January 15, 2025 • 46 mins
Grief can be an overwhelming journey, but the enduring connections we hold with our loved ones can provide us with profound understanding and healing. Join us for a deeply moving conversation with Mrs. Elissa Felder, who shares the intimate story of her infant son Sam's passing 35 years ago. Her poignant recount of the brief yet impactful time with Sam, who faced severe medical challenges, reveals how these deep bonds transcend time and grief. Elissa insights into maintaining this connection with Sam illuminate the eternal nature of love and loss.
We also explore the spiritual dimensions of life and death, focusing on the concept of the neshama, or soul, and its interplay with the physical body. Using metaphors like the glass blower, we delve into how the divine breath infuses us with life and purpose. Our conversation touches on traditional practices surrounding death, such as the significance of closing the eyes and mouth, which underscore the sacred nature of the body's journey. By examining these spiritual insights, we are reminded of the urgency to live life fully, cherishing the vessels that carry our souls.
Finally, Elissa shares her personal path to healing and the lessons she learned from the deaths of her son and her mother. Through therapy and storytelling, she has found ways to keep their memories alive while supporting others on their grief journeys. Her reflections on finding meaning in suffering and the role divine intervention played in her experiences offer a source of comfort and strength to listeners who may be grappling with their own losses. Tune in to discover how these sacred passages from life to death can foster resilience and compassion.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Relief from Grief podcast, hosted by
Mrs Miriam Rebiet and brought toyou by Mayrim.
Mayrim is an organizationdedicated to supporting families
who have experienced the lossof a child.
It was founded by EloiNishmat's, nechama Liba and
Miriam Holman.
Despite her illness, miriamdevoted herself to addressing
(00:22):
the needs of parents andsiblings grappling with the
immense pain of losing a child.
She felt this loss deeply,having experienced it firsthand
when her older sister, nechamaLiba, passed away.
Mehrim continues to uplift andexpand on the work Miriam began,
a mission carried forward byher parents with great
dedication.
(00:43):
If you have any questions orcomments for the speaker, or if
you'd like to suggest a guestfor the podcast, please email us
at relieffromgriefatmayrimorg.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Everyone, thank you so much for joining me here on
the Relief from Grief by Mayrimpodcast.
So today we have Mrs AlyssaFelder and I'm very, very
excited because she's like Idon't even know how to describe
you.
You're just so warm and easy totalk to.
But let me just introduce youproperly.
Alyssa is the coordinator ofcourse communities of practice
(01:15):
and in this role she facilitatesconnections, conversations and
developments of all the corecommunities.
She also actively managescourse community of practice for
women engaged with traditionalChavikadisha, and I find this
fascinating that to date it'struly an international community
of hundreds of women from allover the US and Canada and the
UK and France and Sweden andEngland and France and Italy and
(01:38):
Israel and Chile and Panama andMexico and South Africa and
even Australia I know that'sincredible to me and the mission
of the community is to shareexperiences, give encouragement,
network and to help to developand support each other.
So thank you so so much.
Oh wait, and I forgot to mentionthat she recently wrote this
book.
I'm holding it in my hand.
It's called From One Life tothe Next the Sacred Passage
(01:59):
After Death, and I'm holding itup for everyone to see.
And I'm holding up for everyoneto see, even though no one
could see because it's onlyaudio, but it's very.
I found the book very, veryphenomenal.
So thank you so so much forcoming on.
Thank you, thank you so muchfor having me.
So I guess we could start withthe beginning.
Let's talk about when yourlittle baby boy was Lifter.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yep.
So I was newly married I'mBritish, in case you don't know
the accent, and I was living inLondon.
I met my American husband inLondon and we got married and we
moved to Washington DC and afew years into our marriage, we
were blessed with a little babywho we called Sam, named Sam,
(02:40):
and he was born with a host ofmedical issues, none of which we
thought would belife-threatening.
We really thought whatever Samhas, we'll just fix it and he'll
be just great and he'll grow upand he'll be this wonderful
person and he'll make us into afamily, made me into a mother,
made my husband into a father.
It was like the beginning ofour journey of parenthood.
(03:02):
However, he wasn't thriving, hewasn't growing as he should, and
this was already now close to35 years ago, and at the time
they couldn't really diagnosewhat was happening.
The biggest issue was his heart, and so he went in for open
heart surgery at the end ofOctober of 1989.
(03:23):
And he was in surgery for many,many, many, many hours.
The doctors kept coming out andtelling us they were trying
this and they were trying that,and then at some point, I looked
at this poor doctor, this poorsurgeon, who's drawing pictures
of Sam's heart, giving us hope,perhaps, that he was going to be
able to do something.
