At Tashlich in the Park on Tuesday, a young woman I had never met approached me and asked if we could remember her mother’s name at the service on Wednesday. “Of course,” I offered and we agreed that she’d write her name on a sheet of paper and hand it to me just before the service began. ( I was holding Collins in my hand when she approached the Bimah this morning.)
Toward the end of the service I realized I didn’t want her to feel too self-conscious about having her mother’s name read as the only name so I invited participants to stand and say the name aloud of those that they were thinking of in that solemn moment at the start of the year. Names rolled out across the room, like early tulip bulbs popping up from underground or the last pop and flash of 4th of July fireworks. A bittersweet surprise to hear the names said–as if they were back with us, only to fade immediately into the sea of silence in the sanctuary–the dark, dark ground where they now live.
In the display of names I heard the name of the young woman’s mother. Though the day before she asked me to read it, she had decided, spontaneously, to say it herself. And too soon after, her mother’s name was awash in the Sea of Names of Others. And we all were moved at the listening, finally rising together to say Kaddish.
Afterward, I saw her.
“So you decided to say your mother’s name,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears.
Again, Billy Collins:
“It’s anyone’s guess when the day will come
when there is nothing left of us
but the bare, solid plinth we once stood uponnow exposed to the open air,
just the wind in the trees and the shadows
of clouds sweeping over its hard marble surface.”It’s hard to expose ourselves to our own mourning, to say aloud what we most fear. But in such moments can be found small promises of redemption.
