Tag Archives: Grieving

Not Ready to Say Goodbye to Saying Kaddish

Bereavement, Food, Jewish Holy Days, News, Parenting, Practice, Relationships, Support, Teachings, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Altar I made to mark the eleven months since my father Jacov ben Perla v Chaim Ha Cohen’s death according to the Jewish calendar.

I’ve been weepy the last two days and I just figured out why. My body and heart are always ahead of my mind and brain. In Hebrew the word Lev means Heart and also Mind. So, my heart/mind was knowing something that my brain hadn’t figured out yet. I woke up with pain behind my eyes and a headache, yesterday. It was pretty early in the morning, but my husband woke up to hold me. I know when I have that kind of pain it is because I need to cry. I didn’t know why, but the why wasn’t important. So, he held me and I sobbed and released, still not sure what my tears were for or about.

Before falling asleep last night I thought, I need to check about the Jewish date for my father’s Yahrzeit. This is the day we mark once a year on the anniversary of a person’s death. The calendar for us is a combination Lunar and Solar calendar, so it is different than the Gregorian one used by most folks in this country. I knew that we stop saying Kaddish in the eleventh month from the death and since it was May 9th and my father died June 18/19th of 2018, I figured I better check. The Orthodox website run by Chabad.org is where I go when I need to calculate Hebrew birthdays or deathdays. They have a very easy interface and give you the dates for ten years out if you want.

So, I went to their site and plugged in my dad’s information and here’s what I got:

Yahrtzeit Information
The date of passing for this person was on:

Monday, June 18, 2018 – Tammuz 6, 5778

Observe the upcoming Yahrtzeit on:

Tuesday, July 9, 2019 – 6 Tammuz, 5779

Yahrtzeit observances begin on Monday evening.
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Kaddish Information

Kaddish is recited until mincha on the afternoon of:

Friday, May 10, 2019 – Iyar 5 5779

About the kaddish end date:

>Kaddish is recited for eleven months from the date of passing. Even if the interment took place a number of days after death, the 11 months are still counted from the date of passing. However, if the burial was postponed for two or more weeks after death, kaddish should be recited until the end of 11 months counting from the date of the burial.

I burst into tears upon seeing the Friday, May 10, 2019 date as the last time to say Kaddish for my father on a daily basis. I haven’t been saying Kaddish everyday for him for the last eleven months, but that didn’t matter. I have been thinking about him and saying the Kaddish whenever I was in a Jewish setting with a Minyan (ten Jewish folks or any ten loving folks will work for me).

I wasn’t, I am not ready to stop grieving my father. And, of course I don’t need to stop grieving him, but this marker hit me hard and I realized again with waves of tears that I am still very, very sad and missing my father every day. Grief is just not a one time thing you feel and are done with. I have been living it and reeling from it for the last eleven months very intensely. So, in the morning, this morning I again asked my husband for his loving arms and I cried some more and shared stories with him about my father.

2018-04-29 Kevin and Nicole
My man and I over a year ago celebrating my Beau Père Kenny Weissberg’s 70th, photo taken by Kenny’s very talented sister Ellen Weissberg Whyte.

I had big plans for tonight’s Shabbat dinner. I was going to cook Iranian Eggplant and make Raita and create a sort of pre-30th Anniversary vegetarian feast for my husband. Instead, after my energy/chiropractic/sound treatment with Sarah Griffith and my healing MAT (Muscle Activation Training) with Jazz and then shopping to get groceries, I found myself in a puddle of tears once I got home, barely able to get the groceries up the steps, for emotional, not physical reasons.

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Close up of altar, with the picture of my father and my sister about three months before she died. The Columbine and Lilac flowers are from my friend and MAT practitioner Jazz’s garden. The Columbine is the state flower of Colorado, and I could never pick it there, but here in California I can, in honor of my father and my sister Paula, whose Yahrzeit is coming up soon this May 16th in the Gregorian calendar.

No fancy dinner tonight. I finished setting up the altar for my father, pictured above and I’ll make a simple salad and asparagus for dinner. I’ll cook tomorrow, if I feel up to it. Today is about grieving and being sad and surrendering to my sadness, honoring that eleven lunar months have passed since my father was in a body. I don’t have to recite the mourner’s prayer for him everyday any more. Instead, I move into the wisdom of the Jewish practices of saying this prayer for him on the anniversary of his death, and three times more a year during the Yiskor service. So, four times a year, I’ll say this prayer for him, until I’m no longer able for the rest of my life.

Standing up when the Rabbi asks: “Is there anyone observing a Yahrzeit or in the first year of mourning, please stand,” has been a very powerful thing for me. I’ve cried every time I was asked for the name of who I am remembering, not expecting to each time. But, the tears, the body/mind/heart knowing cannot be denied or stopped. I have no desire to change that.

