In Hebrew the word for journey is masa (מסע). Journeys are interesting and ongoing. "Finding East", the title of this blog, is about just such a journey. I thought of the title several months ago as I rode the express train from Jerusalem to Ben Gurion Airport in the morning on my way north. To my left and right, people were praying. It is tradition to face east when praying - in the direction of Jerusalem metaphorically and literally depending on where you are. One young woman was standing. and as the train ran along the track, I wondered how she maintained that eastern orientation - literally and metaphorically.
I've creatively expressed myself in many ways, through writing, photography, blogs with the occasional insight and postings on FB with the occasional rant as well. I'll try to consolidate some of my posts and thoughts as reflection is always good for the soul. Today is about my mom.
February/Sh'vat is a tough month for me. My mother always hated the month - her birthday is on February 28th, but so is her Yarzheit (28 Sh'vat); as is her sister Ruth's passing on February 24th, my father's mother Tillie on February 23rd (after whom I'm named); my cousin Judy's beloved husband Leon also passed away on February 23 - different years all but in February...a tough month.
My mom passed away in 2009 - 11 years - but it's like yesterday in so many ways. My paternal grandmother and my mother passed away many years apart, but in that strange confluence of time their Yarzheits (the anniversary of their passing) fall within a day of one another, on both the Hebrew and English calendars.
During the week leading up to my mom's passing on 28 Sh'vat (22 February) she was in hospice, at home. My sister and I spent the days, hours and precious minutes by her bedside. I'm reprinting an article I wrote entitled, "Mommy, Moses and Me" which I've shared previously. I wrote it for the 30th day after her passing, shloshim. I am told it is quite comforting - I have re-read it myself and agree.
The picture below was taken in 1964 in Petach Tikvah, my mom (left), my cousin Ruth Graubart (right) and my sister Rayna and I. It has been a long journey Finding East, coming home after the time I spent in Israel as a child. Mommy, may I honor your memory and that of dad's as I continue to Find East...
(reprinted Associated Content 2010)
Thirty days after my mom died I wrote this story. It is a message about life and how our souls become, reflected in the actions in this life, and how our being evolves between the finite time that we know and the infinite we don't yet understand.
Mommy, Moses Me
A few days before my mom passed away, I noticed she kept raising her arms, her hands held open to the heavens. The classic pose struck a familiar chord. Oft repeated through the ages, immortalized by artists, and alternatively interpreted as a desperate plea, a prayer or perhaps just a private conversation between Man, or in this case Woman, and her Maker.
I sat quietly by her bedside so as not to interrupt, but the rational soon intruded on the spiritual or perhaps I was just feeling uncomfortable in the silence of the moment and I couldn't help but wonder if her raised hands were not intended for God, but rather that she needed something more tangible from me. I hesitated an extra moment, but then speaking in a voice I almost didn't recognize as my own, asked, "Mommy, what's wrong, are you okay?"
The juxtaposition of completely contradictory questions that required completely opposite responses was unfair, almost cruel, to ask of someone at the edge of consciousness. She didn't answer me but raised her arms a little higher and shook them ever so slightly back and forth, purposefully.
This time my question was a bit more thoughtful, but only just. "Mommy, are you okay?" What's going on?" Again, two questions, but these were at least a progression in thought, though still intrusive. I knew she didn't really need anything from me, but I wanted to share in her experience. I wanted to know. I needed to know.
"Mommy, is someone there?" There being the point of my question. They were there with her and not here with me.
Her eyes remained closed and with just the hint of a smile on her lips she said, "I see Moses."
Honestly, I didn't know how to react and my nervous incredulous slightly off-key, "really," complemented by a light chuckle betrayed me, but not because I didn't believe her. "You see Moses, mommy?"
"Yes, Moses."
I am a firm believer in the afterlife, not only from a Jewish perspective viewing the World to Come and the Garden of Eden as interchangeable concepts of utopian bliss and peace, but also with the representations advanced by popular television shows which depict those on the other side as a family of silhouettes bathed in the glow of heavenly light, waiting patiently for the meet and greet hour. Indeed, I wasn't surprised that she saw someone and recognized "him" as Moses, as much as I was disappointed by whom she saw.
Honestly, I hoped she would see my dad. I may be fifty-years old, but I am still their child. After nearly thirty-four years apart, my mommy and daddy would finally be back together. That was a comforting thought and made the waning hours of her life easier to take. My mom and dad only had a short time together in this life, just eighteen years (chai) - lifetime by some reckoning.
