The Blessing of Sorrow Read online

  Otto Frank told us that day in 1979 that he had never realized how deep and sensitive his younger daughter was. Years before, he stated:

  I began to read slowly, only a few pages each day, more would have been impossible, as I was overwhelmed by painful memories. For me, it was a revelation. There, was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.21

  The diary uncovered someone transcendent who he had not known. His daughter was a feminist: “I know that I am a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.” She was an inspirational messenger: “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

  And then came what is arguably the most renowned and poignant paragraph written by Anne Frank, the idealist and optimist:

  It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.22

  Otto Frank was able to have The Dairy of a Young Girl published in 1947, and it has been translated into sixty languages. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the introduction to the English language edition. In so many ways, Anne Frank has never died.

  Turning his indescribable grief into creative tribute—as well as his feelings of guilt over surviving what destroyed his entire family—Otto Frank dedicated the remaining decades of his life to spreading Anne’s story and testimony throughout the globe. On the day he visited us clergy in 1979, he mentioned seeing young people in Africa and Asia reading and studying Anne Frank’s diary in schools. It was the only time Otto Frank smiled that day, but it was a bright and enduring smile.

  Honoring the Dead

  You don’t have to be or attain a high profile in order to nurse your grief with this kind of a resourceful and life-giving response to the loss of your loved one. Just as there is so much anonymous suffering in the world, as people die and other people mourn, there is also an overwhelming amount of anonymous kindness. The Hebrew Scripture encourages us: “Therefore, choose life!” Every day, turning their grief into curative work, children honor their departed parents, siblings venerate their siblings, and, yes, parents exalt their children. In their memory and in tribute to what they believed or championed, gardens are planted, churches refurbished, benches or bricks sponsored, modest charitable funds created, library collections started, street sections “adopted,” volunteer projects begun, or food and clothing donated. There is no greater antidote for grief than service to the living that reflects the values and principles of someone we so keenly miss.

  Aaron was a hearty, heavy-shouldered man with kind eyes and sturdy, work-worn hands. He laughed whenever folks in his lakeside Midwestern town called him “the Jewish carpenter.” I served the community’s small liberal synagogue for a brief period many years ago; Aaron and his wife, Rita, were active members. They were of humble financial means but carried a great deal of moral currency. Rita undertook many committees—from the volunteers who visited the sick in hospitals to the day care group who looked after little ones while their parents attended our religious services. Aaron, strapping and always in cheerful good spirits, contributed his time and skills enthusiastically as the synagogue “handyman.” He was most revered as the annual builder of the synagogue’s sukkah—the large booth with a thatched roof in which we gathered and where we prayed, sang, and shared joyful meals during the fall harvest festival called Sukkot.

  Aaron’s communal hut was spacious, leafy, and filled with hanging fall fruits, dried squash, and corn stalks. The autumn sunlight came through its perforated walls of pine branches, some drop cloth, bamboo reeds, and two-by-fours. The construction of the sukkah was Aaron’s trademark, his yearly righteous deed, and he was totally identified with it.

  Aaron and Rita had been married over forty years when he contracted pancreatic cancer. I would visit him at home during his final weeks, late in a particularly oppressive and steamy summer. He was thinking about the fall time sukkah but realized that he might not have the strength to build it. He asked me if I thought he’d make it to the holiday. I replied, “I don’t know if you will make it to Sukkot, Aaron, but Sukkot will definitely make it to you.”

  Rita meticulously cared for her man; he wanted to die at home. One morning, I arrived a bit early and he wasn’t quite up yet. When she heard him stirring, she got up to go into their bedroom. “Come join me, Rabbi Ben. He will love seeing you again.”

  As we entered, Aaron was sitting up in bed, smiling in warm greeting. I leaned over, took one of his big hands, and kissed his forehead. Rita came around the other side of the bed and asked him, “Aaron, are you ready for me to take care of your mouth?”

  The phrase struck me. She was referring to brushing his teeth for him and helping him rinse with mouthwash. But it was so dear and direct. I sat by as she used a little basin for the ritual and a fresh, moist cloth to gently wash his face. For love is as strong as death, I thought to myself, reciting the verse from Ecclesiastes in my head.

  Aaron died the next day. When Rita called to tell me, she almost immediately asked me between sobs, “Who will build the sukkah this year, Rabbi?” I responded, “We all will. He’ll inspire us.” And a number of the congregants did indeed assemble at the designated spot the day before the festival and we helped each other construct the familiar booth. “They needed a sukkah-builder in heaven,” I declared during a brief memorial in the course of the work gathering. “So of course, the angels called Aaron.”

  But Rita had a terribly difficult time in the ensuing weeks and months. She had retired from teaching at a junior college and, without Aaron to look after, struggled with what to do during the day. The grief was withering her soul. Notably, about six months after Aaron’s death, she told me that even visiting with a psychologist wasn’t particularly helping. And, like some people, she simply wasn’t comfortable with the idea of a support group as it did not appeal to her rather private sensibilities. She was deeply sad during the day, unable to function, and suffered from insomnia at night. She cried out to me, “I miss him so much! Sometimes, I don’t see a point in living.”

