Yizkor of Three Parts: Privacy, Heirloom and “I Still Can’t Say Goodbye”

Yizkor Yom Kippur 5771 September 18^th, 2010

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Richmond, Virginia

 

This Yizkor sermon is a "Sermon in Three Parts."  The first is to address a request made of me. The second is poem that I just ran across in my incessant reading in preparation for this season and these sermons. And the last is a song that I stumbled upon last spring and had an "Aha Moment" and said: "I know when I'm using that!" The poem and the song fit together. I just add a parenthetical statement. During my Rabbinate my writing has evolved from the theoretical, philosophical and abstract, to the more personal, reflecting on Judaism and our heritage through the prism of my life. The longer I live, the more facets to the prism. I hope that through this style of writing the words really reflect the issues and realities of all our lives. Maybe not everyone each time, but for many, often. It is the authentic "I" with which I speak.

 

Part 1

 

The time leading up to a person's death is the most difficult time in life. It is or can be difficult for the person dying. It is certainly difficult and stressful for that person's family. Lastly, it is trying for the person's friends. In this web of relationships each person is in a very singular and complex place. The person dying is at the center of a series of concentric circles. The inner most are those of family, each uniquely arranged. The outer are friends and community. Sometimes there will be friends closer than family and family more distant than friends. No doubt. There just those who are in a more intimate position and others who are more removed.

 

One truly never understands something until you experience it yourself. I had been the Rabbi to hundreds of families before my father died. My existential experience of his death taught me more than any book or course. In particular I refer to the following: It was more than being a public persona. It happened from every quarter of my life that everyone wanted to know the details of what was happening to my father and our family. It wasn't from bad or mean people. It came from loving, people. People close to me. Perhaps they thought that it would help me if I 'got it out.' In truth, as time proceeded, the only person I wanted to talk to was Ruby and even then we sometimes just shared the silence and tears. We talked to the children, my mother, my brother and my aunt. I didn't want to give an extended litany to friend and stranger, to the well-intentioned and those with prurient interest. It wasn't right. What did I need? What did I want?

 

There is a concept in Judaism called 'tzinut,' usually translated as "modesty." It applies to  language, attire, and behavior. Essentially one whose life is guided by this value respects their own privacy and the privacy of others as well. Especially during the closing days of my father's life and the immediate days afterwards, I needed privacy, not to be trapped in uncomfortable conversations that forced me to reveal details that were essentially private. Even when I knew that these people loved me, I was discomforted by the intrusion, even invasion of my family's life and death. It was unseemingly. I needed respect of privacy, respect of boundaries, that not every detail is proper and worthy of public knowledge and conversation.

 

What did I want? There is a powerful story in the Talmud of a Rabbi lamenting. His friends and colleagues come to help him. One by one they offer their advice. No matter how well-meaning, informed, philosophically correct they were, instead of helping they hurt him more and more. He did not want their scholarship, their theology about God and life, their explanations. It would not help the pain. Until the last colleague asked him: "Does it pain you?" And he answered: "Yes." Then the colleague offered him his hand and lifted him up. What I wanted was just the hug that was potent with meaning: I was still alive; I was loved; the world was still in place no matter how much it spun; I wasn't alone. I didn't want words. I wanted a hug. There is a halacha that when we visit an avel, a mourner, we are not supposed to initiate the conversation. They are. Until they do, we sit in pregnant silence. There could be much to say. It has to wait for the proper moment and with tzniut. Then we as friends can help raise a person, physically and spiritually.

 

I know that these words describe the experiences of at least one person who shall remain anonymous, and asked me to address these thoughts in this Yizkor sermon. I don't compose them theoretically or philosophically. I portray that from my life and allow you to reflect from yours. Perhaps you have felt this way. Perhaps you did and couldn't describe what bothered you. For all of us, when we encounter our family and friends in these places of the journey, maybe these words will help those of both sides of the equation. May we fulfill the mitzvah of zokaf kefufeem, straightening the bent, elevating the broken, with love, with modesty and with respect. May we set aside our perceived needs and only attend to theirs and bring shalom to their hearts.

