Rabbi Janet Marder

June 2, 2006

A Farewell Salute: Shavuot Yizkor 5766

“My mother on her sickbed,” wrote the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.

“My mother on her sickbed with the lightness and hollowness of a person

Who has already said goodbye at an airport

In the beautiful and quiet area

Between parting and takeoff.

My mother on her sickbed.

All she had in her life is now

Like empty bottles in front of the door

That will show once more with colored labels

What filled them with joy and sadness.

Her last words, “Take the flowers out of the room,”

She said seven days before her death.

Then she closed herself for seven days,

Like the seven days of mourning.

But even her death created in her room

A warm hominess

With her sleeping face and the cup with its teaspoon

And the towel and the book and the glasses,

And her hand on the blanket, the same

Hand that felt my forehead, in childhood.

            This is part of a cycle of poems that Amichai wrote about his mother’s last days. We are with him in her sickroom, sitting next to her, watching her slip out of life, “with the emptiness and hollowness of a person who has already said goodbye…” 

            We are with him, watching a person he loves, wondering who she really was and what has become of her now. “All she had in her life is now like empty bottles in front of the door…”

            There is longing in the poem, as well. What will his mother’s last days be like? Will they be peaceful, free of pain? Will they bring her closer to her son? Will the two of them share “a beautiful, quiet space between parting and takeoff”?

            Every death takes its own course. It is not the stuff of hopes and dreams – it is what it is. His mother orders the flowers removed from her room and withdraws into silence – a silence that goes on until the end. She is closed off -- already, it seems, far away from him.

            So he sits by her side and tries to take comfort in simple, familiar things. Her glasses, folded on the bedside table; her cup and her teaspoon and her towel; her sleeping face on the pillow; her hand, and how it felt stroking his forehead a long time ago.

           We have been where Amichai was, all of us: sitting at the bedside in a sickroom -- watching and longing and remembering. Talking, sometimes, to the person in the bed; wondering if our voice will be heard or understood. Squeezing her hand. Saying his name. Singing their favorite songs. Whispering some private words. Listening to the silence, or listening to labored breathing for long minutes or hours.

            We all have our own stories, of the vigils we kept for mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, beloved partners, a child who meant everything to us.

            Today, at Yizkor, we remember those times when we tried to imagine a world without them. We remember how we tried to prepare ourselves to say goodbye, not yet knowing what it would be like. We are still discovering what it is like, no matter how long it has been since that last farewell.     

            We come to Yizkor, each of us carrying our own stories, but because it is a festival of our people we are given a shared story to listen to together. The story of Shavuot, which Jews all over the world are hearing today -- the story of how the Israelites received the Torah -- may have a special message for mourners.

            Mourners especially understand its essential elements. If you’ve lost someone who was precious to you, you know what it is to wander, lost in a desolate wilderness.  To feel alone. To be disoriented and afraid. To come to a mountain – a barrier so high and so forbidding that you know you can never get over it.

            Mourners know this forbidding terrain intimately. But then the Torah’s story takes a surprising turn.  A voice speaks from the mountain. The wanderers, lost in the wilderness, suddenly realize that they are not, in fact, alone. That they are important. That they are loved. That this place which seems so barren and bleak is in fact holy ground. That life – their life – can have purpose and direction. And that they are called to journey to a new place, a place where someday they will find blessing.

            The giving of Torah at Sinai is not just a story about the transmission of laws and mitzvot. It is about lives lifted up and transformed. It is about slaves who come out of deprivation and darkness into the light of truth. It is a story about hope.

            All Jews need to listen to that story, but it is meant most of all for those who are in the wilderness. We who have walked on desolate ground -- in grief or depression, in numbness, loneliness or isolation – we are the ones who need to hear the message spoken at that mountain long ago.

         “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces,” wrote Robert Frost, reflecting on the vast, cold solitude of outer space.

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars - -on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places. “

       The wilderness, you see, is a state of mind. And we all have our own desert places, and we know how scary they can be. We know that it’s not good for us to wander there. And so we come here, to listen to the ancient Jewish promise:  that life is good, even though it ends; that life can be beautiful, even though there’s pain; that there is a reason for us to be here, and we are not alone.  

         Because of the story we share, because of the promise of hope, we find the strength to face our memories. Even the hardest ones.

         “My mother died on Shavuot,” wrote Yehuda Amichai, “at the end of the counting of the Omer.”

         “Her oldest brother died in 1916; he fell in the war.

         I almost fell in 1948, and my mother died in 1983 [the year of the Lebanon War].

         Everyone dies at the end of some counting, long or short,

         Everyone falls in a war and deserves

         a wreath, a ceremony, an official letter.

         When I stand at my mother’s grave

         it’s as if I’m saluting,

         and the hard words of the Kaddish are like a gun salute

         into the bright summer sky.”

         “Everyone falls in a war,” he said, and we know that it’s true. They fought so hard for their lives – our parents, our sisters and brothers; our beloved partners, our precious children – and we fought for them, hoping and praying by the bedside, watching and waiting with them until the very end.

         And when the battle has ended we stand by the grave, or we stand in this place, and speak the hard words of Kaddish like a gun salute – a defiant tribute to the ones we love. We stand up in affirmation; we stand up because we will not give in to despair or wander forever in those desert places. We stand up, because you cannot say Kaddish sitting down, we stand up to life and speak the ancient words into the bright summer sky.