The papers are signed. The inspections inspected. The repairs repaired. The movers have loaded 42 boxes, 2 suitcases and 3 pieces of furniture onto a truck in the driveway, drawing to a close the life of the Keller family on Osceola Avenue.
Read moreSpirograph, Leviticus, and the Cycles of our Lives
When Lynn and I work in the Chicago basement, it doesn't clearly feel like a cycle, but more often like one, unending difficult state. A jumble of reverence and frustration and ambition and despair. We look at all the holy relics with which my mother was entrusted and ultimately burdened. We sit inside of it and wish it had a cyclical quality. After all, even Sisyphus has his "up" moments. Where are ours?
Read moreParashat Vayechi: Gathered to his People
My mother's death last year also had a "gathering" quality to it. From the moment of her stroke, loved ones, including many people here and many people far away, came together for her. To witness, to help, to soothe. They gathered in her hospital room until they overflowed into the hallway. They gathered on Facebook, watching for posts like villagers in the square, awaiting the town crier. And when she died, they showed up in Santa Rosa to chant and in Chicago to mourn.
Read moreTreasures, Release & Bucket Lists
I made the mistake of picking up a National Geographic that was sitting in our house the other day. Between the manatees and the mammoth tusks, I found a report on changing average life expectancies in America. The ages colorfully printed on the US map looked like prognoses. No, worse. They looked like destiny. I tried to make sense of the numbers and I noticed that my mother had outlived the average female life expectancy by four years. "Oh, good for her," I thought, as a parent might kvell over a child bringing home an A on their report card. Then after a moment I melted into bitter resentment that she only outlived the average by four years.
Read moreQuick Kaddish in a Dreadful Summer
The words of Kaddish, in the Aramaic that was once our everyday tongue, are words of praise. In the face of loss, sometimes because of loss, we are called to express wonder; we acknowledge that the workings of this Creation are bigger, deeper, higher than we can possibly imagine or understand. But now it is not the lofty sentiment that speaks to us. Rather it is the heartbeat-like rhythm of this prayer - yitbabam v'yitbabam v'yitbabam - that hits us most profoundly, and that we associate not with death itself, but with the Jewish experience of death.
Read more