"Life's About Changing, Nothing Ever Stays the Same" - Patty Loveless Or "You Can Always Go Home to Momma" - Josephine Harris

"Life's About Changing, Nothing Ever Stays the Same" - Patty Loveless
Or
"You Can Always Go Home to Momma" - Josephine Harris
By Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Yizkor Yom Kippur
October 13th, 2005

When I first began writing this sermon in my mind, it was provoked by one event in my life. When I sat down to commit it to paper, another had occurred. This sermon became a weave of both.

I have had only three permanent addresses in my life of nearly fifty-seven years. The first was 691 Nostrand Avenue,Brooklyn, New York where I was born. Then we moved to 165 Branch Brook Drive for two and a half years. Then we moved to 25 Wilber Street, Belleville, New Jersey. It is a small Cape Cod style house whose finished attic was the bedroom my brother and I shared. The dining room was remade into my parent's bedroom, and the basement was half finished before my Bar Mitzvah. It has an attached garage with a high peak, just right for lots of storage. It has a modest front yard and a large one in the back. My years of residence there ended when I went off to college, yet my permanent address was always 25 Wilber Street. Since Ruby and I married in 1972, we lived in Manhattan, Israel, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Long Island in two different communities, and now twelve plus years in Richmond. The one constant in my life, since March 1959, was my parent's address. Even when my father, z"l, died in 1991, my mother continued to live and maintain the house, with a great deal of her personal labor. It was the family meeting point. My children stored their college belongings in the basement. I was my Motel 6; the light was always on in the kitchen, on our way to Massachusetts to visit my brother or Menachem and his family, or on vacation.

I knew and dreaded the fact that one day my mother, may she be blessed with long years, was going to move. It was going to be a life-giving move. It would make life easier for her too. I even imagined that she would handle it better than me. For her it would be a sense of freedom. For me, well, that is this sermon, because this past winter my mother announced that she was moving. She had found just the right place. The financing was perfect. The location allowed her to keep her same doctors and same shul. "Come," she told my brother and me, "get the things you want from the house." Though it was and is the best thing for her, all the positives are coming true without any negatives, it was words I never wanted to hear, and a reality I didn't want to happen. For all the changes in my family's life, 25 Wilber Street was bedrock, the anchor, the unchanging. And that day had come.

It is nothing that others have not experienced. Those whose parents live in Beth Sholom Gardens, Woods and Carriage Hill among other places have treaded this path ahead of me. Maybe my ruminations will reflect yours. Maybe they will be different. And for those who will yet follow this path in the future, maybe it will be of some help. I saved this for Yom Kippur Yizkor because particularly at this service, when we mention to ourselves the names of our family members in each paragraph, we are flooded with memories of their lives and ours, the places they have been and where we have been with them.

I.

Of my father's many qualities, the most outstanding was his skill with his hands. He was a tool and dye maker, electronic assembler, made precision instruments, and worked with precious metals. In his lifetime, virtually no one ever worked on my parent's home but my father. And my mother was his assistant, as well as my brother and I. In my last two visits to the house, I stopped in every room and traversed forty-six years of my life. I thought back to the events in each room, from my youth to my granddaughter Ariel in that house. Every space was steeped in memories. And it didn't even seem as so long ago. It was only yesterday when… And I did that in every room. It was hard to get much done. It seemed that I touched my father in every place, for he had touched every place. He sanded the floor in the basement and laid the tiles; built the desk and book cases for me and then for my brother; built the cases for den; filled in the archway to make the bedroom; stripped the wallpaper - that was the most fun - and painted every single wall and ceiling many times. He fixed everything. As I went from room to room, I talked to my father about this time and that time. Then I went into the backyard, which was his pride and joy, with the vegetable and raspberry patches, blueberries and rhubarb. Our children used to run to him, as he would rise with a big straw hat on his head and laughter filling the yard. I mowed, raked and planted every inch of that place with him. Perhaps that is what made this the hardest part of this journey for me, for now I was really saying good-bye to my father. As I let go of the house, I was letting go of him. So I went around the yard recounting what we had done in every corner, and again, it was just yesterday. As the Amidah section on Rosh Hashanah, Zichronot, I was filled with memories. As long as I could visit the house, they were safe spiritually because I touched them physically. Now reality could not be denied.

