven days of mourning after burial and gather in the home of the person who has passed to tell stories, pray and offer support to the family. We light a seven-day candle to hold a space for light and memory in our homes for those we are mourning, mine is burning still.

Photos of my Rebbe, Flowers from my Garden and the Seven Day Candle
Photos of my Rebbe, Flowers from my Garden and the Seven Day Candle

 

I gathered with some folks at our congregation in California and told stories and said Kaddish for Reb Zalman z”l the day he was buried. I have been reading his books, and watching lots and lots of videos of him offering teachings. This is really all I want to be doing right now. Everything else has no draw or pull to it. I know that I am not alone in mourning right now, even though I sit alone at my home writing these words.

In a few days I will drive to my friend’s home in Oregon and we will tell stories and cry and sing and celebrate and mourn together our great teacher. We will swim in the river near her home and try to hold fast to all that has been given to us from him.

Luckily, he was truly wise and left behind a tremendous legacy. Reb Zalman donated his papers to Norlin Library in Boulder and there is a permanent Zalman M. Shachter- Shalomi Collection there. Additionally, there is a foundation, (the Yesod Foundation) dedicated to sharing his teachings and hundreds if not thousands of his students and their students will continue to make Judaism real, thriving, feminist, earth-friendly and alive.

I feel so grateful to have had the times I did with this maverick of a teacher and guide and I’m so sad I didn’t have more time in this world to study with him, directly. Now, I will have to spend years moving through all the media, papers, books and stories he has left behind. I will need to seek out and spend time with his closest students and  learn from them. This is not a sad thing, but something I long for and delight in.

When a great teacher dies, we are instructed to carry their teachings on and to offer in their name and memory. So, I am dedicating myself anew to studying better and more and devoting myself with greater zeal to pursuing Hebrew fluency, Torah Study, and time to davven (pray/commune) with Holiness in stillness and solitude as well as in communion with others, from all religious traditions.

” Joshua the son of Perachia would say: Assume for yourself a master, acquire for yourself a friend, and judge every man to the side of merit.” Pirkei Avot, Chapter 1:6

May you be lucky enough to have acquired/assumed a great teacher, like I have. If you haven’t yet found that great master consider this your invitation to dive into a body of teaching and work that will change and improve your life and the lives of all those around you.

These are just some of the links both to obituaries for my beloved teacher and also for you to explore in your own searches for wisdom, guidance and growth. I hope they will inspire you to look deeper and love stronger and bigger than you can imagine doing.

 

With Big Love and Lots of Tears,

More than One, Fifty years since my sister Paula’s Death, I remember….

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Me, at the age, my sister Paula, died next to her grave in Boulder Colorado
Me, around the same age as my sister Paula when she died. I am sitting next to her grave (called the Lollipop grave) in Boulder, Colorado. This gravestone was commissioned by my parents, because while holding Paula they saw her interest in one of  DeWain Valentine’s watercolors, a heart shaped abstraction hanging in his studio. “Paula pointed to it with great animation and when we recalled that, after her death, we decided to commission DeWain to make it into a sculpture to mark her grave.”

 

Today, May 16, 2014 marks 50 years since my sister Paula died. I was inside my mother’s womb three and a half months from being born on that day. In this picture I am somewhere between two and three. My sister died three months short of her second birthday. Her death has marked my life as well as the lives of all our family. Death is a certainty for all of us, but no one wants a child to die or expects it.

I am truly a child of death, born into the grieving arms of my amazing and brave parents, who had to find love and presence to give me while being devastated about the loss of their firstborn beautiful child.

Every year at this time I light a Yahrzeit candle for her and remember her physical presence on this earth. This Jewish practice is so important to me and gives me a comfort that is beyond words. I feel connected to my sister across time and space and I remember her and honor her and recognize that her short time on this earth was real and deserves honoring.

Yahrzeit Candle and memory altar for Paula on anniversary of her death.
Yahrzeit Candle and memory altar for Paula on anniversary of her death.

My parents have gone through various different ways of mourning her over the last fifty years. There is no way to navigate the territory of the death of a child right or wrong. It is all wrong.

Everything about a child dying feels wrong and those who have to cross that territory know this in a way that others who have not cannot really speak to. I have not lost a child to death and I pray I never do, but that is not within my control. Death is a certainty, there is no way out of it.

