Sailing towards the horizon

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart… You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. — “The Green Fields of the Mind,” by A. Bartlett Giamatti

Today is the third day of Adar. Today is the day my siblings and I say our last kaddish for our dad.

This day, which has been circled on my mental calendar for a long time, stands in notable contrast to our first day of kaddish. That was a Friday in early April, and took place 36 hours after my brother called me from New York, saying that our father wasn’t doing well and was in an ambulance on his way to the hospital. It was about four o’clock in the morning, and I had received similar calls in the past. I thanked my brother and said that I would go back to sleep, and if there were any updates to give me a call. He gently recommended that I stay up.

About half an hour later, my mother called me from the emergency room. She knew what the doctor was going to tell her, and she wanted me to be on the phone with her when she received the news. The doctor emerged from being with my dad, and told my mother that my father’s heart had stopped, and that they were unable to revive him, and that he had died. It felt like a bolt of lightning that I had already known was about to strike. I told my mother that I would tell my two sisters and brothers. And I did, calling one and telling her that Dad had died a few minutes earlier, then hanging up and calling the next.

A day later, I was in Boston, and after the 8 a.m. funeral, we drove to the cemetery. We are kohanim (Judaism’s priests, who are proscribed from coming in contact, even at some remove, with a dead body), so for my brother and me, this was our first time being up front at a gravesite. In the past, we stood outside with our dad. This time, we were inside with our dad, for the last time. At a certain moment, the rabbi nodded in our direction, and we said our first mourner’s kaddish. Soon after, when the grave was full, my brother and I quickly walked out of the gates of the cemetery to the street, leaving our mother, sisters, and everyone else inside. As kohanim, we were allowed to be present for the burial — but once the burial was finished, our license to be inside was finished, too.

We then drove home to begin sitting shiva, and the ritual of saying kaddish — three davenings a day, each with at least one kaddish, every day for 11 months — began that afternoon when we said Mincha. That night was Shabbat, and we said kaddish again during Kabbalat Shabbat, and then after Ma’ariv, and again the next morning before Shacharit, and after Musaf. And so it began, three times a day, every day, for 11 months.

I was always cognizant of how much time had passed and how many months were left, but as the ending slowly crept closer, I kept an ever more detailed count. Ten weeks left. Four weeks left. Two weeks left. Twenty-three davenings, 18, 10. Twenty-four kaddishes. Fourteen. Seven. Six.

One.

One more mourner’s kaddish, in about an hour, when I go to Mincha. And after that, silence. We don’t blow a great shofar as we do at the end of Yom Kippur. There’s no special prayer. We don’t make a siyum, or even a l’chaim.

We say kaddish for the last time, and then we simply go home.

We just stop.

Eleven months ago, we said goodbye to our dad. And for the next 11 months, we said goodbye again, every day, three times a day, whether we were cognizant of it or not. And when 11 months are over, we are done saying goodbye. We have been waving as the car drove away over the horizon, and now there’s no reason to keep waving because we can’t see it anymore.

I remember the day Dad finished saying kaddish for his father, my grandfather, on the 15th day of Sivan in 1985. I used to go to shul with my father every morning, and I vividly recall how he became emotional as he recited kaddish that day.

That wasn’t like him at all. It might have been the first time I ever heard him get choked up.

On the short ride home, I asked him what had happened. He answered that for the past 11 months, he had felt as though he were holding his father’s hand. Now that his recital of kaddish was ending, he experienced it as though he were saying, “OK, Dad, I did what I could. Now you’re on your own.”

My experience was different. I’m not sure that I was holding my father’s hand, and doing what I could for him; that doesn’t feel right. My dad was extremely independent, and even in his final years, I had to convince him to let me help him unpack heavy suitcases from the car. He never wanted to rely on other people… so I have a hard time believing that Dad somehow needed my help.

Much more likely is that for the past 11 months, he was holding my hand, and the hands of my mother and sisters and brother. I somehow feel less that he’s on his own, and more that we’re on our own. And kaddish was less my doing what I could, and more my dad doing what he could, from across the great expanse, giving us his hand so that we could hold it a bit longer.

In an hour, I’ll go to Mincha. I’ll lead the davening, and at its conclusion, I’ll say the mourner’s kaddish for the last time. And in an inexplicable way, my dad will let go of my hand.

I can picture him winking at me, smiling at me, and saying that it will be OK. Whether I realize it or not, he’ll be cheering me on, cheering all of us on. Still, now it’s time to go.

Today, we’re getting out of the boat we were in together. Dad stays in. He stands at the wheel, turns around, and waves to us while wearing that big smile, and we wave back, watching the boat slowly move away. And there comes a moment when we strain to look, but the boat is gone. There’s nothing left to do but go home.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. And the people we love, for whom we say kaddish for 11 months, deserve nothing less than our broken heart.

That is Dad’s final gift, which we will carry with us forever.