Sowing Tears

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon, October 2, 2024
By Rabbi Mark Glickman

Over the years, I, like many of us, have been blessed to have learned from many great teachers– scholars, professors, rabbinic mentors, family role models, and many more. But a couple of months ago, there was a moment when a man who I never would have expected to have become a teacher of mine became one, and he did so in a way I will never forget.

He was a young man – maybe in his late twenties – and I met him through my stepmother. As many of you know, my stepmother, Sharon, died about two months ago, having spent a few years suffering through the ravages of dementia. (At the time of her death, she had been our stepmother for almost 40 years). The challenges Sharon would face became evident shortly after my father’s death in 2020, and her story, or at least some parts of it, will be familiar to many of you who have watched your own loved ones endure this horrible disease: The difficulties she started to have paying the bills and completing her errands; the questions she would repeat over and over again during our telephone conversations; her denial that there was any cause for concern; her continued denial even after receiving her diagnosis; her reluctance to accept help from hired caretakers; her falls; her refusal to move into a facility where she would be safe and properly attended to.

Finally, after it became evident that Sharon really couldn’t remain in her home any longer, we succeeded in finding her a room in a wonderful memory care facility near where she lived in Southern California. We got her there in the nick of time – within a month of her move, she had almost totally lost her ability to speak, and grew increasingly dependent on the staff for her daily care.

And the staff was magnificent. Not only did they competently take care of Sharon’s daily needs, but they did so with unflagging cheer and compassion. They were also good to us, always keeping us in the family aware of any changes or concerns we needed to know about.

My brothers, my sister-in-law, Caron, and I began calling ourselves “Team Sharon.” After she entered the facility, we would call Sharon as often as we could. At first, we called on her cell phone, but soon she could no longer operate her cell, and, to talk to her, we had to call the memory care unit and ask the staff to hold the phone to her ear for what quickly became increasingly one-sided conversations.

Often, the person who picked up the phone in the unit was a caretaker named Eduardo. He was always cheerful and helpful, and even though I hadn’t met him in person, I found myself growing increasingly grateful to him for the vibrant, positive energy that he always seemed to exude as he went about caring for Sharon. “Sharon,” I would hear him say in the background, “it’s Mark on the phone. He’s called to say hello to you….Go ahead, Mark, you can talk now.” At that point, I would proceed to conduct my monologue for a few moments, tell Sharon I loved her, and eventually hang up the phone.

Then, on a Thursday or Friday in late July, we got the call. Sharon had stopped eating and drinking; the legal orders she had put into place during healthier times allowed for no heroic measures to keep her going; they were doing all they could to keep her comfortable. By Sunday, my brother Larry and sister-in-law Lynn had travelled from Chicago to be at her side. They sat with her all week, and Sharon held on, desperately clinging to life as the rest of the family awaited the next phone call. By the following Saturday, Caron and I were at her side, too. Sharon was non-responsive, her breathing was laboured, we sat with her and offered her the only gift we could – the simple gift of our presence beside her.

Through it all, Eduardo continued to be a ray of light, giving Sharon her medication, adjusting her position in bed, and seeing what he could do to make our bedside vigil more comfortable as we sat with Sharon through those difficult days.

We were with her for hours when we first arrived that Saturday, and also for most of the day on Sunday, too. Then, at one point late Sunday afternoon, my brother Larry and I were sitting just outside the room, while Caron and my sister-in-law Lynn sat at Sharon’s bedside. Caron suddenly came out and said, “Guys, you’d better come in.”

Sharon had stopped breathing. We stood beside her in silence for a moment, then we held her hands and said the Shema on her behalf. Then, our silence continued.

Within moments, Eduardo was in the room, calmly and efficiently doing what he needed to do. He noted the time; he adjusted Sharon’s position in bed; he detached some equipment from Sharon’s lifeless body.

And then, suddenly, Eduardo stopped, turned toward the wall, and broke into tears. “I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments, turning back to us and wiping his face dry, “I try to be professional, but I grow so attached to these people sometimes.” It was only then that the rest of us broke into tears, too.

This wonderful man, this paragon of care and compassion, did so much more than his job description demanded of him. He built a connection – a real connection, a personal connection – with my stepmother even as her own connections with the world slowly unravelled. And then, after her long struggle, when her life came to an end, he wept.

How sad it is that he felt the need to apologize to us for his tears; his tears and all that they represented were yet one more invaluable gift that he gave to our family. His tears unlocked our own tears; his tears were a reminder at that moment of the awesome, indescribable value of a human life; his tears, at the moment of my stepmother’s death, reminded us of her invaluable worth as an individual.

We’ve grieved Sharon’s death since then – it was so very sad. And now that we’re several weeks out, in addition to my sadness over Sharon’s death, I’m also left with the unshakable conviction that the world needs more Eduardos. The world needs more people who are willing to weep. In fact, the more closely I look at our world, the more I realize that that world needs more tears.

This is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and in contrast to the revelry of the secular New Year, it is a time for reflection. And so, I invite you tonight to look back on the year that just was. If you’re like most of us, then I’m sure there were plenty of joys – times when you laughed, celebrations, and moments of achievement and deep, deep satisfaction.