  This was, of course, alarming to hear. I asked her, “You are discussing that feeling with the psychologist, right?”

  “Yes, yes. Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill myself. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “What do you suppose Aaron would want you to do?”

  “Ha!” Rita actually chuckled while wiping tears off her face. “I know he wouldn’t want me to be like this.”

  We talked a while longer. She reminisced about her husband, especially at his delight in being the synagogue’s sukkah-maker. “He really did think of it as a shelter of sorts,” Rita shared with me. “He loved seeing people, especially the young people, comforting each other in it, singing songs, and breaking bread.”

  I said, “You know, Aaron had a lot of friends in this congregation and in this town. They really loved him. Do you mind if I talk with some of them about an idea you just gave me?”

  “What idea? You have to tell me that before you talk to people. We . . . I don’t have a lot of money.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I assured her.

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that Aaron really loved giving shelter and sanctuary to others. And, as you say, it was clear that he really loved kids. This town has a lot of youngsters who are hanging out in the streets too much and getting into trouble. Maybe we could start a youth shelter of some kind in Aaron’s memory, a place they could gather and get something to eat and talk with others, including a few adult counselors, about life and other teen challenges. And you’d be in charge of running it. After all, you are a teacher, right?”

&
nbsp; Within just weeks, with the help and input of several members of the community who were thrilled to participate, the Aaron Schechtman Welcome House was opened on the downtown strip. A small cadre of professionals and volunteers rotated in the tasks of maintaining the center, creating after-school and weekend social programming, offering free confidential discussions and advice, cooking meals, and generally reaching out to youngsters in need. Rita was there most days, baking brownies, stirring a large canister of hot bean soup, and tendering remedial tutoring in reading and writing skills. A few local corporations eventually pitched in with vending machines, snack foods, a soda station, new furniture, a sound system, and generally underwriting the place in exchange, of course, for the use of their logos on the machines, the soda and coffee cups, and the donated reading materials.

  In the fall, at the second Sukkot holiday following Aaron’s death, some of the socially challenged kids who frequented the Welcome House came and helped the synagogue committee build the sukkah. Rita spoke at a lectern set up on the site. Erect and proud, her eyes shining, she said, “Aaron would be so happy to see this diverse and united crowd working here today. He loved people, especially people mixing together for a common good. And Rabbi, I must correct something you said last year at this time when we were here. You said the angels needed Aaron. No, in fact, we need him here. My husband lives!”

  Volunteers of all ages, faiths, and backgrounds rebuild the Aaron Schechtman Sukkah every year. Rita remains busy and sleeps well at night. She turned her grief into a sanctuary, and people were served.

  Getting Up Close to Grief

  A few months after my father died, I fell into a pronounced melancholy. One of the things we discover after a death is that other people drift away from us and cannot attend to us as they did in the immediate aftermath of the loss. This is understandable. They have their own lives and their own troubles. They don’t mean to be insensitive or apathetic to our continuing anguish—through its various stages—but they have to move on as well. My Uncle Moshe had to return to Israel and look after his own immediate family and to his professional work. My friends and classmates could only listen to my lamentations for so long. In short, I was more and more solitary with my grief, and feeling very lonely.

  Before the massive myocardial infarction felled my dad, I never gave much thought to heart disease. I had also been spared a lot of severe sorrow because the deaths of family members had always taken place far away—a fateful aerogramme or a harrowing phone call from my birth land of Israel amounted to the full encounter. The sudden death of another one of my uncles earned us only a brief and bitter telegram from Tel Aviv. I spent hardly any time visiting sick relatives, either at home or in the hospital, and gave proportional consideration to the issues of health and well-being.

  This isolation from and lack of experience with mortality likely contributed to my tremendous inability to adjust to my father’s abrupt demise. I was drifting through life and graduate school and a new marriage and really had nowhere to alight. I couldn’t accept the blunt reality as depression and listlessness enveloped my spirit.

  Someone made a suggestion: I should volunteer as a student-chaplain in the cardiac section of one of the city hospitals. “It’ll be good for you,” I was told. “Your dad succumbed to a heart attack. Go and talk to men who are dealing with coronary disease. You will discover an outlet for your pain. And it will certainly be good for the people you visit.”

  I did it. I reported to a hospital where the administrative staff warmly accepted my offer of service. At first, though I proudly donned a laminated “VOLUNTEER” badge, which immediately made me feel connected to a community, I was somewhat apprehensive. The heart monitors and their ominous beeping, the blood pressure pumps, the oxygen machines, the white smocks worn by the medical staffers, all made me initially feel anxious and hesitant. I kept seeing my dad in the ashen faces and slumped shoulders of many of the patients. I thought I experienced chest pains (they were psychosomatic) and had to ward off fleeting moments of panic.23 My father’s open grave flashed before my eyes. I felt myself physically holding up my broken brother Sam over the gaping hole in the earth, the plain pine box just beneath us, as he and I recited the ancient memorial prayer, the kaddish. Each word of the Aramaic devotion came out of Sam’s mouth as a guttural cry. I saw my little sister, her blonde locks flying, as my mother-in-law walked her by the tombstones, just down the hill, a safe distance from the terror.