As I was ruminating on these matters and writing this sermon in my head, a song by Alan Jackson played on the radio entitled "Remember When." Not all of the stanzas are appropriate to my life, while I am sure that they are for others, yet I will only quote from the end:

Remember when thirty something seemed old
Now lookin' back, it's just a stepping stone
To where we are,
Where we've been
Said we'd do it all again
Remember when

Remember when we said when we turned gray
When the children grow up and move away
We won't be sad, we'll be glad
For all the life we've had
And we'll remember when

Remember when
Remember when

And while it didn't make it any easier for me, and while we worked in total harmony, these words and this tune stayed in my heart, for I was glad of the life that I had led in that house. It did have its ups and downs, its celebrations and sadnesses. It saw the passing of a generation with the deaths of my grandparents, and the births of my children and my brother's children who were intimate with every room. And I would pause with boxes in my arms and "Remember when…"

II.

There was a lesson embedded in this experience of my life that I cerebrally knew and had experienced before, had accompanied other people on their journeys, yet had not really accepted existentially for myself. There is an acute difference between knowing something and accepting it. My mother is selling the house and moving to a new address with a phone number that I am still trying to memorize and drive there without getting lost, was to me a death, a real loss. Josephine said to me, "You can always go home to momma." I added "but you can't go to momma's home." I had to accept a note of finality and transition. I needed to discover and accept an existential truth that I knew and had been avoiding, even with my father's death and my move here. 

As I listen to Country and Western music, my ear caught a song by Patty Loveless entitled "How Can I Help You to Say Goodbye?" It contained a refrain that enunciated this existential truth. While not every stanza is appropriate to my life, yet will be to others, as I repeatedly listened to this song I cried and learned and accepted. 

Through the back window of a 59' wagon 
I watched my best friend Jamie slippin' further away 
I kept on waving 'till I couldn't see her 
And through my tears, I asked again why we couldn't stay 
Mama whispered softly, Time will ease your pain 
Life's about changing, nothing ever stays the same 

And she said, How can I help you to say goodbye? 
It's OK to hurt and it's OK to cry 
Come, let me hold you and I will try 
How can I help you to say goodbye? 

I sat on our bed, he packed his suitcase 
I held a picture of our wedding day 
His hands were trembling, we both were crying 
He kissed me gently and then he quickly walked away 
I called up Mama, she said, Time will ease your pain 
Life's about changing, nothing every stays the same 

And she said, How can I help you to say goodbye? 
It's OK to hurt and it's OK to cry 
Come, let me hold you and I will try 
How can I help you to say goodbye? 

Sitting with Mama alone in her bedroom 
She opened her eyes, and then squeezed my hand 
She said, I have to go now, my time here is over 
And with her final word, she tried to help me understand 
Mama whispered softly, Time will ease your pain 
Life's about changing, nothing ever stays the same 

And she said, How can I help you to say goodbye? 
It's OK to hurt, and it's OK to cry 
Come, let me hold you and I will try 
How can I help you to say goodbye? 

How can I help you to say goodbye? 

III. 

And on August 21st, 2005 a boy was born to our Menachem and Liz, a second grandchild. The family that had grown smaller through death has increased with the births of Ariel Shlomit our granddaughter and now a grandson. I was honored to be the sandek, the person who holds the baby for the brit milah. As I did for my nephew so, too, I now did for my grandson - held him on the pillow on my lap, with our son standing next to the mohel, and I at Menachem's request, wearing my father's Talit, this Talit. I knew something was up. He had said to me that he wanted the four generations present for that sacred, holy moment, symbolically my father, Menachem, the baby and I. After the milah, the mohel recited the prayer in which the name is declared, Menachem whispered to him, and the mohel repeated loudly Moshe Tzvi, Moshe for Liz's mother's father and Tzvi for my father. Now fourteen years after his death his name now comes from my lips, not as my patralineage, but as my descendant. My father has a name and in a new and special sense lives, with my mother standing with us, with her new address and new phone number. "Time will ease your pain. Life's about changing, nothing ever stays the same." 

Conclusion 

I hope that these ruminations of my heart have echoed in the hearts of some and will lighten the way for others. We live a life of transitions. While some things seem to be the same, others are always changing around us. With the love of others, with faith in God, with the belief that others will remember us as we remember others, life has its meaning, its richness and its purpose.  As we say the words of Yizkor let us remember when…May time, love and faith ease our pain. Amen.