Bear With Me
As I was trying to decide what to speak about this evening, I kept coming back to the subject of grief and loss. We have all struggled with processing our grief in the past year, and in many ways, we are still at the beginning of that process. Grief is not something that goes away. Instead, it is a process we repeat as necessary throughout our lives. Grieving the loss of a person, a friendship, or our sense of safety in the world can become easier over time, but in its early stages, it is intense and sometimes even scary.
I began learning about grief and mourning from a very early age because Judaism gives us a straightforward formula for what to do when we lose someone. There are rules for the first seven days, the first thirty days, and the first eleven months. Then we circle back and commemorate loss by reciting the mourner's kaddish and lighting a yahrzeit candle yearly on the anniversary of a death.
Before starting college, I had already lost several family members including a a grandmother to illness and age. I also lost a handful of friends to suicide. I was no stranger to grief or the process of mourning. While I was in college, I lost my second grandparent, and my father was diagnosed with a terminal degenerative brain disease. Over the next few years, as I graduated and began my career in non-profit, my family and I would care for him as we watched him deteriorate before our eyes. I was 21 when he was diagnosed. I was 24 when he died. Next week, I will mark his yahrzeit and the tenth year since his passing.
There are many lessons I learned from my father's life that I would love to share another time– but tonight, I want to share some of the lessons I gleaned from his death. I learned what I needed in my time of grief, and what I believe all people need when they are experiencing profound loss is human connection.
In her book, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts, Rabbi Sharon Brous calls this mitzvah of providing human connection to “bear with-ness.” To help define what it means to “bear with-ness,” she recalls a Talmudic tale of Rabbi Yochanan, the magical healer. After healing others by sharing his trauma of significant loss, Rabbi Yochanan eventually falls ill and cannot heal himself. It isn’t until a friend visits that Rabbi Yochanan recovers, and his powers for healing others return.
Soon after, someone falls ill, and Rabbi Yochanan sets out to heal them. When he arrives, this person is lying alone in the dark. Thinking he knew exactly what to do, Rabbi Yochanan lifted his sleeve, and like magic, his skin illuminated the room. Rabbi Yochanan was surprised to see that the sick person was curled up, crying alone in the dark, much worse off than he imagined. He immediately asked them what was wrong– but for some reason, he forgot to pause after his question to hear their response. Instead of listening to them, he made a list of assumptions about why they might be unwell.
Eventually, the sick person responded by telling Rabbi Yochanan that he had it all wrong. The reason they were upset was because they were struggling to accept the finalty of death. Once Rabbi Yochanan stopped talking long enough to listen to this friend, he realized he couldn't solve their pain. Instead, his only option was to sit with them and help hold just a tiny portion of the pain and fear they were carrying.
As I was losing my father, I also learned that I needed someone, or lots of people, who could “bear [the pain] with” me. In my early twenties, imagining life without my dad was nearly impossible. When he got sick, I had no idea what to do with myself. My mom and I began attending a support group for families with loved ones who had similar diseases. Meeting that group of people month after month for almost two years was one of the most essential survival mechanisms we discovered.
I also began serving on the board of the Young Leadership Division of my local Jewish Federation, creating community with Jewish people my age, something I did not get out of my college experience. Without knowing why I needed it, I began subconsciously building these networks of friends who would eventually help me bear the weight of losing my dad.
When he died, I lost parts of my future along with his life. He wouldn’t be there when I became a rabbi. He won’t be there to see me get married or become a parent. Parts of the life I imagined died along with him. Yet because I had a community of people to bear the pain with me, other parts of me blossomed that may have never grown without this most devastating loss.
The other profound lesson about grief and “bearing with-ness” from Rabbi Yochanan's story is that we cannot make assumptions or try to fill the space with words when we don’t know what to say. Instead, we must learn to sit in silence and wait for others to share their pain– and to tell us what they need.
In the time that my dad was sick but still alive, I was surprised and disappointed by the people who did not show up. Many of the people who were integral parts of my childhood and my Jewish upbringing were at a loss for words when it came to my dad’s degenerative brain disease. It wasn’t cancer or heart disease, so they didn’t know what to do. While some could bear the pain with us and sit through the challenging hours and days, many just stopped calling and showing up.
For years, the broken relationships from this time in my life devastated me– but eventually, the new community I built helped me bear my pain and move forward– to become a rabbi and, more importantly, someone who “bears with-ness” for others.
Grief and mourning, death and loss– these are parts of life that we cannot escape. This past year has been filled with examples of how our community can move with ease between struggle and celebration.
I read a Facebook post in one of my rabbi groups about a wedding in Israel just before the new year. As the ceremony was about to begin, the sirens sounded, and the wedding party moved quickly into the shelter for safety. While this was not the wedding they had planned, the couple let their joy rise above the pain and fear. They flipped the order and partied in the shelter until it was safe to emerge. Then, under the chuppah and starlight, wrapped together in a tallit, the wedding couple was married.
Grief is woven into human experience as tightly as all the joy we get to live. I have learned that the pain is softer and the joy more radiant when we bear the ups and downs of life alongside one another.
So next time you think the best way to solve your pain is to curl up in a dark room alone, call anyone to come and sit with you. The next time you see someone in need and think you don't know how to help, just sit down and be present. Don’t give unnecessary advice to fill the silence. Just be together. Key to surviving the most difficult parts of this life: is to lean on the people around you who care– to be in community– and to open your heart to accepting love and support as it comes.
Brous, S. (2024). The amen effect: Ancient wisdom to mend our broken hearts and world. Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
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