Letter to My Rav: Between Two Worlds

(A month before his yarzheit.)

Dearest Rabbi,

I have so many words and so many tears, and neither wants to come- to show itself so I would know that I am mourning you. Instead, I get stomach aches and I sleep so very little and I go around feeling down and depressed when all I want to do is wail, if I remembered that it was you that I wail about.

Why can't I remember that it is you? Why can I not bring it to the forefront? Why does it linger in the shadows like an ill-willed ghost, taunting me instead of making its face known, even though I don't know what that face looks like? I think, though, that I am terribly afraid of it- after the numbness and the anger and the tears, where have I really gotten?

I remember all too vividly the things you said and the things you did before you died- the things I wished I'd seen and the things I wish I could change- but most of all- I WANT TO BRING YOU BACK- to haul you up from your grave and put you back among the living where you belong. If my heart were strong enough and big enough, I would will you back; I still want to will you back, and that's what is so painful, what cannot be faced.

Acceptance? What is that? Today I do not accept- I accept nothing. I do not accept that you are gone- will not- I cannot- I don't know why. I am alternately furious and helpless and speechless and forlorn, but nothing will bring you back. I don't even know why I want it so badly.

Perhaps because this life is your rightful place, not death. You, more than others, were life and brought life with you, and healing- everyone, except yourself. See, I still can't find the words to express what I really feel, what I really want to say.

I feel like I'm in this great, not unpleasant abyss- not unpleasant because I don't know I'm there- free falling, and yet I am close to the edge and might clamber my way out, and yet, I can't do it. I try and I try. But you are with me there, in that great black hole, and I can't drag you out of it, no matter what I do. So I stay with you- I'm crazy- better to be with you, I guess, than totally without you.

Rabbi, why did you do it? What could be so dire? Why why why? Why did you leave us all alone while you struggled to live and to die? Why did you leave us all out? See, these are not the right questions, either.

Can I tell you I loved you? Can I tell you how much you meant to me? Can I tell you what you gave me?

But then I think, what did I give you- it all seems so one-sided. If I had died, you would have gone on well without me. But I, well, it's hard, cause you were like a father to me and I can't tell you how much I bless you for that!!!!! To know true love at last, a father's love, and kindness and understanding, and to have someone there for me, someone who never let me down- who was everything I could of dream of as a father and a human being. No, you weren't perfect, but you were loving- such treasure. And I guess what I feel, most of all, is that I have lost treasure so great, so irreplaceable- I was so lucky and blessed to know you- I don't have the words.

My love screams in that abyss as well as the loss- if I could only shout you out.

Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou...... that's all I know.

Remembering LARabbi™

A month before his yarzheit (anniversary of death).

I'm carrying this giant load- one I do not know I have- but my guts know.

I carry this around speechless, with no words to even begin to describe a kind of soundless scream that reverberates deep inside of me.

Rabbi is dead yet I remember him as if he were alive, and here, in the next room, or a phone call away- all his goodness, all his graciousness is mixed up with the horror of these Days of Awe last year. The burning fires, I remember the burning fires in the Chatsworth Hills, so close by we could see them, and I remember him standing beside me, talking about "the end of days". That will always be burned in memory, seared for as long as I live, and the fact that I can't turn back the clock and do things differently.

The Days of Awe- always the happiest, and most profound holy days for me, and deepest ordinary days- they will have the added tenor of days of, not only triumph and repentance and joy, but days of horror, the days of death that go with the Book of Life- where some are written in, and others stay outside of it.

I wish I knew what to say to you, Rabbi, but I haven't any words. I just have that silent scream inside me that seems to go on forever. I look at your photo, and the radiance and extreme goodness that shines from your smile, and I don't know where it all went wrong- except perhaps that we mistook you for an angel, when you were only blessedly human.

Well, you were an angel to me who never knew many angels in life, and never one so radiant. Who made me laugh and made Judaism fun, and bright, and shining. You were also my father, the one I never had, who cared and was solicitous and went way out of his way to look out for me; someone who also took great pleasure in my triumphs and little victories, and who could see me as people only dream to be seen.

Somewhere inside, where you can't see, my mourning wears me out, and turns me old and withered... my life seems blighted, dimmed...

I sit here, trying to find words to say what cannot be spoken- no more than Isaac could speak on the altar, no more than you could speak on the day of judgment.

I will never understand why G-d brought such an incandescent soul into the world, only to stand by and watch it burn out.