The mainstream culture runs kicking and screaming from this reality, racing as fast as they can from the idea that we all have a date stamp on us, one that we don’t know and cannot see.

If you are a practicing Buddhist, you spend a very long time imagining and looking at your own death in all kinds of different scenarios. If you are a Tribally aligned person, from anywhere around the globe, you recognize that the spirits of those who have died are here on this earth either to help or teach or hinder us based on many different factors. If you are an African Dagara Shaman like Malidoma Patrice Somé , you have a frame-work of belief that holds you, as the progeny of an ancestor, responsible for their wrong actions and the beneficiary of their good actions. If you are Hindu, you are engaged in a circle and chain of lives lived across space and time over and over in various forms. If you are Mexican you will make a feast and an altar of memories and offerings for your dead once a year and recognize and remember them together. Here, we just foolishly hope death will go away and try to avoid the topic. I’m summarizing very deep and profound beliefs here and could write many long essays on each of these, and perhaps I will, or as we say in my tradition, “go and study.” If something here stimulates you to learn more or go deeper, maybe even into the burial root ground of your soul.

I have studied and do study death more than most folks in our society. I am a co-founder of our community’s burial society called a Hevra Kadisha. I prepare folks for burial according to Jewish tradition. I have been called by death from within the womb-safe belly of my mother. I met my sister in that liminal space between, before my birth and after her death.

She was my angel in all the dark nights of my childhood, a sweet presence that helped me find hope, or pointed out the right direction.

I visited her grave as a child and have always held a place for her in my heart.

Memoriam Collage by Helen Redman 1995
Memoriam Collage by Helen Redman 1995

When I was a teenager I would visit the graveyard with my friend Gretchen Reinhardt and we would attempt to rescue or put back together gravestones that had been vandalized.

I was never afraid in that graveyard. All those dead were my friends. It was a quiet, calm place where I didn’t have to feel all the pain of those around me. No one was teasing me or hurting me and I never felt like an alien in the cemetery. I was at home there, I still am. Death and I have always been in relationship.

Which is why everyday of my life feels like an amazing gift that I need to live fully and well. I am not running away from the knowledge that I will die, that all those I love and cherish will die. I am acutely aware of this and I know it in my cells and in my blood. My umbilical cord blood was saturated with the pain of my sister’s passing, my very core has been colored by her passing. This is not a sad story though, while at the same time being the saddest story.

I am more than okay now as I round the corner towards fifty and I pass this spot on the calendar and I touch her once again in the cycle of remembering. I know that there is more to death than an end. I know this in my body, heart and mind, in my Lev (Hebrew for Heart/Mind)  and in my soul and it is not just a comfort to me, it is a lifeline and a guiding force in my life.

I know this post will make my mother cry, but she and I have a long and deep understanding about honesty and truth-telling and being real with each other. We both have made and will make mistakes, but we are linked so very deeply in our connection to dealing with death honestly and with whatever we have to bring to the table around it. Others in my family do not often want to talk about Paula, but perhaps they will read this or maybe they won’t. My father used to take me to her grave as a child, this was not something I did with my mother. As an adult when I am in Boulder I visit her grave and place a stone on it.

Jewish folks bring stones to a grave, stones to mark that our memory for those who have left this earth is as long and durable and tangible as that of a stone or a rock. A rock has been around for millenniums and this symbolic act is our way of saying, “YOU are present for us still today.” It reminds us to do good and enact justice for those who are living. It reminds us to not throw stones, but to remember that everyone is precious and will be mourned by someone, so we shouldn’t go around killing folks EVER!

A rock says, I silently mark this territory and bear witness for you, even when you are in the ground yourself, I will still be here as a reminder of your presence on this planet, at this place.

Visiting my sister's grave October 2014, leaving stones and saying prayers and remembering.
Visiting my sister’s grave October 2014, leaving stones and saying prayers and remembering.

I have a mother who is an artist and who has been marking my presence and journey on this earth since before I was born into it. She has marked me with paint and pastel, with pencil and with cloth. Reminding me and anyone brave enough to visit this place of pain, death and life that we are always MORE THAN ONE.

We are all connected one to the other, now and forever and always and always.

I love you mommy and I love you Papa. I grieve for your loss, even still and especially, today fifty years later.

Thank you for loving me so deeply and magnificently!

