A tale of two kaddishes

On the eve of the 10th of Tevet, the General Day of Kaddish for those who perished in the Holocaust whose date of death is not known, thoughts about saying kaddish for loved ones who are no longer with us in this world fill me.

I think about the kaddish I said for my mother who departed this world over the course of months, weeks, and then days, slowly disengaging from the world around, from her everyday pursuits, from her friends, and finally from us, her closest family. How different from the abrupt and unexpected departure of our 38-year-old son, who was ripped out of life without warning. I contemplate those who say kaddish for loved ones, by now, more than 80 years after the Holocaust, trying to imagine how they navigated their grief.

Standing in our little neighborhood synagogue (in Yiddish, it is commonly referred to as a shtiebel) I mumbled the by-now-familiar words. I said kaddish daily for an entire year after my mother passed away five years previously. I even wrote a book about the experience, plumbing the depths of my personal journey in grief over losing a mother, exploring the interface between faith, women’s role in the synagogue, and the lonely path of grieving. Now, I was there again. The same, but oh so different.

Our son, Yedidya Refael, or Didi as he was called by all those who knew him, friends and family alike, departed this world suddenly. Diagnosed with a large tumor two months earlier, he underwent a complicated surgery that he never returned from. The shock, the searing pain, and the disbelief have muted and become well-worn pathways of longing and sadness. I have no expectations of coming to terms with or getting over this terrible loss.

It is now more than two years later, and as we approach the 10th of Tevet, the Day of Kaddish, I approach the examination of how saying kaddish for a mother and a son are both the same and yet very different.

What are the elements that are the same? There is the daily attendance in communal worship, something that normally I subscribe to for Shabbatot, and almost never during the week. There is the rhythm of getting up early, grabbing a quick coffee (espresso helps, it is short), and stumbling down the path to the shtiebel, a 30-second walk from my front door. There is a sense of community, both in the entire service and more specifically in the kaddish itself, where the mourners say several lines, and the community responds, back and forth, back and forth. There is that sense that in the face of such great and overwhelming loss, perhaps you are retaking control, and doing something positive, possibly the only thing you can do that will help your loved one.

But saying kaddish for a mother and for a son are also intrinsically different. Losing a parent who lived into her 90s, while sad, was never tragic. I remember treasuring the moments of saying kaddish as a way of being in communion with my mother and her memory. In the busy passage of time, the opportunity to mourn and grieve often gets pushed aside. Saying kaddish for her was a way to set time aside to mourn my loss and treasure my moments with her.

There was no way that life was returning to normal after losing our son. Losing a young person, somebody younger than yourself is unnatural, not the way things are supposed to be in this world, and yes it is tragic. Certainly, losing a child is any parent’s worst nightmare. I noticed the way people had trouble looking me in the eye after Didi’s death, or if they did catch my eye, they had that “poor you” kind of look. Well meaning, no doubt, but of no consolation.

Not only is losing a child not in the natural order of things, but it is also contrary to all we think we are in control of. As parents, we do our utmost to ensure our children’s safety and wellbeing. As we grow older, we are so sure that our own health and our lifestyles will protect us from some dreaded disease. In the face of this unbearable loss, I am sent to the depths of feeling that life is not in our hands ever, and all sense of control is an illusion. This is not a great place to be because that illusion is, in large part, what keeps us going. The sense that we do control our destiny and we can effect a change, that life has meaning, that we can help create that meaning, dissolves in the face of this terrible loss.

Losing a son ungrounded me in so many ways. My sense of balance in the world was upended, predictability and expectation were suspended. Losing a sense of control over my own destiny and losing my faith in a benevolent and compassionate God were companions to the heart-wrenching feelings of loss of our son.

Sitting in the synagogue over the many months, I did not treasure this time to grieve, as I was grieving all day and all night. Life was not readily returning to routine. I did not need a special time or place to mourn my Didi. I mourned him all the time, every minute of the day. And night.

Over the course of the weeks and months that I said kaddish, I found the actual words of the kaddish remote. Extolling the greatness of God just didn’t do it for me. As the months progressed and the familiar words rolled off my tongue, I often thought about my relationship to God, and how difficult I was actually finding to be in a relationship with this God. Childish no doubt. I clearly remembered Racheli Shprecher Frankel saying, when asked about all the prayers for her son Naftali, who was kidnapped and murdered, “God doesn’t work for me.” But somehow that didn’t cut it for me. I was disappointed, to put it mildly, bereft to phrase it more clearly.

While intellectually I understand that part of the reason for saying kaddish may be to ensure that we don’t lose our faith, it did little for me in fostering a closer relationship with God. kaddish is in fact a kind of hook. It keeps us anchored in this world in ourselves, in community, in relationship to God. It would have been so easy to shut the door on all of that and let grief overwhelm, if only there was no kaddish to say.

But there was, and I continued to say kaddish for my son for an entire year, even though parents are required according to Halacha (Jewish law) to say kaddish for their children for only 30 days. Why did I continue? There was no one saying kaddish for him. His children were too young and his siblings had fulfilled their obligation by saying kaddish for 30 days. At the end of those 30 days, my husband and I decided to continue. This was one thing we could actually do for our son, for his neshama, his soul.

The second reason that I continued is that I did not want my husband to say the kaddish alone. He of course had plenty of opportunities to say it alone (I only went to synagogue once a day), yet it was important for me to share in this obligation by choice. It isn’t easy to say kaddish, and saying it together was a way that we could strengthen and support each other.

Solace was hard to find in those early days, weeks and months. Saying kaddish did get me out of bed and moving and it did bring me into relationship with God, however fractured. While the words of kaddish seemed remote, and rote, although the tears often choked my words, the single comfort I found was in the final words. “He who makes peace in His high places, may He bring peace upon us and upon all Israel, and say Amen.”