It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.
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Bonne année 2012
Posted Jan 17th, 2012 By everafter in Celebration of Life, Talking About Death With | No Comments
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Keep what you like. Ditch the rest.
Posted Dec 2nd, 2011 By everafter in Celebration of Life, Grief Etiquette With | 2 Comments
I will be lighting my menorah and plugging in the tree this year with a new family member. Both of us believe in low stress holidays. Not everyone observes family events in the same way; some do nothing at all. My parents had long decided religion was merely a guide for others and they decidedly lived by the principle of “We’re not going to know who’s right until we’re dead, so in the interim be a good person.” Not a shabby way to look at it, if you ask me.
As I work this week on two family celebrations, it reminds me of some guidelines that help keep us all sane and guilt-free:
1. Traditions — keep what you like, ditch what you don’t. Love the desserts your grandmother used to make, but hate spending time in the kitchen? Call Trader Joe’s, work with a caterer or give a recipe to your best friend who loves to cook. Sure it may not be the gourmet way, but it’s another way to make it work for your family. The world will not end.
2. Fake it till you make it. For some folks real Christmas trees can be expensive, if you think you want to make the switch to a fake one, see if someone you know has one you can borrow. There’s nothing written in any religious doctrine that says fake trees are sinful. If you hate it, you can always go back to the real one next year.
3. Who says you have to eat at home? Discuss the option of eating at another family member’s home or a friend’s house from time to time. Even a local restaurant or a vacation spot might be fun during the holidays for a change of pace. You might be surprised at what resorts do for holidays and it might even be considered “off season” for some places.
4. What changes can be made to a holiday so it’s more festive and less frustrating? Notice how I did not say how will “you” change it? Holiday celebrations are meant to be family celebrations, so it should not depend on one single person to “make” the holiday special.
5. Will anything change this year for your family? Are there changes to be considered but the only thing in the way is not knowing how well they would go over with everyone else? Are there changes that have already been made in the way your family observes holidays you would like to share with others? Do tell.
Tradition should always include a little room for change.
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STAY.
Posted Oct 2nd, 2011 By everafter in Celebration of Life, Questions, Talking About Death With | No Comments
Stay. That’s what we want when we’ve lost a loved one. We want them to STAY. If only for a minute, an hour. To feel again their embrace. To kiss their cheek. To listen to one more word of love, or kindness, or wisdom, or humor. Just, stay… and we have to decide what to do with our grief.
And the pain. Even over the years when it stabs us afresh and reminds us anew of what we have lost. The day comes when we think we are past it and then we read or see something and suddenly are assaulted by a memory and it is as if we are back in that moment, when we lost the one we loved.
And so we gather at important moments, not only in tribute to grandparents or parents or children or sisters or brothers or spouses or friends but also to figure out what to do with the grief that never fully goes away. So what do we do?
We listen to beautiful music. To gentle sounds. We recite prayers and still, we do not always know what to do.
Become that which you have lost.
For some of us we mourn someone who never gave the love that we wanted and so it is our task in this world to give that love that we did not receive to someone else so that the legacy of love not given will be love given. For others it is all the love that we did receive; all the goodness, all the kindness, all the wisdom, all the help. And we know that only way to honor the memory of the person that we have lost is to give that to someone else to become what we have lost because the measure of our loss is the measure of our blessing. There is no grief without there first being a blessing.
And there is no sadness without a previous richness. And so it is our task to use our grief as a springboard. Our sadness is a stage and our grief a beginning because we know that sooner or later we will be there, too. None of us will live forever and the question won’t be to what degree or depth of pain did we feel for those that are lost, it will be to what did we evolve; and what goodness and kindness did we express to those who are still here?
So if you have gathered to pay tribute; remember to embrace the recollection of someone or many whom you have lost, don’t neglect to pay them the greatest tribute which is to be the kind of person of whom they would be proud.
- as delivered by Rabbi Wolpe and listened to by me at this morning’s Kever Avot services, Mt. Sinai Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills
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