After briefly indulging in what I wanted, I realized the enormity of what she was saying, seeing, and hearing. As such, my next question wasn't that unusual and would provide an affirmation to that eternal question that permeates many lives, "is there something out there beyond what we know" and which most certainly weighs heavily on those privileged to sit with a loved one as they prepare to leave this world and wonder with great hope, "is there something out there beyond what we know..."
"Do you see anyone else, mommy?" I asked, ever hopeful for the answer I still wanted to hear.
"Love," she replied.
Love was my dad, that much I knew for sure. I was comforted in knowing that my mom was seeing, feeling, knowing love during this very difficult time, a time when my sister and I could only try to help. Not long after Moses visited, my mom fell asleep for what I thought would be a short time. I used the time to try and find meaning in the experience, and the nagging question...why Moses? According to Jewish tradition, all souls were present at the giving of the Torah, the Old Testament, so the possibility that my mom recognized Moses as Moses was certainly possible. I consulted my favorite Rabbi, the Internet, and sought my own counsel in interpreting my mom's reference to Moses. Instinctively, I knew what to search for though I didn't know where it would lead me, but lead it did. The article I clicked on described how Moses more concerned with the Children of Israel who had wandered in the desert with him for the past forty years, than he was for himself as he prepared for his own death. Amongst the millions of web pages in cyberspace, and setting arrogant comparisons, context and theological interpretations aside, the tidbit of information I gleaned from the lengthy article was exactly what I was looking for, and exactly what I needed.
My mom was always more concerned with and about others than with herself. She was a very special person, as I'm sure your mother is or was. Very few people knew how sick my mom was. She never complained about her pain or the weakness she endured on a daily basis, rarely mentioning it to my sister and I, and sometimes not even to her doctors. She was a woman of great strength and courage, someone to be admired and someone whom I admire. But she also was capable of tremendous empathy and caring for others, even during her most difficult struggles.
She faced one of those struggles with grace and dignity when she was diagnosed with a form of breast cancer called, Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) in February 1995. Cancer is a devastating diagnosis at any time, but the timing couldn't have been worse as my sister had only recently met the love of her life, a young man from Denver, and the two had become engaged. No wedding date was set because of the breast cancer, an intrusion at any time. Later that month, my mom underwent surgery, a mastectomy, and was given a clean bill of health. We could all move on, move forward with unrestrained joy, a true celebration of life. On July 3rd 1995, with Chicago's lakefront fireworks as a backdrop, my sister married her husband and my mother danced with her new in-laws at the wedding. A little over a year later, my mother held her first grandson, Alec, who was named after his two grandfathers. She traveled back and forth between Chicago and Denver on special occasions and Jewish holidays. But then after a near-fatal heart attack in April 1998 and the birth of my sister's second son, Adam, another grandchild for my mom, later that year, my mom decided to retire at the age of seventy-six and to move from Chicago to Denver.
Starting over is never easy. It was difficult for her to leave Chicago and her beloved sister Ruth, but she moved to Colorado to be a full-time Oma, a grandmother, where she could be part of her grandchildren's lives and watch them grow into fine young men. In 2000, my sister became pregnant again, only this time my mom was able to share in the entire experience of my sister's pregnancy and the birth of her third grandson, Aidan.
Every get together, birthday and holiday was a gift, and every Friday before the Sabbath she was blessed by visits or a call from the boys. Time passed. The cancer became a distant memory. Life went on. But then in February 2003, eleven years after her first brush with breast cancer, as mom prepared to board a plane for Chicago to visit her ailing sister, she fell. At the hospital, spinal X-rays revealed not only an L2 compression fracture but also the first hint of metastases to the bone. My mom never had a chance to see her sister one last time or to say goodbye to her in person.
Perhaps it was because of her upbringing in Germany, of being kicked out of school as a young girl, of watching her home be destroyed and her father beaten on Kristallnacht, and then fleeing Germany to start a new life while still only a teenager that allowed her to take life's missteps in stride. I don't know; I don't possess that kind of grace. But while we waited for a definitive diagnosis that would eventually take another two years, my mom didn't wait to confront this new reality and new questions. At eight-one years old, how many more years would God grant her?
Without pause, she set about making each of her grandsons a special gift for their Bar Mitzvahs. At the time, my sister's children were only 3, 5 and 7 years old, and it would be another six years before her oldest would reach Bar Mitzvah age. But she wanted to do something special for each of them, even if she might not be there to celebrate with them herself. She loved to needlepoint and chose a lively modern Jewish star design for their Tallit bags (a Tallit is the ceremonial prayer shawl, a gift that can last a lifetime).