And I looked at this poor manand I said is Sam still alive?
(03:43):
I mean, it didn't occur to methat Sam wouldn't be alive, but
somehow I had this thought toask him.
And he didn't look up and itwas so obvious in his body
language that Sam had died onthe operating table.
And I had never experienced adeath so traumatically like my
(04:03):
grandparents had died.
They were old people, but tohave a baby that you had vested
so much love and hope and desireand dreams into, and then the
finality of losing him was sobig that my world completely
changed from that moment on.
So Sam lasted, he lived in theworld for four and a half months
(04:26):
and he thrived as best as hecould, and he was a sweet little
baby that we got to care forand take care of and we really
feel like he was a gift that Godgave us.
And as much as God gives, godalso takes.
And God took our little Sam inwhat we thought was before his
time, but it was his time, andthe journey since then, which is
(04:49):
now 35 years, has been one ofreally figuring out how to live
and thrive and still hold and beattached to this little baby
that only lived in this worldfor a few months.
Lived in this world for a fewmonths.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
It's really amazing because, like what's amazing,
what I'm saying is amazing ishow our life experiences, they
become so part of us forever.
Some could say, okay, it's 35years ago and the baby was four
months old, like you probablyalmost forgot that you even had
him, and yet your love is sodeep and your connection is
still so real that it's amazinghow our experiences just stay
(05:26):
with us forever.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Right, I mean, I think that I believe perhaps
this is a deeply I really deeplyfeel that there was.
We have soul connections withour family members and
especially your children, one'schildren.
You're intertwined with on asoul, on a cellular level.
That I totally understand.
(05:48):
Why people who havemiscarriages not miscarriages,
people who lose pregnancies itcan be very devastating to them
because it's a part of them.
Your children, whether they'rebiological or they're not
biological, they're a part ofyou and when they come and go so
quickly it shakes your wholeworld, it pulls the whole rug
out from under you and you haveto learn how to walk again.
Right, right.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So you wrote in the book how eventually you came to
appreciate that you had a partin helping Sam, in helping his
Neshama, really complete hisjourney.
Yeah, I found it veryfascinating because I don't know
different parts.
One question that came up forme was like how long did it take
for you to feel that?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, I don't know.
I think it's a process.
They say that grief is like asnowflake.
No, two snowflakes are alike.
So everybody has their ownexperience of grief, and where
you are when you start the griefjourney and where you end up is
uniquely yours.
I didn't come into this deathexperience with much
(06:48):
understanding any understandingactually of what Jewish
teachings are around this topic.
So I didn't have a beliefsystem, I didn't have something
to draw on, and I had to learnthat step by step.
So in the beginning, if you askme personally, my story in the
beginning it was grief that wasso overwhelming.
It wasn't about trying tounderstand why bad things happen
(07:09):
to good people.
It wasn't that.
It was just trying to figureout how to live, how to get out
of bed in the morning, how toreframe a life without Sam in it
, because my whole trajectorygoing forward was with Sam and
then all of a sudden it wasn't.
I had pumped milk for him todrink, post-surgery, post-op.
So I felt a mess, physically aswell as emotionally.
(07:31):
And so the sort of moreexistential questions about what
happens when you die and all ofthose things.
I had them but I couldn'tabsorb them.
So you know, I remembersomebody trying to explain to us
why you know why good peoplesuffer, and it's like in one ear
out the other, like it didn'tresonate, it didn't flick with
me.
However, I did want to knowwhere Sam had gone.
Like where was he?
(07:51):
Did he need me anymore?
Was he going to be taken careof?
Was God taking care of him?
Like where was he?
I wanted to know that and Ialso wanted to try to understand
.
Like then, what it makes youquestion is like why am I even
here in the first place?
What is life all about?
If a four and a half month oldbaby come and go, then what does
that say about our lives?
What's the purpose of our lives?
What are we here to achieve?
(08:12):
Given that we are here toachieve something right?
So it kind of makes youquestion your own life or just
life in general.
Does my life matter?
Did Sam's life matter?
And so, in the bigger picture,as I have now, 35 years later, I
can say Sam was destined tolive for four and a half months.
(08:32):
That was his allotted time inthis life and that he had a job
to do.
Whatever that job was, I don'teven know what that job is.
I can put my own feelings andthoughts into it.
I don't know for sure.
Obviously, I think that he wasan old soul that had to come
into the world to completesomething, some tikkun, some
rectification that he had tobring into the world, and that
we were chosen.
(08:53):
There's a Kabbalistic teachingthat the soul, before it's born,
chooses its parents, thatthat's the family that it's
going to be born into and itbuys into that experience that
these are the people.