At Passover this year, I was in San Diego at my mother and beau-père’s home. When we got to the teaching and questions about why is this night different from all other nights, something strong came through for me. We ask “why on all other nights do we not even dip our greens/vegetables once, but on this night we dip twice?” This refers to dipping parsley in salt water and charoset into horseradish, so two dippings, double dipping that is encouraged. I was inspired to get honest with my parents about something very hard and sad for me, and so I gave them access to my feelings by introducing the subject through this idea of double dipping.

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The Pre-Passover double dipping table in the San Diego home of Helen Redman and Kenny Weissberg

I shared that usually we all avoid our feelings and on Pesach/Passover, we are being asked very clearly NOT to do that. If we think of the salt water as our tears and ourselves as the thing that needs to dip into them, we can see that our first dip is just a small foray into the emotional realm. Oh, there’s my feeling, yes, I know you’re there, that’s enough. We have that choice, most of the time, to stop ourselves from actually deeply feeling the sadness, grief, joy, fear or whatever emotion we are just lightly touching/dipping into. But, if we have the time or are able and have the support to immerse completely into our emotions, to really double dip, then something transformational and intense happens and we are no longer on the outside looking in, we are fully immersed.

So, this is the territory of emotional work, of grieving. It’s a place, where if we are healthy, we can have some agency and choice. I can’t live in this immersed in pain place all the time. Nothing would get done. It’s also not fair to my friends, family and community because I’m really not able to be present for others when I’m fully immersed in my emotional territory. My husband likes to say that I’m due and can take all the time I want. This is just one of the many things I adore about him. My middle son Issac, upon hearing about some of my sadness a few months back, said: “Mom, you’ve done so much for us, for so many people, if you take the next thirty years off to do whatever you want, that won’t even come close to covering it.” Both these men in my life are deep wells of grounding and tenderness in my life. I’m so very blessed by there understanding of my emotional double dipping.

To be fair, neither one of them likes it when I’m sad, but they don’t push me or aren’t upset by my sadness. I don’t feel as if they’ll topple or be hurt by my pain and grief. I trust their own steady grounding.

Mama Nicole and Issac
My man Issac, able to hold up whatever needs holding up. We take good care of each other, he and I.
The thing about family is that it’s not perfect or fair. Some members are better able to be around and take care of each other than others. Some parts of my family can hold my emotional double dipping better than others. This doesn’t mean the folks who aren’t able to do that don’t have gifts for me and aren’t available in other extremely helpful and important ways. My family is a messy, complex, messed-up and deeply caring for each other family. I think probably, this is true of most families.
As, I let myself be sad today and grieve the passing and end of day to day interactions and laughter and shared toast in the morning over coffee moments with my father, I’m so grateful for all the members of my family still here for me to cherish and honor and love and be loved by.
Mom Ken Ethan April 2017 Beard
My mother Helen Redman, Beau-Père Kenny Weissberg, and youngest son Ethan, cherishing each other!
Maren and Iris
Maren, my Mother-in-Love (because we are much closer and care for each other much more than the Mother-in-Law moniker makes room for). Maren and I share a deep love for all things flower and here she is cherishing one of her Iris blossoms.
2014-10-17 04.23.31
My brother Paul and his partner Kathryn and me too!

If I were to put up all the pictures of my sisters, my many G!dchildren, my bonus brothers and sisters and all my friends and community who actually are also behind what makes me smile, this blog post would never be finished. So, to all of you, not pictured here, please know, deep in your bones that you are in my heart/mind/Lev always and enable me to double dip, to triple dip and to just be all around drippy as well as silly and whole.

Thank you All!

Lost in Bed

Bereavement, News, Practice, Relationships, Support, Teachings, , , , , ,
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Winter Full Moon, Holy Hill, County Sligo Ireland, January 2016

Under the covers, under the stars, under the radar,  under, under, under, snowed completely under.

Lost in blankets, wholly surrounded. How the hell to emerge? I don’t seem to have an answer and have had to push myself physically and mentally to move outside of my bedroom. The death of a beloved community member and the grief around this also got me up and out to attend to the details that are mine, as Chair of the Hevra Kadisha, to do when someone dies. Being surrounded, in this process, by good people and community, sharing the tasks, holding each other in our pain and sorrow. This, then, becoming the new blanket I want to be folded into.

The blanket of community and shared carrying of the load. My friend, the grieving widow was expressing, on one of the nights of Shiv’ah, how special it was to have people in her home and how she was so terribly sad that it had to happen as a result of her husband’s death. She was expressing her anguish and loneliness and it was raw. We all know this, we don’t go visit folks or make the time, feel too overwhelmed or just have too much going on, we make excuses or just cannot get ourselves to the homes of others.

When there is a death, that drops away and we get there. This, by itself, is a correct and good thing. The stark contrast though between having your house full of folks for seven days after your husband dies and the fact that prior to that and after that your home will again be pretty empty, that is not a correct or a good thing. But it is the territory we are all in. We push ourselves when the need is great, the grief is current. We slide back into old patterns and ways of being as soon as we can.

