The Room In My Heart
Where do we go when we die?
Every so often, I find myself sitting in my office chair, across from a bereaved family.
On the couch across from me, your eyes are red from crying. A mental checklist runs across your forehead, creased worry lines that burrow into your brow. Often, you are a blur, a jumble of things to do and lists to check. These are tasks that seem small, but are unbearably heavy under the weight of your loss. Your grief takes its own seat in the room. It sits next to you on the couch, or even in your lap. You clutch it tightly in your hands, sometimes: a crumped tissue, a buzzing cell phone, your wedding ring.
It is there between us as we begin to talk.
We talk about the most impossible things.
We talk about funerals, and burials, and keriah ribbons.
We talk about who will be present and what time it will all begin.
Sometimes, we talk about what to wear, or what to eat.
But this isn’t the reason you are here. This isn’t the reason at all.
You take a breath, and you begin to tell me the story of your deepest love. Of your spouse, of your parent, of the person who was so much a part of you that it is like telling me how you breathe, or how you get dressed in the morning.
How do you explain the essence of a person?
How do you capture what they taught you or how they changed you when they are still in you?
And after an hour, or maybe two, I have notes. So, so many notes. You’ve told me where she went to school, and the trouble that he got in as a child. Her favorite joke, his favorite meal. How she danced while she brushed her teeth, or how he couldn’t go to the movies without ordering a large popcorn and a coke. The thing he always said before closing his eyes to sleep, or the way she picked the perfect lipstick each and every morning.
Sometimes you share stories that I don’t write down: The times that weren’t happy, or loving, or sweet. Because this, too, is a part of the picture. That no one is perfect. That no one is easy all the time. Not even in our memories.
And my job then becomes to carry your words. To hold this image of a person I have maybe known or maybe not, and to reflect them back to you as we enter our Jewish rituals of memory.
There is a rhythm to remembrance. It is a pulsing, beating vein that begins as you tell their story. It continues through shiva, and sheloshim. Through the year of firsts, and beyond: for each yartzeit,
each birthday, each small moment when you remember. This pulsing, this rhythm… it never, ever stops — as long as you always tell the story, let it build a home there, inside of you.
He would have loved this book.
This was her favorite recipe.
I just know he would have loved you.
I just wish I could pick up the phone, and tell her.
At a shiva minyan, loved ones share their memories of the person whose life has ended. They share words of comfort with those who are grieving. I usually describe it like this:
Imagine that each story told tonight is like a flower.
And each one of us holds a bouquet.
Your flowers are roses, mine are lilies.
His are sunflowers, and hers are tulips.
And as we share each memory, it is like offering a flower from your bouquet for someone else to hold. When shiva began, the memories we held were only ours. But by the end the memories we hold are rich and varied. We leave with a full bouquet of rich and fragrant stories, colorful images that we hold in our deepest heart — that place inside, where our memories live.
We talk sometimes, in Jewish spaces, about what happens when a person dies. We wonder: whether or not Judaism believes in an afterlife, if there is a bright light, or singing angels. If there is a better place.
If only the rabbis gave us something definitive to hold.
If only we could say we knew.
Instead, we carry these bouquets of story.
These gifts of memory.
This room in our heart where our loved ones dwell.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner teaches,
“Each person has a Torah, unique to that person, his or her innermost teaching. […] Some are long, some short. Some are intricate and poetic, others are only a few words, and still others can only be spoken through gesture and example. But every soul has a Torah. […] For each soul, by the time of his or her final hour, the Torah is complete, the teaching done.”
And like we read the Torah again and again, learning more each year, the memories of those who have died — their teachings, their Torah, is eternal within us. The fragrant bouquet of stories lives on in each of us, so long as we are living, too.
One year later, I see you again. Perhaps we are gathered to unveil a headstone.This will be a permanent place to visit, to rest, to remember. Or maybe you have come to synagogue for his first yartzeit, a painful but important milestone.
I am glad to see you.
I remember funny details, like your loved one’s favorite hot dog
or that they always wore mismatched socks.
Because you see, they live in my heart now, too.
You are still carrying your bouquet, of course. But you are lighter now.
Instead of carrying the grief outside of you, heavy on your shoulders, it rests within you.
It is nestled into that tender place, the home you have built for it in your soul.
It sometimes spills out your eyes, in silent, wistful tears.
It sometimes lingers on your lips — an easy, thoughtful smile.
But it is always in you.
You still receive new flowers in your story bouquet when your friends remind you:
how he always sang that song, how she always baked that cake.
And you promise to share a rose or a sunflower and give it to your grandchildren to carry:
Here is why you share her name.
Here is why I wear this ring.
And all who hear their stories in the here and now, they build a room in their heart, too.
A place to keep the gift of your beloved’s Torah that you will always teach as you always, always, remember.
Zichronam Livracha
May all those who we mourn tonight be remembered for a loving blessing.
Rabbi Sara Mason-Barkin
Yom Kippur Yizkor, 5782
Congregation Beth Israel, Scottsdale