But this has been a hard year for many of us in so many ways, and I hope you take this Rosh Hashanah to reflect upon the moments of difficulty, too. Some of you, like me, may have lost dear family members this year or continued to grieve losses of the past. You may have faced strained or broken relationships, suffered professional difficulties and illness, and sometimes just felt a sense of despair or sadness for no apparent reason whatsoever.

For us Jews, this has been one of the most difficult years in living memory. There was that horrible day last fall that saw the brutal murder of so many of our brothers and sisters in Israel, and the horrible if unavoidable war that came in its wake. Even here in Calgary, we have faced broken and strained relationships, blatant antisemitism, anger at our fellow Jews who disagree with us, and feelings of solitude when it feels like so few of our fellow Jews see things the way we do. We feel abandoned; we feel betrayed; we wish things would get better, and we despair when we see that they aren’t.

Suffering is an unavoidable element of the human condition, I suppose, but the knowledge of that fact is of little comfort as we experience it. And experience it we have this year, and we’ve seen people we love to experience it, too.

Through it all, we try to keep a stiff upper lip. We try to persuade those around us that we’re OK, even when we’re not. We try to hold back the tears.

But sometimes we can’t hold them back, because sometimes our feelings won’t let us. Tears are so very human. From the moment we are born and feel that first pang of hunger we shed them. We shed them as children when we skin our knees or grow angry or frustrated. Teenagers shed them at moments of lost love, or rejection, or despair in sorting out the difficult complexities of life. Whatever our age, our tears come when we feel intense emotions of any kind. The depth of love, and the loss of those we cherish; the birth of a child, and watching our children suffer.

Tears are always honest, always genuine expressions of the intensity of our feelings. Good actors can cry on cue, of course, but the way they do it is usually by conjuring up an experience they’ve had that brought out their tears in the first place. Even actors don’t fake tears – they relive powerful offstage experiences and make real tears flow as they act.

We human beings have feelings, and to experience them fully, we need to let ourselves cry more than we do. So often, we try to convey strength to the people around us. We try to convey that we’ve got it all together, that we’re bearing up against life’s challenges, and that we’re fine…just fine. To cry would show us to be vulnerable, to be imperfect…to be human. We don’t owe it to the world to always be sharing our emotions, of course, but I find it sad that we’re so often frightened to be honest about our humanity. I wonder what the world would be like if, either in private or with other people, we became more comfortable shedding tears

Our Jewish tradition has been aware of the importance of crying for many centuries. In fact, the Torah is full of tears – you can almost see them dripping off the scroll as we go through it. Lot and his wife, fleeing their home in the barren, desert city of Sodom, were told not to look back. Lot’s wife turned back anyway, and the text tells us that God turned her into a pillar of salt. Perhaps, suggests poet Merle Feld, she simply became a dried-out tear, forever frozen in place, an eternal expression of sadness and grief.

The Torah tells us that our ancestors were enslaved for many years before God freed them, and what eventually got God’s attention wasn’t anything particular about the bondage itself, but rather that the Israelites finally cried out in their suffering. Only when they cried, did redemption come.

And later, our rabbis taught that after the destruction of the Temple, the gates of prayer were locked. If you wanted to pray to God after that calamity, the Rabbi Elazar teaches in the Talmud, your prayers wouldn’t necessarily reach God. However, even then, Rabbi Elazar teaches, the gates of tears remained open.

If you cry before God, then God hears your prayers.

In fact, over and over again, our classical literature repeats this theme. The gates of tears are always open before God. We try to hold it together; we try to suppress our tears because their intensity and honestness can frighten us. But if we really want to connect with the divine, we need to let them flow. When we cry, a heavenly gate opens, and God welcomes us into the divine embrace.

It was Eduardo who got me thinking about all this, but the more think about it, the more I realize how sad it is that there are so many people who put so much energy into not letting ourselves do what Eduardo did. In fact, sadly, even Eduardo himself felt the need to apologize for his tears that day.

My friends, you don’t need to cry in public, but as we’ve seen this year among others, life inevitably brings pain at times, and holding back your tears can deny the reality of that pain, and ultimately serves no one. Cry alone; share your tears with a friend if you want – if you’d like, you can share them with me; come here, sit in services, and let your tears flow if that will help. I see some of you do that, and when you cry, I think I see it bring you comfort and release. I’m glad that this is a place where you can weep.

The psalmist, I think, said it best in the 126^th Psalm – Shir Hama’alot, a Song of Ascents: “Those who sow in tears,” the psalmist wrote, “will reap in joy.” There are moments of pain that we all encounter. We could hold our tears back, the psalm seems to be telling us. But when we let them flow, they water the ground at our feet, and one day, our tears themselves will allow us to reap the fruit that grows before us. “Those who sow in tears…will reap in joy.” Joy itself, sometimes demands tears in order to sprout forth.

Eduardo gave us such a gift that day. In his tears, we saw his compassion. In his tears, we saw his love for our stepmother. In his tears, we found the ability to shed tears ourselves. May each of us in the year ahead, have joy and satisfaction, and may we each find a way to shed the tears we need to shed to enable us to achieve those great goals.

Shanah Tovah