Meeting death in a different light

I have a very dear friend whose maternal grandmother passed away at the ripe old age of 101, still living in her own apartment with an aide. This spunky senior citizen would sometimes share with her only living child, who was my friend’s mother, two insightful worries: One was: “I think God forgot about me!” And the second was: “When I die, I hope it’s in a convenient time for you!”

I thought often about those two comments a few days after I sat in the synagogue on Yom Kippur. I earnestly requested of the Almighty in so many of my prayers to grant me a long life. Those prayers were mixed with prayers of thankfulness for the blessings He has already given me, knowing full well that illnesses and unexpected tragedies cut lives short every single day. And with October 7 still a powerful piece of our psyche, there is the profound understanding that life does not always follow the path for which we and our children pray. Hashem’s plans are His and His alone.

But if you are fortunate enough to reach my age, or an age close to mine, you might agree that a small change to our prayers would be quite welcome. Certainly we want to be granted a long life.  But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could add the word “healthy,” because I believe that what we truly yearn for is a “long, healthy life.”

Yet I do sometimes reflect on how I might feel if I reached a very old age and was — thankfully — healthy, but was faced with sadness at the inevitability of family or friends dying before me. Perhaps I would be thinking: “Wow, I am quite old and still healthy, and thank you, Hashem, for not forsaking me in my old age. But still, I feel so alone. When will your Messenger come for me?” An irresolvable problem, I fear. Or as the King of Siam observed in “The King and I,” “’Tis a puzzlement.”

The simple truthfulness of my friend’s grandmother’s second worry is a scenario that I, and most likely many people, have thought of often. The death of a loved one, quite naturally, is a difficult piece of life that we generally cannot escape. If only we could receive a guarantee that such a painful loss would not be compounded by additional challenges; hopefully death will not arrive on the first day of a three-day chag, or when you are away on vacation, or on a cruise, or in the middle of painting your house, or two days before your child is getting married. Scenarios abound, but you get the point.

I actually remember with remarkable clarity the Monday morning when my beloved 54-year-old husband died. It was early, around 8:30 a.m. When my children and I completed the inescapable task of suppressing our grief just long enough to deal with the necessary funeral arrangements, I returned to my home and sat down in Bruno’s big brown leather chair to feel his presence and to collect my thoughts. I literally thanked Bruno for his kindness in dying on a quiet Monday morning. In hindsight, perhaps I actually should have thanked the Almighty for choosing that moment to send his Messenger, despite the fact that it was a moment that would change my life and the lives of my children forever.

In any case, it gave me time to think, somehow to find the calmness that would help me and my children. It allowed time for my out-of-town relatives to fly here if they chose to do so. It was not near a chag, not right before Shabbas, not near any of life’s joyful events. The day was just an ordinary day, until it wasn’t.

Despite Bruno’s medical challenges, he rarely dwelled on the possibility of dying and much preferred focusing on the positive pieces of living. We once had an appointment with a well-known doctor in Boston to discuss the possibility of his becoming a kidney recipient. Unfortunately, he was not a good candidate. 

And the doctor unfortunately lacked any semblance of a compassionate bedside manner. “If you picture yourselves walking on the beach when he is 80 years old, that isn’t going to happen,” he said. “If you picture yourselves walking on the beach when he is 70 years old, that isn’t going to happen. If you picture yourselves walking on the beach when he is 60 years-old, I’m not sure if that could happen.”

Icicles and chutzpah annoyingly mixed inside one incorrigible body. He had no empathy or tact, and I had no shame or self-control. I cried inconsolably in his office and continued to do so as we walked out of the building and sat down in the car. I turned to Bruno before we drove away and asked: “How am I going to live without you?” He smiled at me lovingly, stroked my hair, and replied: “He doesn’t necessarily have all the answers. Don’t worry. Let’s go get some lunch before we drive home.”

Sometimes talking about death entered our conversations wrapped around a sense of humor. As a young couple, Bruno and I, along with three other couples who were good friends, decided that we would always eat together on Shemini Atzeret. At one of those meals, not too long before Bruno died, a bit of dark humor joined the gathering when one friend suggested we go around the table so that each person could share where he or she would like to be buried. Now Bruno struggled with quite serious claustrophobia, so when his turn came, he unhesitatingly responded, rather matter-of-factly, “I absolutely can’t go into a casket! Just sit me up on the couch. That will be fine.”

