Uniting the generations
This year, I became an adult orphan. Not only is there now one less person on this earth who loves and cares about me, but yet another link to my childhood and my past has been severed. As the eldest sibling, there is now no one who directly remembers what I was like as a baby or toddler.
Admittedly, in my particular circumstances, such memories vanished quite some time ago. My widowed mother having been afflicted with Alzheimer's disease for the past ten years, I had long abandoned any hope of uncovering more details of our immediate family history.
After losing their second parent, many people report feeling anxious at the realization that they have joined the ranks of the eldest generation, thereby becoming more aware of their own mortality – there is now no one between them and death. In my own family, however, the transfer of the responsibility baton took place while my mother was still alive, as indeed it tends to do in families battling debilitating long-term illness, where adult children take charge of caring for ailing parents. I had also become accustomed to mourning my mother's gradual loss mostly silently within, and so it was quite a relief for my grief to be acknowledged publically when she died.
Grieving for my mother has been quite different to my experience upon losing my father more than a decade ago after a short albeit brutal illness. Not having been given time even to try to accustom myself to the fact that he was ailing, my grief at the loss of my father was visceral and raw, whereas my mother's Alzheimer's tended to offer some protection, often cocooning me, as it did her, from the full brunt of emotion. After all, there had been plenty of time to say goodbye. Nevertheless, on occasion, the pain still manages to pierce my defenses.
Judaism recognizes the particular relationship between parent and child by allowing a longer mourning period. While the generally accepted time is 30 days, an adult child is notably expected to honor their parent's memory by publicly reciting a prayer, known as the Mourners' Kaddish, for 11 months. While the prayer itself actually has nothing to do with death, I have found this ritual to be cathartic, as it enables me to draw on the support of my community.
It was also a relief when shortly after my mother's passing, we decided to donate all the paraphernalia associated with her illness – wheelchairs and other medical aids – to the adult day care centre, which she had attended over the past years. As her world had narrowed, the centre had become her only source of companionship apart from that of immediate family and caregivers. It felt wonderful to be able to help others, while simultaneously removing the physical evidence of an illness that had nothing to do with her essence as a person.
When embarking courageously on the process of sorting through their parents' home and possessions, others might start with the wardrobe or kitchen cupboards. We, on the other hand, have been going through reams of newspaper articles, spanning five decades, which our parents and grandfather marked and preserved to discuss with each other, often providing a springboard for their own ideas. As I turn the yellowed pages, my past comes alive … until I hear my mother's voice whispering, "Find an interest to sustain you…"
At my mother's funeral, my youngest son recited the ancient, well-known verse: "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; … A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance…" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4)
On occasion such times overlap. Indeed, just three months after my mother's death, I find myself in the throes of preparing for the Bar Mitzvah of my middle son. While joy is somewhat tempered by loss, I recognize how blessed I am as a mother myself to see my child mature and begin to take responsibility for his actions.
For it is not all about me. Daughter, sister, wife, mother, colleague, friend, I exist in relationship to others too and must still consider needs apart from my own. At times, admittedly, compromise is difficult, and yet, it is grounding to remember, especially when feeling particularly vulnerable, that I am not alone and can look outwards rather than solely within, turning my focus to strive to contribute to the world.
My parents always put their children first, teaching us to be modest and ethical, to stand up for our principles and to make the most of our opportunities.
It is now my turn to transmit their rich legacy to my own children, providing a strong foundation for their future and uniting the generations. My children may not have had the privilege of growing up in the company of all their grandparents, but at the very least I can try to ensure that they will come to understand and even cherish the values by which their elders lived.
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Shira contemplates the big questions.
Like most of us, I usually try to avoid thinking about death. Its seeming finality – the enormity of the thought that we are never coming back – is not something I have ever managed to face and comprehend fully, no matter how hard I try. Instead, heart thumping, courage faltering, I usually come to a screeching halt just before plunging over what seems like the looming precipice beyond.
Yet, on the tenth anniversary of my beloved father’s passing and after attending the funeral of my dear friend Shimon, I find myself drawn to musing about death and to be able to do so more calmly and rationally than ever before.
Selfless and discreet, Shimon was a caring man, a listener, who preferred not to speak about his own trials and tribulations, and devoted much of his life to helping others through his nursing work and later as a hospital chaplain. Listening to the eulogy for Shimon, I felt uplifted and a sense of inner peace soothed my soul – just as my friend would have wanted.