She finished each of their Tallit bags and set them in a drawer for the future, intending to write each of the boys a special note for their special day. During this time, she endured not one, but two bone biopsies, two years apart, and faced each day in between and the days and years that followed with courage and faith. But in the summer of 2008, the cancer seemed to become resistant to the life-saving medication. She knew, and without telling anyone wrote the special notes for the boys, for their Bar Mitzvahs, and another note addressed to no one in particular, and which I believe she intended for all who might needs to hear encouraging words from my mom, from Oma, from a friend.
"In good times or in bad ones, please pull this little note out and read it and remember how much I loved you and know that you will succeed in anything you want to do. You know the old line, if you don't succeed at first, try and try again."
I try to imagine how she must have felt writing the very words she intended to be a comfort to others. I hope the words were comforting to her as well since they reflect deeply from the mirror of her heart to the essence of her soul.
Why Moses...Moses thought of others even as he faced his own death. So did my mom. Even as she confronted the reality of cancer and her own death she was thinking of others, of how they might feel on special days, on any day. It wasn't long after seeing Moses and Love that my mom stopped talking, stopped opening her eyes and as the Sabbath came to a close, her time was near.
I know she would be in a better place, with her mom and dad, her brothers and sister, and, of course, with my dad. I knew from words I'd often repeated for Yizkor, the memorial prayer service, that her soul would find rest in everlasting life in the warm embrace and under the protective wings of Shechina (the feminine reference to the presence of God). I didn't just believe with perfect faith, I knew with absolute certainty it was true.
I don't ask why Moses anymore. That part of her passing actually makes sense and comforts me at times. Indeed, if the person we see in the waning moments of our lives is someone who reflects our life, of how we lived it and how we conducted ourselves with others, then you too can ask yourself the question as I have, "who will I see when the time comes," and perhaps more importantly, "who do I hope to see..."
End Note: On Saturday, August 8, 2009 (18 Av 5769), my oldest nephew will receive a special gift from his Oma - a Tallit bag with a special note tucked inside. This Bar Mitzvah will be particularly difficult for our families - a celebration tempered with memories of those who have passed and the legacy they have passed on to future generations.
2020 Note: Preparing for a Bar Mitzvah is not an easy task for a young boy of 13. Alec completed his preparations and was able to give my mom an early Bar Mitzvah experience - reciting the Haftorah for her more than six months in advance of his actual Bar Mitzvah. It was a private gift shared between them. I am profoundly grateful to Drs. Stephen Frank and Rachel Rabinowitz who saw my mom through difficult times and fought valiantly to care for her.
I've creatively expressed myself in many ways, through writing, photography, blogs with the occasional insight and postings on FB with the occasional rant as well. I'll try to consolidate some of my posts and thoughts as reflection is always good for the soul. Today is about my mom.
February/Sh'vat is a tough month for me. My mother always hated the month - her birthday is on February 28th, but so is her Yarzheit (28 Sh'vat); as is her sister Ruth's passing on February 24th, my father's mother Tillie on February 23rd (after whom I'm named); my cousin Judy's beloved husband Leon also passed away on February 23 - different years all but in February...a tough month.
My mom passed away in 2009 - 11 years - but it's like yesterday in so many ways. My paternal grandmother and my mother passed away many years apart, but in that strange confluence of time their Yarzheits (the anniversary of their passing) fall within a day of one another, on both the Hebrew and English calendars.
During the week leading up to my mom's passing on 28 Sh'vat (22 February) she was in hospice, at home. My sister and I spent the days, hours and precious minutes by her bedside. I'm reprinting an article I wrote entitled, "Mommy, Moses and Me" which I've shared previously. I wrote it for the 30th day after her passing, shloshim. I am told it is quite comforting - I have re-read it myself and agree.
The picture below was taken in 1964 in Petach Tikvah, my mom (left), my cousin Ruth Graubart (right) and my sister Rayna and I. It has been a long journey Finding East, coming home after the time I spent in Israel as a child. Mommy, may I honor your memory and that of dad's as I continue to Find East...
(reprinted Associated Content 2010)
Thirty days after my mom died I wrote this story. It is a message about life and how our souls become, reflected in the actions in this life, and how our being evolves between the finite time that we know and the infinite we don't yet understand.
Mommy, Moses Me
A few days before my mom passed away, I noticed she kept raising her arms, her hands held open to the heavens. The classic pose struck a familiar chord. Oft repeated through the ages, immortalized by artists, and alternatively interpreted as a desperate plea, a prayer or perhaps just a private conversation between Man, or in this case Woman, and her Maker.