Everyone laughed. I also laughed, but I needed to know more: “No really, where do you want to be buried, the shul cemetery or the cemetery where your parents are buried?” “Honestly, Tziv,” he insisted. “I won’t bother anyone. Just sit me up on the couch.” I pressed the issue. “Let’s assume that might not be possible. What’s your second choice?” That’s how I knew for certain that he wanted to be buried next to his parents.

And despite the dark abyss that enveloped me the day we buried him, I admit rather sheepishly that when they were lowering the casket into the ground, my grief and flowing tears were mixed with a brief comical thought that if he wasn’t really dead, this claustrophobic guy was definitely going to be seriously agitated.

Yet there were those rare tender moments when he admitted, albeit softly, to life’s truths. Now Bruno knew only two of our 15 grandchildren; Gershon was not quite 3 years old, and Raanan was still a baby when Bruno died. They and their parents lived near us. We were talking about Gershon’s sweetness and the silky softness of his golden hair. And I was both surprised and saddened when Bruno remarked: “I probably won’t be alive to see it, but won’t it be fun for you when Gershon is old enough to walk over, knock on the door, and ask ‘Boubie, can you play with me?’”

The scene as Bruno envisioned it never occurred because my children made aliyah about five years after that conversation. But years later, my son and his wife and three daughters bought a house right on my block on the very same side of the street. When each girl was old enough to walk toward my house on her own on a Shabbas afternoon, she would knock on the door and ask if we could play some games together. I loved that golden moment! And what I treasured most was that Bruno envisioned it so many years earlier, but instead of Gershon at the door, it was other grandchildren, grandchildren he could not have even imagined, who fulfilled his sweet hopeful dream.

As I have aged, my reflections about a person’s time to die have increased, as have my imaginings of what Olam Habba, the World to Come, is like. I know very little about that and I am perfectly content to wait a very long time to be part of the details. But I know the system is set. Hashem’s master plan. We can imagine Olam Habba, but imagine is all we can do. I had a quirky uncle who liked to say that no one gets out of this world alive, confirming the finality of leaving one world and entering another, with clearly no one returning to give us a sense of what lay ahead.

Well, I can still imagine.

Yet with such musings I still recall a poem I learned in college that was published in 1851 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Titled “The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi,” it was part of “The Golden Collection, Longfellow’s long narrative poem inspired by Jewish and Christian sources.

In this poem, people could see the Angel of Death coming for them as he holds his deadly sword in one hand.

But Rabbi Ben Levi tries to trick the Angel of Death by stealing the sword, thus hoping to protect people from being terrified when they see the Angel of Death coming for them. The struggle continues until Hashem ultimately commands the rabbi to give back the sword.

The Rabbi bowed his head in silent prayer;
Then said he to the dreadful Angel, “Swear,
No human eye shall look on it again;
But when thou takest away the souls of men,
Thyself unseen, and with an unseen sword,
Thou wilt perform the bidding of the Lord.”

The imagery made a powerful impression on me. I recall that years after I learned it, my beloved mother-in-law was quite ill and I was following behind her one day as she walked up the steps in my house. She turned to me and unexpectedly commented that of late, she often saw her mother and father talking and calling to her. Not the Angel of Death, just her beloved parents, who had been murdered in the Holocaust. It was, I felt, a foreshadowing of what was soon to come, but my mother-in-law wasn’t fearful, wasn’t bothered, wasn’t afraid. She seemed to welcome seeing her beloved parents. She appeared totally at peace.

Rabbi Meshulam Zusha of Anipoli (1718-1800), popularly known as Reb Zusha, was a deeply loved chasidic master who was known for his  earnestness, humility, and total love for humanity. Chasidic tradition tells us that Reb Zusha would say that when he dies and arrives in heaven, the Almighty will not ask him why he wasn’t more like Moses or King David. Instead, Hashem will ask him, “Zusha, why weren’t you more like Zusha?” Such a profound concept. And a very comforting one. Hashem does not want us to emulate the greatness of others. All He asks is that we try our best to reach our very own highest and most authentic potential.

Philosophically, this speaks to me as a guideline for how all of us should live our lives right up to the very final moment. Maimonides (Rambam) taught that once you have earned the right to enter Olam Habba, your soul enters without any physical needs since the body is left behind. And the soul feels intellectual and spiritual delight by savoring the radiance of the Divine Presence (Shechinah). Such a peaceful yet glorious image. Years down the road when I hopefully stand at the place where Zusha imagined standing in the light of the Shechinah, I pray it will come at a ripe old, healthy age and “in a convenient time” for the family I love so dearly who will mourn my passing while still celebrating the time we shared in this world.