 

Part 2

A.M. Klein was a prolific Jewish poet who was born in the Ukraine and emigrated shortly thereafter to Canada. He was a devoted Zionist and wrote a great of poetry and other literature. Intermittently I would discover some of his works. Particularly the last line in the following piece entitled "Heirloom" grabbed me. In these days Ruby and I spend considerable time in my aunt's apartment in New York City assisting her to continue to enjoy life in the safety, security and warmth of the place she has known for forty-five years. She is 96. She and my uncle, who died in 1988, have a wonderful library. I have opened up different books, on art, religion, and stand in amazement of things I found inside. I then think of my library. My mind wanders and speculates. It is my nature. So this poem caught me. And in these moments of Yizkor I share it with you.

 

Heirloom – by A. M. Klein

My father bequeathed to me no wide estates;

No keys and ledgers were my heritage;

Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates

Writ mournfully upon a blank front page—

 

Books of the Baal Shem Tov, and of  his wonders;

Pamphlets upon the devil and his crew;

Prayers against road demons, witches, thunders;

And sundry other tomes for a good Jew.

 

Beautiful: though no pictures on them, save

The Scorpion crawling on a printed track;

The Virgin floating on a scriptural wave,

Square letters twinkling in the Zodiac.

 

The snuff left on this title page, now brown and old,

The tallow stains of midnight liturgy—

These are my coat of arms, and these unfold

My noble lineage, my proud ancestry!

 

And my tears, too, have stained this heirloomed ground,

When reading in these treatises some weird

Miracle, I turned a leaf and found

A white hair fallen from my father's beard.

 

Part 3

I have often turned to country and folk music to reflect values and thoughts that resonate in Judaism and in my life. I wasn't searching for this song. It just popped up on one of those side-bars. In a song by Clint Black called "Ode to Chet" he refers to Chet Atkins as CGP.  So I followed this piece, learned that those were the initials for Certified Guitar Player and that led me to this song. When I listened to him I knew it was for this moment. When I found A.M. Klein's poem, I knew they fit together.

 

I Still Can't Say Goodbye – by Chet Atkins

 

You know every time I look in the mirror I see my Dad.

I think that's why this song means so much to me.

 

When I was young

My dad would say

"C'mon son let's go out and play"

Sometimes it seems like yesterday.

 

And I'd climb up the closet shelf

When I was all by myself

Grab his hat and fix the brim

Pretending I was him.

 

No matter how hard I try

No matter how many tears I cry

No matter how many years go by

I still can't say goodbye.

 

He always took care

Of Mom and me

We all cut down a Christmas tree

He always had some time for me.

 

Wind blows through the trees

Street lights they still shine bright

Most things are the same

But I miss my dad tonight.

 

I walked by a Salvation Army store

Saw a hat like my daddy wore

Tried it on when I walked in

Still trying to  be like him.

 

No matter how hard I try

No matter how many years go by

No matter how many tears I cry

I still can't say goodbye.

 

Perhaps this the magnetic pull of the cemetery that Judaism has implanted within us through the mitzvah of kever avot,  cyclically visiting the graves of family and friends, of standing there and speaking with or without words but often with tears. Perhaps it is the attraction of driving past places we once lived, or visiting them in our minds, or of objects exactly or nearly similar to the hat in Chet Atkins' song that ignites memories of long ago and return us to yesteryear when we were young. Perhaps it is the words of the Yizkor service, in which paragraph by separate paragraph we recite for each of our relatives in their personal relationships. I insert each Hebrew name individually for my father, mother-in-law, uncle and grandparents, Ruby's and mine. We stay in constant dialogue with the generations. I can't say goodbye and don't want to either. Will our children and grandchildren pause when they see a slanted black hat or my summer straw one? Will it provoke memory like this song did to me? I leave it to them.

 

Likewise I have lots of books. Lots and lots of books. I haven't read them all, by no means, but I have read many parts of many of them. I haven't used snuff, so they won't find any of that. But I have left little sticky notes, unmarked. I want to leave them a puzzle. What was I looking for on that page? Sometimes when I go back into a book and find one, I can't remember myself! Yet like the poem, they most certainly will find hairs from this white beard. I leave this for their memories and hopefully many smiles. I will never say goodbye.

 

So let us continue in dialogue with the generations. Let us remember sweet times, semi-sweet times, and even difficult ones too. Let us be part of a continuum that gave us our past and will secure us a future. We never say goodbye. We just say Yizkor.