I sat quietly by her bedside so as not to interrupt, but the rational soon intruded on the spiritual or perhaps I was just feeling uncomfortable in the silence of the moment and I couldn't help but wonder if her raised hands were not intended for God, but rather that she needed something more tangible from me. I hesitated an extra moment, but then speaking in a voice I almost didn't recognize as my own, asked, "Mommy, what's wrong, are you okay?"
The juxtaposition of completely contradictory questions that required completely opposite responses was unfair, almost cruel, to ask of someone at the edge of consciousness. She didn't answer me but raised her arms a little higher and shook them ever so slightly back and forth, purposefully.
This time my question was a bit more thoughtful, but only just. "Mommy, are you okay?" What's going on?" Again, two questions, but these were at least a progression in thought, though still intrusive. I knew she didn't really need anything from me, but I wanted to share in her experience. I wanted to know. I needed to know.
"Mommy, is someone there?" There being the point of my question. They were there with her and not here with me.
Her eyes remained closed and with just the hint of a smile on her lips she said, "I see Moses."
Honestly, I didn't know how to react and my nervous incredulous slightly off-key, "really," complemented by a light chuckle betrayed me, but not because I didn't believe her. "You see Moses, mommy?"
"Yes, Moses."
I am a firm believer in the afterlife, not only from a Jewish perspective viewing the World to Come and the Garden of Eden as interchangeable concepts of utopian bliss and peace, but also with the representations advanced by popular television shows which depict those on the other side as a family of silhouettes bathed in the glow of heavenly light, waiting patiently for the meet and greet hour. Indeed, I wasn't surprised that she saw someone and recognized "him" as Moses, as much as I was disappointed by whom she saw.
Honestly, I hoped she would see my dad. I may be fifty-years old, but I am still their child. After nearly thirty-four years apart, my mommy and daddy would finally be back together. That was a comforting thought and made the waning hours of her life easier to take. My mom and dad only had a short time together in this life, just eighteen years (chai) - lifetime by some reckoning.
After briefly indulging in what I wanted, I realized the enormity of what she was saying, seeing, and hearing. As such, my next question wasn't that unusual and would provide an affirmation to that eternal question that permeates many lives, "is there something out there beyond what we know" and which most certainly weighs heavily on those privileged to sit with a loved one as they prepare to leave this world and wonder with great hope, "is there something out there beyond what we know..."
"Do you see anyone else, mommy?" I asked, ever hopeful for the answer I still wanted to hear.
"Love," she replied.
Love was my dad, that much I knew for sure. I was comforted in knowing that my mom was seeing, feeling, knowing love during this very difficult time, a time when my sister and I could only try to help. Not long after Moses visited, my mom fell asleep for what I thought would be a short time. I used the time to try and find meaning in the experience, and the nagging question...why Moses? According to Jewish tradition, all souls were present at the giving of the Torah, the Old Testament, so the possibility that my mom recognized Moses as Moses was certainly possible. I consulted my favorite Rabbi, the Internet, and sought my own counsel in interpreting my mom's reference to Moses. Instinctively, I knew what to search for though I didn't know where it would lead me, but lead it did. The article I clicked on described how Moses more concerned with the Children of Israel who had wandered in the desert with him for the past forty years, than he was for himself as he prepared for his own death. Amongst the millions of web pages in cyberspace, and setting arrogant comparisons, context and theological interpretations aside, the tidbit of information I gleaned from the lengthy article was exactly what I was looking for, and exactly what I needed.
My mom was always more concerned with and about others than with herself. She was a very special person, as I'm sure your mother is or was. Very few people knew how sick my mom was. She never complained about her pain or the weakness she endured on a daily basis, rarely mentioning it to my sister and I, and sometimes not even to her doctors. She was a woman of great strength and courage, someone to be admired and someone whom I admire. But she also was capable of tremendous empathy and caring for others, even during her most difficult struggles.
She faced one of those struggles with grace and dignity when she was diagnosed with a form of breast cancer called, Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) in February 1995. Cancer is a devastating diagnosis at any time, but the timing couldn't have been worse as my sister had only recently met the love of her life, a young man from Denver, and the two had become engaged. No wedding date was set because of the breast cancer, an intrusion at any time. Later that month, my mom underwent surgery, a mastectomy, and was given a clean bill of health. We could all move on, move forward with unrestrained joy, a true celebration of life. On July 3rd 1995, with Chicago's lakefront fireworks as a backdrop, my sister married her husband and my mother danced with her new in-laws at the wedding. A little over a year later, my mother held her first grandson, Alec, who was named after his two grandfathers. She traveled back and forth between Chicago and Denver on special occasions and Jewish holidays. But then after a near-fatal heart attack in April 1998 and the birth of my sister's second son, Adam, another grandchild for my mom, later that year, my mom decided to retire at the age of seventy-six and to move from Chicago to Denver.