Here I am, inside my mommy, right before I was born, more than one always!

More than One by Helen Redman, 1964
More than One, by Helen Redman, 1964

 

 

 

Moroccan Seven Vegetable Cous Cous with Hot Sauce, in memory of BB Cohen

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BB Cohen in Oukamaiden, Morocco with Etan Lev, April 9, 2013
BB Cohen in Oukamaiden, Morocco with Etan Lev, April 9, 2013

My Uncle BB Cohen, may his memory be for a blessing, passed away on Sunday, March 30th, 2014. He was 88 years old. I last saw him with my youngest son. We spent two glorious days with him in the Atlas Mountains and ate good food, took good walks, and shared stories and family. We then rejoined my son’s companions on the school trip we were on. I am so grateful for this final time of connection with BB. I have so many good memories and a CD he gave me of his piano playing. You can read more about my visit with him in the piece called Omar and the Bowls that is at the end of my post called It’s a Small World.

What follows here is the basic veggie dish I make to go with about ten other dishes, coming later. There are seven vegetables that go into this dish and you can pick and choose which seven you use. My husband doesn’t eat bell peppers, so I never include them, but make a separate dish with them, Perla’s Peppers, already up on this site. If you like bell peppers, use them in this dish as one of your seven.

The Hot Pepper Sauce can be made all the time and can be used every day of your life, to the delight of your family and friends. It is absolutely essential, in my opinion, for any couscous recipe to add some spice. The actual flavors of this dish are very delicate and sweet, the cinnamon, saffron and coriander being the main flavors. For those who don’t like spice, the dish is perfect without it. For those who do need a little kick, this Hot Pepper Sauce is different from others due to the cumin, VERY Moroccan!

Also, I am not giving instructions about how to prepare the actual couscous grain here. That is a three page process that many others have written about. Perhaps one day. I recommend you do look up how to actually prepare couscous, the grain itself, according to the Master Directions given by Paula Wolfert from her book, Couscous and other good food from Morocco. There is no point in making nasty couscous mush to go with the vegetable dish, but unless you take the time to prepare the grain properly, serve the vegetables with a millet bread or some other grain.

This recipe and the Hot Pepper Sauce are my adaptation from the Sunset Vegetarian Favorites cookbook and also Paula Wolfert’s book mentioned above.

Moroccan Seven Vegetable Cous Cous with Hot Sauce

  1. two large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes or use fresh pumpkin or some other sweet gourd/squash
  2. several handfuls of fresh green beans, cut into small ½ inch pieces (instead of bell peppers for those who are allergic to bell peppers, otherwise use bell peppers!)
  3. two-four large tomatoes, chopped

  4. one or two large cans of garbanzo beans (rinse off the gooey juice) or the equivalent amount of fresh cooked ones

  5. two-three medium size zucchinis chopped into small little wedges

  6. one-two turnips (peeled and cubed into small pieces)
  7. one large parsnip (peeled) or other vegetable of your choice, cut into smallish pieces

¼– ½ cup of olive oil

1–2 large onions finely chopped

2–4 teaspoons fresh ground coriander

2–4 teaspoons cinnamon

juice of one to two lemons

¼– ½ cup water

½ to a full teaspoon of saffron threads

dash or more of salt

Heat the oil and add the onion, coriander & cinnamon, stirring frequently until the onions are soft (5–10 minutes). Stir in the sweet potatoes and mix often for about two minutes. Add the parsnips, turnips, tomatoes, green beans, garbanzo beans, water, lemon juice, saffron threads and some salt. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 15–20 minutes. Mix in the zucchini, after the sweet potatoes and other veggies have cooked, they need less time. Cook for another twenty to forty minutes, stirring gently and on low heat. You can let this dish sit for a while before serving in a good covered pot, if you aren’t cooking in a traditional Moroccan Tagine style dish.

Serve over couscous and make sure and use the Hot Pepper Sauce as it makes this dish. This recipe w/out the pepper sauce is very savory, not spicy, the Hot Pepper Sauce adds the heat and you can use as much or as little as you wish. I also like to add fresh feta or some other crumbly salty cheese as it gives the flavors another contrast. Again, I serve the feta on the side. I prefer goat or sheep’s milk feta, but use whichever one you like.

