Whole

A mockingbird sings its long, complicated tune just outside the sanctuary.  Inside, Rabbi Janet speaks of Harvey.  Her voice cracks often with emotion.  The large, beautiful room, is filled with people who loved and admired Harvey – the inmost circle of family in the front row, and behind them row upon row of friends and colleagues. Harvey lived such a big life, and you can see it in all the people who have come to mourn his death.  It is breath taking, even now, days later, to know that he is gone.

At the cemetery in Colma Jay and I stop first at Joe’s grave.  The rough top of his headstone is supporting the life of a vivid orange lichen.  He’s buried in the plot he chose, in a neighborhood he liked, close to the road. We pause to leave stones, and to tell him that his dear friend will join him in the earth, to tell him that nearly eleven years after his own death we love him and remember him. The loss is not the sharp pain it was, but it is always a loss, still shaping so much of my memory.

In the Beth Am section of the cemetery there are so many other loved names: Bob Lewis, Mel Sadoff, Marv Siegel. Marshall Greene and Len Goldberg are not here, but still in our thoughts. Other friends. And Harvey’s parents, with the empty hole beside them. The friends and family gathered in Colma, a much smaller group than in the sanctuary, all have dear ones here, all leave stones as they remember. Harvey’s grandchildren accompany the plain casket to the waiting hole.  It is the first grandparent they have lost, the first painful lesson in death. And there is Rabbi Janet, speaking more quietly now, without a microphone in the intimacy of burial.  There are no bird songs in the air here, but the noise of planes overhead. Then the last sound, the sound of each shovelful of earth dropped on the coffin by those who need to perform this final act of love. Rabbi Janet leads us through this loss as she has led us through so many before. She is a reassuring guide, helping us keep our balance, find a way forward. She doesn’t mask her own feelings of shock and sorrow, but she leads right through the feelings, making a path for us to follow.

It is neither cold nor raining at Colma for once. Perhaps I only remember it as always cold and raining at the funerals here.

At the shiva that night the Schloss home is filled, friends spilling out into the courtyard. This home has been filled countless times with happy groups of family and friends.  But as full as the house is, it feels empty – the one face we all want to see, the one laugh, the one voice we all want to hear is gone.  Gone.

I hold Harvey’s kindness in my heart.  I hold his energy and exuberance, his intelligence and drive.  Jay reminds me that at our age loss is one of the skills we have to master.

In the prayer for healing we sing the line “We pray to once again be whole.” When Joe died I could not sing that line at all at first, or without tears later.  I could not imagine feeling whole again. But somewhere in the last ten years, and especially in the last few months on Sunnyhill, my prayer has been answered.  Despite all my losses, I am whole.  Loss has just become part of what it means to me to be whole.  I am whole with memory, I am whole with love, I am whole with life.