So many gates to walk through... In the Kolinsky-Mandelbaum house and the Pravda house and the Corey-Moran house, among many others, all the children are leaving home for college and points beyond, leaving their parents behind, proud and wistful both. The Jacobs/Rakofsky house swarms today with mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends in the happy aftermath of Neshama's Bat Mitzvah. At our house, we are making hasty plane reservations to go up to Seattle, where Mickey's younger brother, Tommy lies critically ill in a hospital, one day a little up, another, like today, catastrophically down. It's all stirring at the same time, these and a million other passages. Sometimes the density of life takes my breath away.
Tommy has had a long, slow illness. But the crisis began three weeks ago today, when he was found unconscious outside his home, whisked to a hospital in a coma, put on a ventilator. It was late night phone calls, a sense of desperate urgency (we've been expecting this so long, but is it really here?), so many decisions to make so quickly. Should we go? Wait by the phone? Make funeral plans? (but there was a Bat Mitzvah and a wedding -- I was expected, irreplaceable -- how to balance these obligations, my heart's desire to be present many places at once...?) And then he didn't die, but remained unconscious for almost two weeks. And then one day he opened his eyes. And a nurse could put the phone receiver to his ears as we spoke to him, and he would blink his eyes furiously in recognition. And then a week later he was weaned off the ventilator. Yesterday Mickey talked to his brother on the phone. He was hard to understand but intelligible. We were jubilant. Then this morning I am awakened early by a ringing phone, a nurse practically screaming at me -- "He's dying! He can't go on like this! You know that, don't you?" And then just a few minutes later another nurse, another reading of the whole situation. "Really nothing's changed..."
Meanwhile I am making phone calls today, asking people to participate in the High Holy Day services. Telephoning always scares me a little bit, especially if I think about what telephoning actually does. It pierces into someone else's life, connects their moment with mine -- without permission, sometimes almost violently -- and I am quite suddenly talking to someone who just returned from a vacation, someone else who is thinking about the white spaces between lines of text... "And how are you?" they ask. Scared, confused, sad, peaceful, my heart in several worlds at once. Glad to hear your voice, glad that our realities intersect. Dazzled by the density of life.
One hard day a few weeks ago, when Mickey was away and hard to reach by phone and I was fielding news of his brother, I suddenly felt terribly alone. I couldn't decide if we should go to Tommy's bedside, if today was the day. I was afraid he was going to die and I'd be alone in the house and no one would even know this was happening. I was afraid that someday in the future I would feel guilty for making the wrong decision. I was afraid that one day soon I'd be calling people, cancelling appointments or something, saying, "My brother-in law just died." And they woud say, "We didn't even know he was so ill..." Somehow that thought disturbed me very much, though I was too busy to stop and think about why. I sent some e-mails, told the next few people who asked how I was doing, even casually. And right away I got a note back from one person: "Sorry to hear -- we're thinking of you..." Someone else called to check in on me. People started to ask me how Tommy was doing. It felt good.
Since then I've gone on and travelled. I went to see my Grandma Sylvia in Chicago, then on to the Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education in Columbus, Ohio. I've participated in Quinn's Bat Mitzvah, Hannah and Clayton's wedding, Neshama's Bat Mitzvah. Today I'm planning the High Holy Day services. It's all been real. It's all been strong. It's all been important, not just the sad and scary news but all of it. Now Mickey and I are planning to go to Seattle tomorrow, to see and touch Tommy ourselves. It seems like a crucial moment.
And it makes a huge difference to me to know that, somehow, some of you who know me know some of the "all" of it. We haven't needed meals to be brought to us or anything. I don't even need, or want, to talk at length about Tommy's situation with very many people. But I have needed the people around me, friends, neighbors, people with whom I am in community, to know that Mickey and I are at this difficult doorway right now. And also that we are, I am, fine, okay, managing, that it is huge but not everything.
And it makes me feel, in a very visceral way, just what is the nature of our connection as a community, that need to know and be known, in the particulars as well as the broad sweeps. Sometimes I complain that my ears hurt from listening to so many things, hearing so much about so many people. And it's not because I'm a rabbi, or not very much. It's because we all call each other and see each other at all these occasions. And so our lives pierce into each other's, sometimes abruptly, and we tell each other things we want each other to just know. And we carry each other through this exchange of news. Our thoughts are literally 'with each other,' This intermingling of our thoughts really does sustain me.
Copyright 1999 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Last updated 09/04/99 (rge)