Excerpt from Standing on One Leg by Neal Raisman which is available through the author at iduhpres@hotmail.com
The first time we went to Compassionate Friends, a self-help grief group for parents who had lost children, was on Suffolk County on Long Island. A faculty member at the college told me about it. Compassionate Friends had helped his wife and him when their son/stepson died. We needed help, so we went.
We had talked to the rabbi at our temple but he was too into the role of rabbi as platitude to help us. We really did not need a sad face and empty banality. Yeah, we know he will always be in our heart. And yeah, I know about saying Kaddish for him and how that helps keep me in the community. Keep me in the community of congregants so I will remain a member. Keep up my subscription by getting together with other mourners and heavy duty daveners who loved praying twice a day to a God I no longer wanted as a Facebook friend. What I would write on his wall would make the rabbi blush.
Wonder if God does have an asshole to stick himself up? Can he fuck himself as I requested at least daily? If not, what kind of God is he or she anyway?
“God is big enough to accept your anger.” Another rabbinical piece of wisdom.
“When you are no longer angry at him, he will be there to accept you back. You cannot get too angry. He is a com- passionate God.”
Not sure of that any more. Seems too small and hollow like the statement above to even be worth anyone’s time. There cannot be a God big enough to accept my anger at him for letting my son die. But I have to admit I do envy those who do believe that there is a God of compassion who has taken their loved one into his or her heart where they dwell in Heaven forever. It must be nice in some ways to have the certitude. It must be hell to have to deal with the direct loss and have to rejoice that the child died and is in “a better place” when there is no better place than by your side. Not sure which is better. To believe in heaven or just in life and death?
What I know for certain is that Isaac is gone and where he is, I don’t know at all.
Saying Kaddish twice a day as I saw it then was to keep me in the fold because when one hates God for killing his kid, it is likely he may drop out of the whole God stuff and the congregation too. And hey, Judaism is not on the membership upswing right now so need to keep all the members we can get and keep.
“But rabbi, I have no trouble with being Jewish. It’s the God stuff I can’t take anymore.”
“He will be waiting for you when you are ready to return and he will welcome you with open arms.”
Hmmm, wonder if I can fake it and sucker punch the prick? Yeah, prick. I agree with Shalom Auslander, God may exist but he is a real prick. Just ask the Egyptians or the Holocaust victims. Just ask me. I’m drowning in my pain. I am suffocating from the Zyclon B of my grief.
“Why can’t you find a Jewish grief group? I think there is one that meets each week. I can find out where. I believe one of our recent widows went there and thought it helped” the rabbi asked and directed at the same time.
“Well because that group is mainly widows and widowers and losing a child is different. Very different. We need to be with people who understand and feel what we are going through.”
“I am available to you whenever you want. Oh, I need to go say hello to…. Excuse me.”
Like I said… He is a successful rabbi and that means keeping the congregants happy even when the platitudes don’t work. So we went out on a cold, dank, drizzly December night to find this club Compassionate Friends that no one wants to be a member of.
The Compassionate Friends of Brookhaven met once a month on the second Friday of each month in a building at the St. Sylvester Church in the town of Medford! Medford was where Aileen had actually started life but in Massachusetts. Seemed a good sign. But not when we kept driving up and down Rte. 112 looking for Ohio Street.
Finally after twenty minutes of looking and not finding we saw a glow of lights from behind a building blocking our view. We decided to try it. And there it was. St. Sebastian. We were told the meeting place was in a building to the back to we walked through the cold mist searching again.
When we found the building we knew we were late. Should we…? Yeah. We went down the steps into the building basement while some choir group practiced above us. Our path down the brown steps to the basement was escorted by hymns that meant nothing to us.
Opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and there it was. Compassionate Friends or we hoped they would be. About fifty of them seated around long rows of tables formed into a rectangle so everyone could see one another. There was only one chair left. Right up front on the long end of the row that butted up to the perpendicular one where the leaders of the group sat. We hesitated. Not sure if we were ready to go that public with our grief yet.
Then one of the leaders stood up. “Welcome. C’mon in. Here, I’ll get another chair. Sit down and join in, We were really just starting.” He was a rather squarely built guy. Looked like maybe he was a bricklayer or construction worker. But one who could smile. Maybe the only smile in the whole room. A room vibrating with pain, grief and a little bit of calm in one or two spots.
“We’re just starting to go around the table to introduce ourselves. Oh but first, this is the Compassionate Friends. Just want to make sure you are in the right place.”
We nodded a small yes. Two chairs were now empty waiting for us. We sat.
“Okay. Welcome again. I’m sorry you have to be here but you’re among friends.” Most everyone nodded and gave us small, even tiny halfhearted, but genuine smiles that said “we feel your loss. I’m feeling mine now. But this is a safe place to be”. And it felt it. For the first time in a long while, my burning anger seemed to go on to become a smaller pilot light.
The leader began “I’m Sam and this is my wife Maxine. We lost our son to an overdose and miss him every day. Then they went around the tables. Each person told of his or her loss followed by the next sad tale of loss and yet another and another. By the time it came to us and our tale I was exhausted. I could not say anything so I left it for Aileen.
“Our son Isaac was living in Manhattan. One morning he work up not feeling well and by the end of the day he was gone from meningitis. He was twenty-six and had every- thing going for him. A good job. His own apartment and now, now he’s gone and I don’t know how to deal with it.”
“That’s what we are here for” Maxine said. “To try and help through our experiences. Help you learn how to deal with it better.”
We then broke up into two groups. New-comers in one area and old timers who were still dealing with their grief after years of trying to work through it in another. Not a good sign for me at the time. Too many old timers who had not found a new balance in life to be able to do without Compassionate Friends.
Aileen and I went with the new-comers and learned so much that night.
One of the people there gave us an analogy that helped start to place the lifelong journey toward dealing with grief.
She said that after her son died it felt as if her whole world was blocked by one thing. She could see nothing but his death and the world was not there for her. The death of her son was all she saw. And she put her hand flat against her face, covering her eyes.
After a while, a long while, the covering seemed to lift a bit and she moved her hand away from her eyes so she could see just a bit around her hand and its fingers as they had moved out away from her face a bit. “Then finally after a long time, the constant reminder of his death was not the first thing I saw every day.”
She twisted her hand so it was now parallel to her nose and her eyes could see around it. She could not avoid seeing her hand but it no longer blocked the world and life.
”I can now see the world again and it is better. Never perfect but better. I can go on with life. He is still here. Always will be there. That does not go away but it does get better. Believe it or not, it does get better.”
And now I begin to understand the analogy. My hand is no longer blocking the world but the fingers are always visible. They do not go away but I can see around them to live and continue with life.
