Mourner's Kaddish

On the death of a parent

The house is full. Shoes create a sea of discarded leather at the door, and those who sat down in the room at the front will say later that they never even knew so-and-so was there, because they couldn’t make it through the crowds to the back. The food is in the middle, a meeting place, an oasis of bagels and tuna and egg salad and so much cream cheese that we will be sending it home with people in paper coffee cups before the day is done. I am surprised by the attendance of some people, and surprised by the absence of others. I periodically scan for my sisters and brother; we are four points on a compass and we have navigated this week together; have not been swept in our own directions. We will not let each other be carried out to sea. More people walk through the open door and I am again amazed by this simple act of showing up. I can’t wait to talk to my mother about this; to compare notes and rehash the interactions with cousins and friends we haven’t seen in years. And then I once again remember why we are all here. My mother died on Saturday and this is her Shiva.

***

The mourners are divided almost equally into three groups: the Gentiles, the European Jews, and the South African Jews. We’re so sorry for your loss, say the Gentiles. May her memory be a blessing, say the Europeans. We wish you long life, say the South Africans. Each is heartfelt and sincere and rooted in inevitable practice. These incantations offer us both comfort, the words softening the edges between life and death. We are thankful for the guidance of our traditions; the rules and next steps and things we must do and things we can skip, laid out or easily found out. The funeral was simple and lovely and without dramatics. It followed our traditions and even the most challenging parts were softened by the customs, the incantations. We bury our own but the earth was so wet, so heavy. Please, the Cantor said, do only what you can and let the machine do the rest. Still, after everyone else left the feld, we went back to the shovel for the final time; a mitzvah, a tradition. What do we do now is a question that can be saved for the philosophical, and not logistical, reality of the death of our mother.

***

It is the spices that do it. After promising myself, all through the hard week at her bedside, that I would not try to control my emotions, that I would let the feelings come and be acknowledged, it is cleaning out the pantry in my mother’s apartment that breaks me. We are there on the day in between her death and her funeral. We needed to be useful, to do something with the hours. There was food rotting in the fridge, and siblings that were going to get on planes in the days ahead. This was our chance to do this together; to sift through the remains of a person’s life. We laughed at some things, shook our heads at others. Who keeps that? What is that? What ever happened to… I do not know this apartment. My mother moved in during the pandemic and our Toronto visits took place almost exclusively at my sister’s, where my family would stay. This apartment, full of the things my mother took into her final years: some things that she’s always had, and some things I had never seen before. My mother was both utterly familiar and utterly unknown to me. Every warm feeling and every regret; all the resentment and all the forgiveness; every moment of connection I worked hard to cultivate over many years as an adult daughter, and every reminder that I wasn’t always successful are present among my mother’s things. I leave the clothes and the jewelry and the photo albums and the collected artifacts to my siblings and head to the room I thought would be the most neutral. But a Jewish mother’s kitchen is not a neutral place and I realize this as I sort through cupboards that house the bowls we ate salad out of as children and mugs with my own children’s handprints stamped in garish colours. There’s a smoothie blender that has never been used and Corningware she used for nearly sixty years. And in the pantry, on a small shelf, my mother’s spices. Garlic powder, paprika, salt, and pepper in blue-topped Tupperware shakers we have had my entire life, but I haven’t seen in years. These containers and their contents are so familiar I am almost toppled by nostalgia and sadness. They are sticky and yellowed and I wish I didn’t even have to touch them and I wish I could keep them forever as I throw them directly into the garbage bag. And then I shift a few jars of half-used herbs and there is a large, Costco-sized bottle of Montreal Chicken Spice and it is almost empty. I didn’t know she liked this, had never seen her use it, yet this giant bottle is almost empty. I don’t know this part of her, don’t know the meals she cooked with this, don’t know if she ate them alone. There was an entire life my mother lived that I didn’t have any insight into. It’s here, in this apartment full of things I’ve known my whole life and things I’ve never seen before. It’s here in a nearly empty, unknown bottle that sat beside the most familiar. I sit on the floor and try not to let the others hear me cry.

***

None of this is new to us. We’ve done it before and we are orphans now. Too old to be orphans, we argue our own point. So much has changed since the last time we did this. Two more spouses, three more grandchildren. It is the grandchildren we weep for. We have been congratulated by many on being such a united front. This is how a big family should be; this is the benefit of having so many children. We are four points on a compass and the winds are gentle and we travel through this in the same direction. Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba. Our mother is dead. We are orphans now.

We wish you long life.