Starting over is never easy. It was difficult for her to leave Chicago and her beloved sister Ruth, but she moved to Colorado to be a full-time Oma, a grandmother, where she could be part of her grandchildren's lives and watch them grow into fine young men. In 2000, my sister became pregnant again, only this time my mom was able to share in the entire experience of my sister's pregnancy and the birth of her third grandson, Aidan.
Every get together, birthday and holiday was a gift, and every Friday before the Sabbath she was blessed by visits or a call from the boys. Time passed. The cancer became a distant memory. Life went on. But then in February 2003, eleven years after her first brush with breast cancer, as mom prepared to board a plane for Chicago to visit her ailing sister, she fell. At the hospital, spinal X-rays revealed not only an L2 compression fracture but also the first hint of metastases to the bone. My mom never had a chance to see her sister one last time or to say goodbye to her in person.
Perhaps it was because of her upbringing in Germany, of being kicked out of school as a young girl, of watching her home be destroyed and her father beaten on Kristallnacht, and then fleeing Germany to start a new life while still only a teenager that allowed her to take life's missteps in stride. I don't know; I don't possess that kind of grace. But while we waited for a definitive diagnosis that would eventually take another two years, my mom didn't wait to confront this new reality and new questions. At eight-one years old, how many more years would God grant her?
Without pause, she set about making each of her grandsons a special gift for their Bar Mitzvahs. At the time, my sister's children were only 3, 5 and 7 years old, and it would be another six years before her oldest would reach Bar Mitzvah age. But she wanted to do something special for each of them, even if she might not be there to celebrate with them herself. She loved to needlepoint and chose a lively modern Jewish star design for their Tallit bags (a Tallit is the ceremonial prayer shawl, a gift that can last a lifetime).
She finished each of their Tallit bags and set them in a drawer for the future, intending to write each of the boys a special note for their special day. During this time, she endured not one, but two bone biopsies, two years apart, and faced each day in between and the days and years that followed with courage and faith. But in the summer of 2008, the cancer seemed to become resistant to the life-saving medication. She knew, and without telling anyone wrote the special notes for the boys, for their Bar Mitzvahs, and another note addressed to no one in particular, and which I believe she intended for all who might needs to hear encouraging words from my mom, from Oma, from a friend.
"In good times or in bad ones, please pull this little note out and read it and remember how much I loved you and know that you will succeed in anything you want to do. You know the old line, if you don't succeed at first, try and try again."
I try to imagine how she must have felt writing the very words she intended to be a comfort to others. I hope the words were comforting to her as well since they reflect deeply from the mirror of her heart to the essence of her soul.
Why Moses...Moses thought of others even as he faced his own death. So did my mom. Even as she confronted the reality of cancer and her own death she was thinking of others, of how they might feel on special days, on any day. It wasn't long after seeing Moses and Love that my mom stopped talking, stopped opening her eyes and as the Sabbath came to a close, her time was near.
I know she would be in a better place, with her mom and dad, her brothers and sister, and, of course, with my dad. I knew from words I'd often repeated for Yizkor, the memorial prayer service, that her soul would find rest in everlasting life in the warm embrace and under the protective wings of Shechina (the feminine reference to the presence of God). I didn't just believe with perfect faith, I knew with absolute certainty it was true.
I don't ask why Moses anymore. That part of her passing actually makes sense and comforts me at times. Indeed, if the person we see in the waning moments of our lives is someone who reflects our life, of how we lived it and how we conducted ourselves with others, then you too can ask yourself the question as I have, "who will I see when the time comes," and perhaps more importantly, "who do I hope to see..."
End Note: On Saturday, August 8, 2009 (18 Av 5769), my oldest nephew will receive a special gift from his Oma - a Tallit bag with a special note tucked inside. This Bar Mitzvah will be particularly difficult for our families - a celebration tempered with memories of those who have passed and the legacy they have passed on to future generations.
2020 Note: Preparing for a Bar Mitzvah is not an easy task for a young boy of 13. Alec completed his preparations and was able to give my mom an early Bar Mitzvah experience - reciting the Haftorah for her more than six months in advance of his actual Bar Mitzvah. It was a private gift shared between them. I am profoundly grateful to Drs. Stephen Frank and Rachel Rabinowitz who saw my mom through difficult times and fought valiantly to care for her.
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