Hot Pepper Sauce

In a small pan on a low flame combine ½ – ¾ cup olive oil, when the oil is warm to hot add 3–5 teaspoons of fresh ground red pepper (cayenne); 2–4 teaspoons fresh ground cumin seed (use the Sabatu/Suribachi to grind your cumin seeds); 2–3 cloves of garlic, pressed (be careful as the oil is hot, you can press the garlic into a small bowl and slip it into the oil if you are worried about oil splattering); ¼ – ½ teaspoon of salt. Cook over low heat, stirring with a chopstick until all of it is well–blended (5 minutes).

Enjoy and Live your life with gusto!!!!!!

View from BB's home in Ouka
View from BB’s home in Ouka, now he flies above these mountains, free as a bird!

Aisha’s Heavenly Curried Green Beans

Bereavement, Food, News, Recipes, , , ,
Fatima Cut Out by Helen Redman from her Moroccan Women series
Fatima Cut Out by Helen Redman from her Moroccan Women series

I just learned that my dear Moslem friend Aisha Aziz died a few days ago, so this recipe is in honor and memory of her. It has been in my cookbook, and deciding which recipes to upload when is one of my current questions. I have been thinking a lot about Aisha, even before knowing she was so close to leaving this world. She has been in my daily prayer practice for some time.

Her home was always open to me and to others. Every year at the end of Ramadan, her and her husband Abdul would invite me to their Eid al-Fitr celebration feast. The food there was extraordinary and I wish I’d gotten more recipes. Aisha always asked me to bring  one or two of her favorite dishes of mine to share. We both had a fierce love of the Divine,  a constant engagement with caring for those in our homes and cooking up feasts for them.

The differences between us were more like the differences of taste and flavor between kinds of peppers or spices. Moslem or Jew, we were and always will be sisters. I learned this particular recipe from my beloved sister Aisha, now of blessed memory, who came over for Shabbat one evening and offered to cook the beans for me. She couldn’t just be a guest, she saw the beans and the ingredients and offered to show me a new recipe. I’m so glad she came over early to hang out with me in my kitchen. It’s pretty much my favorite place to be with people. Once you’ve cooked with someone, they are family!

Life is so short, so please when you have the chance to partake of something delicious, or someone delicious, enjoy! Enjoy their laugh, the texture of their skin, the wrinkles when they smile, the smell of vanilla or cumin they bring with them or the sound of their voice.

Aisha’s Heavenly Curried Beans

  1. at least three or four large handfuls of fresh green beans (You cannot ever get enough of this dish if prepared well and they are great cold the next day as well)
  2. olive oil
  3. curry powder (I use cumin, spicy red pepper or cayenne, coriander, turmeric and salt for my curry powder. Curry is a word that has many translations, it is a combination of spices or dishes and flavors not one specific spice.) If you don’t have your own fresh separate spices, you can use a “curry” powder, but make sure it is fresh and it won’t taste as good as if you mix the spices together in the hot oil in the pan.
  4. 1-2 medium to large tomatoes
  5. lemon

Blanch green beans thoroughly. This means you have a large pot of boiling water and you throw the green beans in the water for about three to five minutes. Remove them either with a slotted spoon or strainer and put them in another dish or bowl. In a separate frying pan heat some olive oil (not a tiny drop but a goodly amount so that the spices mix well and you will have enough oil and spices to coat the green beans. Add the spices or your curry powder and blend together while warm. As stated above, I create my own curry mix with fresh ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, and a dash of cayenne. I combine these in the oil as it is warming and add the salt as well. I adjust with more of one or another of these five basic ingredients. I prefer to grind my cumin in a Suribachi, which is a rough and large grooved mortar and pestle and is an absolute essential in my kitchen. The flavor is so much fresher when you grind your own spices and really makes a difference, the same can be said for the coriander seeds (but they take more work, so even I use the already powdered kind sometimes.) Please see the Lesser but Still Important Commandments from The Ten Commandments (and a few more) of Nicole’s Kitchen for more instructions on herbs and spices.

Add the blanched green beans to the olive oil and curry powder. Sauté for 5–10 minutes. Add sliced tomato wedges and sauté for another 5–10 minutes. The tomato will break down and the green beans will be very soft. You can add more curry powder or salt to taste and a squeeze of lemon near the end.

I can’t even eat them any other way now. Do use good salt, see Let’s Talk Salt, for more details.

Enjoy!

Nicole