162 - Sitting Shiva

The message I had anticipated was there when I logged on Sunday morning: "Sandor is spending Shabbat in Heaven, the perfect peace, the perfect rest. How he struggled, how desperately he wanted to stay with us, but he finally answered God’s call."

My e-mail friend, Carol, sat shiva this week for her husband. We met through her message to my website discussion board last December, asking prayers for Sender ben Chaim Leib, diagnosed two months before with pancreatic cancer. Prayers that he would live to see his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in March, his son’s Confirmation in spring.

Sandor Strauss, shofar blower of Temple Vassar, traveled from milestone to milestone these final months: Rebecca’s Bat Mitzvah, his own 50th birthday, Simon’s birthday and Confirmation, Fathers’ Day, when his family planted a Red Chinese Maple tree together, and a long-awaited trip to Cooperstown, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Carol’s e-mails detail the months and tender moments, the hope and despair and blessing, the final days. Carol wrote me that their children blew shofar at his burial this last Monday. So may he be heralded in Heaven, his memory for a blessing.

One Hundred Sixty-Two

Sitting Shiva

Find a place, my Companion
To rest my heart,
A still place of respite,
Sighs free of shudders.

Find a time, my Companion, to fill
With strong memories
Of bright days. A time
Not omitting, but of kinder recall.

Release me, if briefly,
From the crushing blows
That batter and threaten,
Undoing my days.

Rest me in Your care,
My heart forever changed;
Rest me with Your loyalty,
My heart’s Guide.