Introduction:
In our tradition, when we grieve, we do so both privately and in community. Yizkor is our opportunity to be with our community, to have our community be with us, and to ask “may God remember”.
Together, we honor the memory of our loved ones.
May the work of our hands, our good deeds, our acts of lovingkindness, continue to show their presence in our world.
During the Yizkor offerings, I invite you to close your eyes.
I invite you to bring to mind those who have passed away.
I invite you to let tears flow, if tears would like to flow.
I invite you.
Guided Integration:
There are sounds outside. The wind and the leaves of trees. Footsteps… Further away, is that a voice?
The room temperature sits on my skin.
The feet touch the floor. They settle. Like a golden cord it rises through my body, up my spine. My shoulders fall away. The golden cord rises, all the way from the floor through my spine and head to reach above – and I fall away.
The gentle rise and fall of your breath fills the spaces within.
What color surrounds me?
With each breath the color fills the space.
[PAUSE]
I was telling someone your story the other day.
Just a little bit of it. And I realized,
I can see you.
Not as I did before.
Before you were vivid.
Colors and movement and all the emotions were in your eyes.
I remember…
I remember you.
You feel different now.
If I look for you, I find you in a different space.
A space inside me.
The cells of my body remember you.
The parts of me that used to see you have learned to see a different way.
The parts of me that used to hear you, still hear you, but I can’t exactly say where.
And the parts of you and the parts of me that held each other, I have learned can still embrace, just in my inner space – our inner space.
I have found you again, in quiet spaces.
In the sound of ladled soup filling a bowl.
In the pressure under foot as I step.
In the mirror, when I catch your memory in my eyes.
I have found you again, in places in me.
A new place to love you.
A new place to hold you.
A new place for you.
[PAUSE]
[Cantor sings Eli Eli softly]
“O God, my God
I pray that these things never end:
The sand and the sea
The rush of the waters
The crash of the heavens
The prayer of the heart.”
Rabbi:
My feet feel the floor, my toes wiggle just a little, the sounds of the room return.
As I open my eyes, my heart is open.