So Sam quote chose us and wehelped him in his journey.
And I look back and I feel like, was I as successful as a
(09:16):
mother?
I didn't save him from deathand that was a big deal because,
like, if I'm a good mother, Ishouldn't have died.
So I had to get over that.
So that's out of my control andwhat is in my control is the
kind of life that he had.
Even for that four and a halfmonths, you know, he had a life
in our home, in our care.
I don't think I left him with ababysitter ever.
(09:36):
I took him everywhere with meand I took him to.
I took him to Shawl and I tookhim to Shurim that I went to and
I wanted him to be surroundedby all the good that's in the
world Love and loving people,and Torah and Shabbos, and I
mean, you know he didn't livethat long.
He lived, he lived, he livedthrough all the like.
(10:06):
So he was born in June and hedied in October.
So he got some of the year Well, I'm the mom and everything.
He got all that.
He got all the suckers, andthen it was his time to leave.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Look back also and say that obviously we don't
really know what his half kidwas, but you could say that
because of him, this is how Ichanged and that's a credit to
his neshama.
Yes, maybe that's what aneshama needed.
It needed to make you be morecareful with that.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I don't know, I don't know, I actually have another.
I have another, anothersomething I hold on to which is
that, yes, yes, he did come inthe world to change the people
around him, for sure, and I'mI'm very committed to making him
continue to live on through myteachings and through how I am
in the world, for sure, and Ialso think that his soul had
(10:51):
something to complete, whetherhe was a Gilgul, whether he had
come back to complete something.
Maybe he needed a kosher burial, maybe he needed to drink
kosher milk for the length ofhis life, maybe he needed to
experience whatever it is thathe also, as a baby, as a pure
neshama in a little body, neededto experience, needed some kind
(11:11):
of tikkun that perhaps I and myhusband and all the people
around him gave him thatopportunity to finish his soul
journey.
So I think it's both.
I think he expected the worldand we're all rippling off with
that and he had something tocomplete in this world.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I'm like a little bit morbid sometimes, you know so.
Like whenever I have a baby,like after, like I don't know if
it takes three days or, likeyou know, seven days, but I'll
look at it.
I'll be like a week and a halfago.
I didn't even know you.
If something would happen toyou today, I would never be able
to go on Like it's amazing howyou said before just how
connected we are to our childrenand it's just everyone should
(11:52):
just always live.
I guess I wanted to ask youalso about some of the questions
.
I know that you said that youeventually had and that you
wrote about in your book, but Ithink people really struggle
with like the Neshama and thethree parrots, and which parrot
is down here and which parrot isnot down here, and all that
type of stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of differing
opinions in our tradition.
So again, just to disclaim thatwhatever I learned that I found
to be helpful to me fromAmasora is what I'm sharing, and
it's not the only take.
So there are differentunderstandings of what a neshama
is and what it is here toachieve, and et cetera, et
(12:32):
cetera.
So I'm really only sharing thethings that I found to be
helpful.
So the glass blower metaphor isa very commonly used one for
who we are in life.
So we have a physical body thatis the vessel, that is the
container that holds the holyneshama, the shamanashima breath
.
It's a breath that comes fromGod.
So if you take the glass blowermashal, that God, so to speak,
(12:58):
is the glass blower and he'sblowing the breath through this
tube into the vessel, into theglass at the end of the tube,
and the neshama is the higheraspects, or higher aspects even
than the neshama.
Then there's the ruath, whichis sort of the breath that then
rests in the nefesh, which isthe life force that's within the
(13:20):
physical body that we are allblessed with.
So when we're alive, we are acombination of physical,
tangible, organic, dust-likematter, body with a holy neshama
that is constantly being blowninto us.
So go another step and say thatthe people who are alive, all
(13:44):
of us today, the soul comes outthrough our eyes, through our
eyes, through our eyes, likethat's the shine, that's what we
see.
When you look into these eyes,you're seeing the neshamah of
the person, you're seeing theinside.
The Kabbalists say that handsand your eyes are the ways in
which you can access and you caninteract with the soul of the
(14:08):
person.
So when we're alive, that'swhat's shining.
We have this like in Aramaic,in Aramaic so I'm very involved
in Chafikadish and we'll get tothat but the Tahara, the
purification process that we gothrough, tahara means shining
light and what we're doing iswe're somehow cleansing,
(14:28):
purifying the body and the soul.
That's what we're doing.
So when a body loses its soul,meaning that God is no longer
blowing the soul into us,there's nothing coming from the
inside out.
There's no emanation of bright,shining light that is your
neshama coming out of your eyes,out of your hands, out of your
body.
It's not animating you anymoreand it's not cleansing you
(14:50):
anymore.