  But by my second or third visit to the ward, I began to relax. My immediate dread yielded to an overwhelming sense of affinity and purpose. I lingered longer with each of the ailing and recovering patients and, obviously, they were now more comfortable with the more “present” me. I didn’t just stand by their beds and breeze through the visits. I sat down next to them in a chair or on the side of their bed. I got up close.

  Some of them, though not all, began to open up to me with their stories and their own apprehensions. I saw something of my father in them. I listened to them, recited prayers with them, which I had been denied an opportunity to share with my dad. I literally felt the grip of grief loosen for me in this work and this privilege. It was all a balm and, as I touched the gentlemen’s hands or gave them sips of water or read to them, my father’s inexplicable disappearance transformed into a soothing closeness with his spirit.

  Then there was Mr. Washofsky. He was suffering from chronic heart failure. One of the nurses told me, “We are just trying to keep him alive as long as we can.” Mr. Washofsky was wiry and bespectacled, with dancing eyes and an impossibly appealing personality. He was also foreign-sounding, like my father, which was probably one of the reasons I sought to spend time with him.

  “So who are you?” asked the sixtyish man, whose pale complexion and thin white hair made him look even older. His gleaming eyes betrayed his fears; however, they invited me in. It was clear that the sweet man was intensely lonely.

  “I’m a student rabbi, Mr. Washofsky. From the Hebrew Union College. I came to visit you and see how you are doing. My name is Ben.”

  “Never mind, Ben. A rabbi, eh? You look like a kid.” The man shifted his weight in the bed, heaving a bit with what sounded like an unfinished Yiddish groan. The tubes in his nose fluttered about dangerously as he lifted himself up a bit to give me a closer look.

  “Yeah, you’re a kid,” he breathed out and fell softly back on his pillow. “A kid like you back in Warsaw (which he pronounced “Var-saw”) would be pulling wood on a wagon! Ha! Ha!”

  I felt a distinct concern as Mr. Washofsky guffawed; he enjoyed himself but his various monitors were getting busy. I took a step toward him but he continued to observe and chat.

  “From de Hebrew Union, eh? A Reform rabbi they send me. De ones that don’t have time for de traditions. Oy, I need a prayer or two, even from de Reform!”

  He was teasing me and I was totally charmed by this Polish man. His crusty good nature was disarming, and I felt something warm inside drawing me to his face that seemed now a touch more possessed of color.

  “Yes, de Reform,” I retorted with mimicry. He smiled and I chuckled. Then he shut his eyes momentarily and let out a long breath.

  “Oh, vat’s de difference? Vat’s de difference? Reform. Orthodox. Vatever. Jew. Gentile. Does God really care? I accept your kindness, young man. Excuse me, Mr. Student Rabbi. So what do you have to say? Nice of you to be here. My son is in California, older than you, I think. A pretty good job he got himself with a company that sells, eh, brochures, something like dat, to de car dealerships. Something like that, what do I know? I had three heart attacks already. My wife is already dead, what can I do? What’s your name, Mr. Student Rabbi?”

  “Uh, Ben. I told you before.”

  “So it kills you to mention it again?” Then he asked me where I was from. I said, “From right here, actually, Cincinnati.”

  “Vat are you talking?” The old man roared. “Nobody is from Cincinnati! Nobody is from America, either! You know vat I’m ta
lking? Come on, where is your father from?”

  There was a little ripple in my chest as he mentioned my father. But I answered, “My father was from Israel, Mr. Washofsky. And actually, you’re right. I’m not from Cincinnati, either. I was born in Israel also.”

  “Israel? That’s something. I keep telling my son—did I mention he got divorced already? What can I say? What can I do? Divorced, like a bullet! I keep telling him, with de car brochures, I say, ‘Take your kids, go see Israel.’ That’s a place. That’s a beauty.”

  “Were you there, Mr. Washofsky?”

  “Never.”

  He was actually playing me now. And I knew that this rascally old man, in his final few weeks on earth, was relishing being himself.

  “Okay. Uh, you have now many grandchildren, Mr. Washofsky?” I suddenly heard myself speaking with an affected Eastern European inflection. I imagine now, as I looked for my father in Mr. Washofsky’s bed, that I could not find enough ways to pay tribute to this funny gentleman with a fickle heart muscle.

  “Vell, I have two little grandchildren. You never seen such babies. California sees them, I don’t. But whenever I do, let me tell you. Dat is life for me, dat tells me I’m still alive! You know vat I’m talking?”

  I looked at Mr. Washofsky who, I learned later, had survived a fourteen-month internment at Auschwitz. I was so grateful to have met him and hear his brimming passion for his grandchildren. Now I asked him, “When are you going to see your grandchildren again?”

  He lit up. “Actually, soon. He’s bringing them soon, he says, the brochures salesman. He comes with them every time I have a heart attack! Ha-ha!” Mr. Washofsky let out a chopping cough and the flimsy bedframe shook. “Take it easy!” I pleaded, grabbing his narrow wrists and noticing the concentration camp tattoo number on his forearm. “You must remember your strength. You should preserve yourself for your children.”