Taking Time to Think of Rose Along the Way

The Importance of Remembering

A few facts: I love to do jigsaw puzzles, my mom’s name was Rose, and yesterday was the anniversary of her death. Thus, when I was out shopping and saw a jigsaw puzzle created by RoseArt and featuring the Rose Motel, I bought it. It is from their puzzle series called Back to the Past, which is exactly where this puzzle sends me. Let me take you along as I tell you about Mom by sharing the eulogy I wrote twenty-four years ago. And then I will go on to talk about the importance of remembering, even all this time later.

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There are many ways to say, “I love you.” Mom’s way was to take perfect care of Dad, Richard, and me through the running of a perfect household. The pantry was always stocked. Our clothes were always clean. Every bill was paid the minute it arrived in the mailbox. Complete and nutritious meals were on the table three times a day. Even frozen water pipes in the kitchen did not keep her from cooking dinner when I was a kid – she just washed all the dishes in the bathtub. And when I grew up and moved to Cincinnati, 380 miles didn’t stop her either; she’d come to visit with a complete Sabbath dinner packed on ice. 

Like Goldie singing to Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Mom’s many actions said, “If that’s not love, what is?!” And so, yes, I knew we all loved each other, but still it was an odd thing to me that my parents’ generation did not easily say these words aloud, that instead we all had to read between the lines where sometimes there was the possibility of miscommunication. 

Oddly, during the period of Mom’s illness, she insisted that Dad and I go to the theater to see the musical, Carousel. You know, she had bought the tickets in advance and being frugal, did not want them to go to waste. So off we went to the theater where one song spoke to my rapidly growing fear of losing her without ever telling her – in words – how much I loved her. The song said:

If I loved you,
time and again I would try to say
All I’d want you to know.
If I loved you, words wouldn’t come in an easy way.
Round in circles I’d go.
Longing to tell you but afraid and shy.
I’d let my golden chances pass me by.
Then you’d leave me, off you would go in the mist of day
Never, ever to know
How I loved you.
If I loved you.

As if our whole family had heard the song instead of just Dad and me, a miracle happened right there at Missouri Baptist Hospital where as Mom’s illness progressed so did all of our capabilities to speak words of love. 

Thank you, Mom, for a lifetime of showing us your love and for telling us of it in the end.

Now you leave us. Off you go in the mist of day. Knowing eternally how I love you.  How we all love you.

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It is astounding to me that I found this eulogy in my computer’s memory. It is twenty-four-years and three or four computers ago that I wrote it. But memory is exactly what I want to talk about – especially about the deceased. To do so, I need to mention Jewish mourning practices.

We Reform Jews do not necessarily believe in an afterlife, however, we believe our loved ones live on in the memories of those who loved them. Therefore, we have prescribed ways of remembering them.

• During the first year after their death, we say a prayer called the mourner’s kaddish daily. We are supposed to do this in community so that we have others to comfort us in our loss. (In the first months after Mom’s death, it was challenging to say this prayer without tears, but by the end of the year, time had healed many wounds, and I was ready to be done with this ritual! I’m pretty sure that’s the intent.)
• At the one-year mark, we reassemble at the cemetery to dedicate the loved one’s headstone. The crowd for this is as large as a funeral would be, but the meal afterward is happier since the pre-illness, good memories are easier to access.
• There is an annual commemoration of the loved one called yahrzeit. It has private and congregational components. At home, we light a twenty-four-hour candle. And we attend Sabbath services at Temple where the rabbi reads a list of the people whose anniversaries are that week. Then the entire congregation rises to say the mourner’s kaddish prayer.
• There are four Jewish holidays that include a memorial service called Yizkor: Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot. At these services we remember our loved ones no matter how long ago they died.
• Yahrzeit and Yizkor give us a permission slip to cry. But then we need to get back to life and to living.

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Following these mourning practices, last night I lit the candle for Mom and tomorrow night I will go to Temple where Mom’s name will be read. It is always a shock to hear her name on the list, but whether I am crying or not, I will truly appreciate this ritual. I will be so very happy to have…

Taken the Time to Think of Rose Along the Way.

And I will continue to do so through the one thousand pieces of my puzzle.

I love you, Mom.

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A bit more info on Jewish mourning practices:

Jewish folks visit the graves of loved ones with some regularity. It is customary to put a rock on the headstone to mark the visit. (If you live out of town and can’t visit the graveyard regularly, it is nice to see rocks on your loved one’s headstone. It shows other family members have visited in your absence.) If you notice some golf balls on top of the headstone, that means my cousin, Kenny, visited the grave.

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