Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 62

Kintsugi

Today a giant cardboard box arrived.
Ceramic plates that once were yours,
adorned with hand-drawn faces --

service for six, in theory.
But inside the bubble-wrap,
one plate's in pieces.

You'd shrug and throw it away, but
it's such an obvious metaphor.
I look on eBay but there's no replacement.

There's a space in my china cabinet
where a pair of women's faces should be
in conversation. I try to glue it

though my son rolls his eyes: "Mom, you know
there's no repairing a broken heart."
He's right. It can't be what it used to be.

What can I do but paint broken places
gold? I can't hide my cracks.
All I can do is make them gleam.

 

kintsugi is the Japanese art of adorning broken pottery with gold. I've written about it before. (See also Everything breaks. It's what we do with the pieces that matters at The Wisdom Daily.)

Beauty

At Olmos Beauty Parlor 
I made a dragon from foam curlers

(from big red to small purple)
while you tipped your head back

in the shampoo chair, relaxing
into the scalp massage.

You went platinum blonde
in the sixties. Hair like that

needs maintenance. Not to mention
your nails, which were never bare.

Even the week you died
they were sleek, cream-colored.

Mom, you'd be pleased: in my 40s
I've finally found a stylist.

You'd like her: she knows
everyone in town, she's got panache.

After your funeral, one of my brothers
gave up shaving for 30 days

(I'll bet you can guess which.)
And I went without a haircut

until the door of that first month
was closed behind me. Today

my stylist gave my hair shape
and trimmed my cuticles

and gave one nail a little sparkle
in memory of you. I emerged

with new hands, ready
to build something beautiful

in the world, ready
to hold my head up high.

 

Empty

My phone buzzes: a text
from a sibling, a photo
from the last Shabbat.

A wave of heat passes through,
blood rushing to my face
and hot tears

you were still there
you were alive
it's unbearable again.

How can I make dinner
when you died
when dad's going to die

when someday I will need
to bury all of my siblings
the way we buried you?

The agony passes
but I can feel the hole
where your presence used to be

alongside echoes
of all the empty places
that are to come.

 

Texts from the hearse

When you have a rabbi for a daughter

sometimes you get texts from the hearse.

You must have known what I was doing:

reminding myself that I still had a mother,

bracing against -- well, now: not being able

to reach you to talk about purses or friends

as the cemetery's energy slowly drained.

Dear Mom, I'm wearing the same black suit

I wore to your funeral. As for purses

I'm carrying the one you gave me last year,

bright yellow like the forsythia flowers

that are curled now in hidden potential,

waiting for the time to bloom.

I wish you still had time to bloom.

A beautiful newspaper article

I'm deeply grateful to Kate Abbott and the Berkshire Eagle for this beautiful profile of me and my work, both locally (serving Congregation Beth Israel) and on a larger scale (co-founding Bayit: Your Jewish Home). Here's how it begins:

At the foot of Mount Greylock, a round building with a wall of windows looks out at the the stone path of a labyrinth in the grass. The center of the room is a sanctuary, and a woman stands taking in the light.

She moves with poised self-command and an undercurrent of laughter. Walking in, a neighbor might hear her singing a prayer to a folk melody on her guitar, or sharing and reflecting a friend's quiet triumph, or talking frankly about navigating a time of pain.

On a Saturday morning, she will welcome in the community, wearing a rainbow tallit, a prayer shawl. Rachel Barenblat is the rabbi and spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel, the only synagogue in Northern Berkshire...

Read the whole story here: One of 'America's Most Inspiring Rabbis,' The Berkshire Eagle, March 30, 2019.

Uncomplicated bereavement

At the doctor's office
a questionnaire
about sadness.

I answer honestly, then
backpedal: my mother died.
This is just grief.

Later a friend gives me
the medical billing lingo:
"uncomplicated bereavement."

I almost laugh. Find me
a daughter mourning her mother
without complication.

I think of the photo
on your bathroom mirror
from what you called

the best days:
"when Dad was thin, and we
were rich, and Rachel was easy."

For years I was convinced
you wanted a different daughter,
one who stayed

in Texas, pledged
the right sorority,
married up.

We got better
at being mother
and daughter by the end.

But I hate the fear
you might have thought
I wanted a mom who wasn't you.

 

Four weeks

Dear Mom: it's been four weeks
since we sat in flimsy folding chairs
beside a gaping rectangular hole.
The morning was raw, too cold

for my son's summer-weight suit.
Someone gave him a navy-blue blanket
-- the funeral home? the limo driver? --
and he curled up in it, half in my lap.

At the end, when most people returned
to their cars, he wanted to stay
and keep shoveling earth onto the box.
He brought the blanket home on the plane

and sleeps with it every night.
Maybe it feels like a last hug from you.
I haven't asked: he doesn't want
to talk about the sad things now.

You'd applaud that, but I don't know
how to live without looking back.
At the end of shiva I wrapped myself
in your monogrammed sable stole

and walked around my neighborhood,
blinking like a mole bewildered by sun.
Like my child, still wrapping himself
in the plush blanket from your funeral

carrying you with him from bedroom
to living room sofa and back again.
As I prepare to leave this first month
I'm still learning how to carry you.

 

 

 

Manicure

No haircuts during shloshim: once you died
I called the shop to say postpone my trim.

I don't know the rules on manicures, but
it felt right to leave my nails unkempt.

This winter I came down after you fell
and called the beauty shop for both of us.

You said sure, but when time came to go
just getting yourself dressed had wearied you.

You rallied, pushed your walker to the door
turned down the visor mirror and then frowned

"How can I go to the beauty shop like this?"
I tried to turn it then into a joke:

we go when we don't yet feel beautiful?
When we arrived at Holly's, the bombshell:

the pedicure chairs were up a flight of stairs.
You hadn't gone up stairs in years. You made it

step by awful step and then collapsed
into a chair and closed your eyes. Your calves

were bruised, your tiny ankles swollen tight.
They were so gentle when they washed your feet

I thought despite myself of taharah,
the way we wash the bodies of the dead...

Before you died I got a goodbye manicure
but now my nails are chipped, my cuticles

as ragged as my heart. Soon I'll let
my stylist bring repair, rejoin the world

still feeling strange without you there to see
my nails that look like yours again at last.

 

 

shloshim - literally "thirty," the first 30 days of mourning

taharah - literally "purification," the holy work of washing, blessing, and dressing the bodies of those who have died (see Facing Impermanence, 2005)

Fine

Dear Mom, today I was fine
until my son played piano

and crowed "make a video, send it
to Nonni" and then his face fell.

When hospice began you told us
to stop moping. You'd tell me now

to make hay while the sun shines,
suggest that I hire a sitter

and go out with friends --
just dab a little concealer

so no one can see I've been crying.
Mom, I'm trying. But nothing

feels real without you here to see it
and I just sang my son

the lullaby I sang to you
as you were dying.

 

To the Management

I would like to register a complaint
about grief. Whose stupid idea was this?

Whichever angel was in charge
of giving human beings capacity

to move through sadness and then
feel better -- they screwed up.

Even after four weeks, grief is a wave
that hits sometimes at chest height

and sends salt water up my nose.
To make matters worse, it's

an ocean wave that swamps me
at the grocery store -- I'm not even

at the goddamn beach. Grief is
a pane of glass two feet thick

that crushes me like a pressed flower.
Grief is the same menu over and over.

Grief is banal as a crayon drawing
by someone else's kindergartener.

I would like to exchange this grief
for something that fits me better,

in a more flattering color.
I would like to set it afire, kindled

on a bed of crumpled tissues
and return it to Sender.