Tackling Personal Bereavement

MyLife Essay Contest

As we approach the 5 year yahrtzeit of my father I thought I would share a short letter I wrote around the time of his passing and share some strength I found during that tragic and challenging time.

Tragedy has rippled through our family. It affects us all and will forever weigh on us with grief and sadness. This last week has been so painful and I am hopeful and confident that we will find some solace and comfort as a family together. There will never be words to help any of us. As always, my mind is constantly racing with questions, anger, sadness, confusion and disbelief.

I came across something while reading the Alter Rebbe’s maamar in Torah Ohr from parshas noach that has helped me so deeply to deal with my sense of grief and loss. I would not be so bold so as to suggest that we can find comfort of any kind in these words to remove the whole in my heart because I truly feel there is no healing but, perhaps some validation and serenity may be within reach. Rationally I know that as human beings we must live on and survive and we can only survive if we can bear the peckel that Hashem gives us.

The Alter Rebbe quotes the famous medrash that says:

“Hashem wanted to create the world with the middah of Din (Gevura/judgement). He saw that the world would not be able to exist, so, using his mercy he partnered the midah of Chesed (kindness) with Din to create the world.”

The common interpretation of this medrash is that Hashem had to reduce his power of judgment because it was too strong. The Rebbe explains that the correct explanation is that Din/Gevurah refers to unadulterated unbridled power or light. Hashem saw that a world could not exist with unbridled raw energy – she needed an element of calm, an element of order. Using his mercy he made this happen by including the calming order of Chesed. In the language of kabbalah; you have the world of tohu / unbridled energy that had to merge with the world of Tikun / order; so that people could live. Total opposites coexisting!

One of the many wondrous miracles Hashem performs every day is allowing these two opposites to co-exist. Order and Chaos. Unbridled energy and calming serenity. Chesed and Gevurah.

Through this tragedy, some have suggested that we now must achieve the “goal” of doing good and overcome the pain and anger by continuing on. This certainly seems to be the common response that our Rebbe has always encouraged broadly speaking. These are wonderful suggestions I’m sure, but they smack of denial and lack empathy to me when overwhelming pain and sorrow are so heavy and real for me right now. I find this approach hard to accept. Even before doing anything I wonder how we are capable of gearing up and taking the next step to do anything at all. Doing something good will never take away the loss and sorrow. A plaque or Sefer Torah will never bring our father back.

When we sit alone and think about the pain and the eternal loss that will forever be our reality – somehow we have to live with this pain. So I wonder how we are to live with this pain and carry on at the same time. After reading this maamar something stood out to me. Hashem created the world and all of us with a capacity for paradox and opposites to exist simultaneously. We can bear a tremendous pain and yet still engage in joy, life and action. This is possible because Hashem ingrained within all of us the capacity for these opposites.With mercy he allows us to possess both pain and life. This may seem obvious but the key here for me is that this is a tremendous miracle that Hashem is doing for us!

Logically, it is impossible to contain both of these feelings and realities at the same time. No human can do this with natural strength alone. Yet, somehow, he allows us to do both – a remarkable miracle. Anyone who suffers a tragedy carries a pain forever. It seems to me that we are all walking miracles of Hashem, ambassadors of this miracle and proof to the world of this riddle of creation; opposites can and do co-exist within each of us – the unbridled chaotic energy of pain and passionate feeling of loss and the orderly calming ability to carry on – not to move on. Only Hashem’s mercy, which by extension is the essence of Hashem, can do something so wondrous.

I hope this message can bring some validation to you as it does to me for the impossible confusion and pain that we all have with the passing of our father. Keeping this message in mind has helped me so deeply deal with every day life.

Enjoying the most basic human activities like a walk in the warm summer sun light or sipping a dark brewed cup of coffee are so guilt ridden lately. It feels so wrong to allow myself even the simplest of life’s pleasures when someone so dear to me is not here physically to do the same. At other times, I feel so guilty for not maintaining the deepest sense of sadness in its most raw and unbridled form all the time. How can I allow myself to not always feel this pain? The words of the Alter Rebbe ease my guilt and brighten my sadness. It’s the tzimtzum of creation, the contracted and limited emotional energies that he has embedded in all of creations and in all of us that shape our capacity for how we can feel. We simply can not feel with unlimited levels of raw energy 24/7. It’s just not humanly possible. And that is ok. Yet, we can always carry a loss with us even while we enjoy life around us. This is a miracle of paradox that Hashem give to each of us and I am very grateful for it.