There is no judgement here. It’s just something I’m living and experiencing and noticing. The cycle of connection and effort and how that unfolds in my community and life. I remember many years ago, when I was very sick and my husband was as well. We were very contagious with MRSA. We were hoping our young son wouldn’t get infected and he didn’t thanks to the help we got. There was a crew of folks coming to my home washing all the sheets every day, bleaching bathroom and kitchen counters, basically disinfecting my home daily. This enabled us to recover and allowed me to navigate my allergic reactions to various antibiotics. I only had to let folks in my community know I needed help and what I needed and BOOM it was there.

Now, I don’t ask for help that often. I’ve done it a few times in the over twenty years I’ve been a member of my congregation. This time, I’ve mentioned above, was one and more recently when my son got hit by a car, which crushed his right foot, last April. I had too much to navigate and needed meals delivered so I didn’t have to cook on top of everything else. My community was there for me, is there for me.

bed
My cozy bed. Artworks by Alice McClelland and a student of my father’s named Simone. This flower has been over my bed since I was a little girl.

 

 

simone
Simone, my father’s student who painted the flower above my bed. Simone is painted  here by my mother Helen Redman. My mother’s portraits and colors surrounded me as a child and they inform my life still and always are waking me up.

I attend to my community as I would to my family. I try to be there as much as I can and I also work with my boundaries and knowing that it’s a shared home. This works if everyone in the community is part of the work-force. Not everyone in our congregation or the world is functional or able though, so those folks who need constant help or more help than we can actually provide makes the work a little heavier and harder, because it’s just impossible to actually “fix-it.”

This is where it gets sticky and hard. The feeling of failing, of just not being able to fix or provide enough comfort or help for all the broken things in this world right now, the hopelessness of having someone I cannot bear to look at, or name, be elected President and all the problems I anticipate this will cause. I’ve been telling everyone I know, it’s not going to get easier folks. And, I’m tired, very, very tired of fighting all the battles and extending myself continuously, but the work is not done.

As our beloved prophet Leonard Cohen, may his memory continue to be a profound blessing, says on his last album: “You want it darker, we kill the flame…” It seems extremely dark to me right now, and this song has been a clarion call for me because in the middle of all the darkness there’s the line in this song when Leonard chants “Hineyni/Here I Am.” and then says “I’m ready my Lord.”

These are the words of Abraham and Issac and they are the words of those drawn to service, to the willing offering of everything, absolutely everything, in service to the work in service to the Holy One, even when the territory is full of fog. My hineyni has been whispered lately. It’s been really hard to actually stand up and be heard and loudly proclaim that I am ready to continue serving. I’ve just wanted to be under the covers.

Several things are helping me emerge:

  1. knowing that my hiding will not make anything better
  2. knowing that I am not alone in my feelings
  3. knowing and working always to remember this teaching by Rabbi Tarfon: rabbi-tarfon-quote
  4. a recent teaching shared with me by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone that has to do with us being the food for others and not knowing the end of our story, having to trust and serve without knowing outcomes.
  5. This post by Rebelle Society about these times being dark Goddess Kali times
  6. finding comfort in small-scale victories locally, globally or personally
  7. the patience and kindness of my beloveds

I’m a very lucky and resourced person, in the privileged category. This doesn’t mean I don’t have troubles or concerns, but they are manageable. This is not the case for so many other folks. So, I venture out to be food and nourishment to offer these things as well as be these things for those near me. It’s all I can do. I’ve made a new vow to not get into my bed before 9pm at night. So, between 9 and 9, I’ll offer and navigate my world. On Shabbat and during the night, I’ll re-connect to the Divine and get the nourishment that will enable me to emerge.

not-before-nine
My bedroom door with the new “Not before Nine sign” underneath the beautiful Klimt poster that reminds me of my husband and I.

My Mussar assignment this month has to do with creating a fence in front of one activity that takes me over a cliff I don’t want to go over. I identified that getting under the covers wasn’t where I wanted to be, it’s wasteful and not helping anyone as well as causing concern for my husband and friends. It was necessary for me to be in bed for the time I was.

 

I’m not sorry I’ve spent a large amount of time in bed trying to recover—RE-COVER— I just noticed that this word is extremely apt for where I’ve been, lost in bed recovering myself, like re-wombing myself going into a safe warm place to grow into the next phase.

I’m no newborn though, which is good. I’ve got the tools, the friends, the community, the time and the wherewithal to engage more fully, so it’s time to get out of bed!

“Whatever we are doing, however great or small the act, may we remember to take the wisdom of Joseph with us, and the shamanic medicine of  the Baal Shem Tov to help us align ourselves to a Will greater than our own, to become  michyah, life-giving food for the great unfolding.”  —Rabbi Tirzah Firestone