At Shimon’s funeral, we listened to the recitation of a beautiful poem, Life is a Journey, by the late Alvin Fine, which provides a realistic summary of the fallible human condition. Failure certainly does not preclude meaning:
“From defeat to defeat to defeat, until, looking backward or ahead,We see that victory lies not at some high place along the way,But in having made the journey, stage by stage, a sacred pilgrimage.”
Perhaps I have become more aware of death at a time when I have been writing the life stories of my late grandfather and mother. In the course of this journey, I have been fortunate to have been able to trawl through a treasure trove of family letters, some dating back as far as the 1930s – snippets of social history, which regrettably, with the advent of email and the Internet, come to an end around the year 2000. It is sobering to realise that I will not be leaving the same legacy for my children.
Written in a multitude of languages, these letters have criss-crossed the globe. Desperate letters from a sister in Lodz, Poland, in 1935 to her sister, my late grandmother, in Tel Aviv; hundreds of letters, which followed my mother’s journey from Tel Aviv to Melbourne in the late 1940s and then on to London and Montreal a decade later and back to Melbourne once more in the late 60s; and letters spanning four decades from my Canadian father’s family in Toronto to their brother in Melbourne and from my adopted Melbourne ‘aunt’ and close family friend to my mother, providing vignettes of what life was like for Australians in the 1950s and 60s.
In perusing these letters, each preserved in its original envelope, what quickly becomes clear is that no matter what advances technology may bring, fundamentally little has changed: human beings still experience joy and suffering, success and failure, complain about the economy, celebrate births and marriages and bemoan divorces and deaths among family and friends. Life continues – whether you are there to witness and experience it or not.
As the ancients taught: “there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1.9) “One generation passes away, and another generation comes; And the earth abides for ever.” (1.4)
So much toil and trouble, fuss and bluster, anguish and elation. Yet, after we are gone and our contemporaries have also vanished with the passing years, what remains? For the creative few, a contribution to knowledge they may have made; book they may have written; artwork they may have produced. For those with means, a legacy in bricks and mortar or a charitable foundation to which they may have contributed. For the vast majority of us, the living legacy of our children, grandchildren, and possibly even great-grandchildren, as well as photos and other memorabilia and perhaps sayings or traditions handed down from generation to generation.
My late father was a quiet man. In his own discreet way, he did whatever he could to care for and support his family. He would do anything for the ones he loved and he was everything to us. To him, home and family came first, and I will never forget how on the day he died, he urged me to leave his hospital bedside and return to my husband and young children because “they need you”.
My father stood like a pillar at the centre of our lives. We were all accustomed to depending on him, and when he died, we felt his absence keenly. In the days and months that followed, I could not help but ask myself how it would have bothered anyone if he had been allowed to continue driving through the streets, helping to lighten the load of his family and friends?
Until my father’s passing, I had been fairly sure that there was nothing after death. After spending years studying philosophy, I could not seem to accept the idea of “eternal life” and “everlasting peace” in the “world to come”.
Yet, when I lost my father just a few hours after spending the night tending to his needs in hospital, I began to question my former apparent certainties. How was it possible that my father could be there one minute and gone the next? What had happened to his persona, to the essence of who he had been, to his soul?
Ecclesiastes teaches: “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit returns unto God, who gave it.” (12.7) Today, while I am still not sure whether or not I believe in God, I draw comfort at least from striving to honour my father’s memory through my actions.
As Sylvan Kamens and Jack Riemer wrote in their poem, We Remember Them, also recited at Shimon’s funeral:
“As long as we live, they too shall live,for they are now a part of us,as we remember them.”
Shira Sebban – Life Issues
Shira is a Sydney-based writer and editor, who is passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist with the Australian Jewish News, Shira previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. The mother of three sons, she also serves as vice-president on the board of her children’s school. You can read more of her work at http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/
Life Balance = Abandoned. The. Search.
Shira is a Sydney-based writer and editor, who is passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist with the Australian Jewish News, Shira previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. The mother of three sons, she also serves as vice-president on the board of her children’s school. You can read more of her work at http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/
Life Balance = Abandoned. The. Search.