My mother did not like having her photo taken. Six pregnancies had left her heavier than she wanted to be, and she always felt self-conscious of her size. After a tumor in her sinuses invaded her brain, my mother had to wear glasses with one lens frosted over so she would not see double images. The glasses made her look weird. No wonder she avoided cameras.
When I was about nine, just learning how to use a camera, I sneaked a photo of my mother. In the black-and-white photo, my mom’s face is in profile and her arm is extended. She holds a long blade of grass in her hand. A small white kitten stands on her hind legs, reaching to play with the blade of grass.
The kitten was new to our family then. She had one blue eye and one green eye. My older brother decided that we should name her Angelique because she looked so exotic, like an angel. We called her Angie for short.
My mother died from sinus cancer a few months after I took that photograph. I did not cry at my mom’s memorial service. As we sat in the pews of my childhood church, the pastor instructed us that we should be happy because our mother had gone to heaven. No need for tears.
After the memorial service, my younger brother and I snuck away to play behind the church. We threw clods of dirt down a hillside, watching silently as each one sailed against the gray sky and exploded in a puff of dust.
About two years after my mother’s death, Angie went missing. She was an outdoor cat who liked to roam, smudging her white fur wherever she went and then returning home to lick herself clean. One day she did not come home, and I searched for her. I spotted her crumpled body from a distance, tossed to the side of a street.
Although I had shed no tears for my mother, I cried for many days over that cat. It was only after I was an adult, and I found the photo of my mother and Angie, that I realized why I felt such grief. One loss had intertwined with another. The tears I had not shed for my mother had finally found release.
Grieving should come to us naturally. We all lose people we love in this world, and it has always been that way. Yet grief can elude us. Grief can sneak up on us. Grief can overshadow us, if we do not allow for its expression. Jewish tradition recognizes this truth about grief. Rather than turn away from grief, our tradition has us face it and feel it.
Upon hearing of a death, Jewish tradition instructs us to say “barukh dayan haemet,” “blessed is the true Judge.” These words reflect complete acceptance, even when a death might feel utterly unjust. There can be no avoiding the fact of a death, no pretending that it did not happen.
When we mourn, we tear our clothing or wear a torn black ribbon as a visible sign of grief’s inner pain. We traditionally cover mirrors and sit on low stools, a stark reminder that nothing is normal after the death of a loved one. During shiva, community members visit us and provide for our needs. All these customs are meant to give us an opening to let our grief flow.
When we bury a body, we shovel earth into the grave, filling it. The sound of earth falling on the wood of the coffin is the sound of finality. This is often the moment that suppressed tears find release.
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Years ago, I attended the funeral of a younger woman who died, leaving behind a husband and school-aged daughter. This was a death in which the words “blessed is the true Judge” rang false. What could be “just” about the death of a young wife and mother?
A large crowd came to the cemetery. While most participated in shoveling earth into the grave, the grave was not filled. The day was brutally hot and humid, so we brought the service to a conclusion before anyone fainted. As the mourners walked soberly to their cars, one young man picked up the shovel and began to fill the grave on his own. He was sweating profusely, but he kept shoveling until the earth formed a gentle mound over the grave.
Afterwards he told me that he needed to do that. In the face of a tragic loss, he had to do something. And this is what he could do. He could act with chesed shel emet, true loving kindness for his friend, and tuck her body into the earth. Only then could he walk away from the grave and turn once again to life.
This is the power of ritual. Ritual gives us an opening to feel our grief.
On the anniversary of a loved one’s death, it is customary to light a memorial candle. We light the match. Hold it to the wick. The flame catches the wick and glows against the darkness, a gentle invitation to remember, to feel, to grieve.
Four times a year we have a Yizkor (Memorial) service. The Yizkor prayer itself is formulaic. Its language is sparse. We read it in silence. Like the memorial candle, Yizkor is merely an invitation. We each bring to the ritual of Yizkor our own memories of those we have lost, we each feel our own pangs of separation, we each open ourselves to the possibility of releasing the tears that must fall.
Many years after my mother died, I finally wept for her loss. As time passed, I grew to understand how her absence shaped me. Her death changed my life in surprising and beautiful ways.
My mother had a strong Christian faith. After she died, I rejected that faith. This marked the beginning of a surprising spiritual journey that led me to join the Jewish people.
Had my mother lived, would I have made that journey? Had she lived, would I have moved away from my home, across an entire continent? Would I have followed the call I felt, the call to devote my life to the work of a rabbi? In many ways, my mother’s death made it possible for me to be who I am today.
Just a few months after my mother died, my father remarried, and our family traveled to the Oregon Coast, to the same beach we visited every year. My younger brother and I spent long hours on the beach by ourselves. Without my mother, the beach felt so strange and desolate. We found ourselves in constant motion, trying to do something, anything, to chase away our sadness.
We decided that this was the year we would finally dam up the stream that ran from the forest, its water tumbling over smooth rocks before widening across the sand and flowing into the ocean’s waves. My mother used to sit by that stream and watch us splash in the water. This was where I took the photograph of her playing with Angie the kitten the year before.
My little brother and I worked on the narrowest spot of the stream, plunking more rocks into the water and piling them into a line. We filled the gaps between the rocks with chunks of driftwood and plugged the smaller holes with damp sand. Our older brother wandered over to watch us work. He suggested that we build a channel through the sand to relieve the pressure as the water level rose behind our dam.
We succeeded in stopping the flow for a moment. Water pooled up behind the dam and we gave each other a high five. Then a small chunk of damp sand broke free. We moved to plug the hole, but then another hole opened, and another. Water trickled, and then burst through the gaps. Our dam could not stop the water as it flowed across the beach to the ocean.
The next morning we returned to the stream. A line of rocks was all that remained of our dam, and the water flowed freely through it. Overnight the waves had worn smooth our channel, erasing all evidence of our labors.
Yet overnight, on its own, the stream had etched a new pattern on the beach, intricate and beautiful, as it flowed to the sea.