You have, so to speak, like avacuum of where that neshama
resided in your composite, whichis why we shut the eyes of the
dead right, there's nothingcoming out through the eyes
anymore.
It's a, so to speak, anemptying out and leaving behind
a shell that needs to go throughits purification process, as
(15:12):
does the soul that we have livedwith and schmutzed up
throughout our life.
It has to go through itsprocess until the end of days
where tifkas ha-mesim they'llcome back together as a purified
body and soul together, afterYom HaShem HaShiach in Oram Abba
, so that you know to see lifeas a piece of the whole
trajectory of the soul coming in, living a life in a body,
(15:35):
exiting at death, going into thehigher realms to be purified
and then to reconstitute it.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So how do you ever do any of eras if you're so
involved?
Even when I was reading yourbook, I was like, oh my gosh,
I'm becoming perfect.
Today, as of today, I'm perfect.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
I don't plan to so when you're perfect.
None of us are perfect.
Nobody is perfect, right?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
But when you're so deep in, you're probably living
with such a more like it'salways before you, like you're
probably always so aware of what, like I don't know you.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Just I think it's important to.
I think that's why I'm on thismission to talk about death, and
you're on a mission to talkabout death.
We're on a mission to talkabout death because it informs
our life.
Right, if we're, if we areaware of what life is, then
perhaps we can be more aware ofwhat life is.
And in that awareness ofknowing what life is, it takes
on a greater sense of maybeurgency or importance or
something.
It matters, like it matters,everything matters, and that
(16:29):
doesn't mean that we're perfectand it means that we mess up,
and it means that we don't doall the things and we're human
and we have different you knowYateses that take us in
different directions and allthose things.
And where are you heading?
Where are you heading and whatare you thinking about?
You're thinking about.
You're thinking about who youare in the world and what you're
(16:50):
here to do, and what God wantsof you Doesn't mean that you
live up to it, but it means youhave a sense of it, or perhaps a
little bit more.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Right.
So when you're so involved inthe work that you do that, it's
so much easier to really keepthat vision constantly before
you.
Yes, and yeah, I mean, we'reall regular people, mere mortals
and regular people.
As my friend was saying, someare better than others, but OK.
So I wanted to talk about theChabot Kaddish and how you got
to be part of it.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
But maybe we could cover this when we get up to it,
because when you talked aboutclosing the eyes and the n them
off, I know that you said alsowe close the mouth.
So I was just wondering, likewhy that?
It's all the apertures, it'sall the things, all the places
which allow internal, externalcommunication.
So all the orifices should beclosed.
So what do you do with the noseand ears?
We don't, but it is eyes andmouth, I don't know.
I mean it probably should beears.
Part of it also is his verybeautiful teaching.
Very beautiful teaching as theHevokadisha wash our body right.
(17:53):
So our body is B'tzelem Elohim.
Our body has the capacity tomodel and emulate God and
emulate God, and so each bodypart has a huge potential to it
right and you could say well, soyour eyes will only see good
and your mouth will only speakgood and your ears will only
(18:14):
hear good and your hands willonly do chesed and your legs
will run all the things rightthat your body can bring you to
do.
When we in the Hevogadisha arewashing the body before the
Tahara, before the mikvah,before that immersion, there's a
cleansing of each body part andas we wash each body part.
There's a pasuk from ShirHaShirim that relates to that
(18:38):
body part.
That we say, and our intentionon the Hever Gadisha is to
elevate the body part to themaximum, to the highest
potential that it had.
Knowing that nobody actuallyreached that potential, nobody,
was all everything positivelygood.
Nobody is like.
Most people, I would say, rightAt some point use their eyes in
(19:09):
the wrong way or use theirmouths in the wrong way or
whatever.
But we, you know, on NechevHaKadisha, have the intention
and the kavanah that the personin our care reach that highest
level.
Wow.
So it's a beautiful and it's avery comforting experience to
know about, especially in theoutside world, the non-from
world, where American Jews, forsure, are choosing cremation.
(19:30):
They have no understanding ofthe beauty and the power and the
spiritual aspects of what thepreparation for burial is and
what burial is and why we needto be buried.
So all of these pieces that theHevra Kadisha do are to elevate
and purify and cleanse in themost loving and the most
dignified and the most Kabedicway.
And so why wouldn't you choosethat?
(19:52):
It seems like a bit of ano-brainer, but even to know,
like maybe we all, there's noquestion, we're going to choose
Hevra, kadisha and choose burial.
But even to know, like maybe weall there's no question we're
going to choose Khavikadisha andchoose burial but even to know,
like, how comforting andbeautiful it can be to know
what's happened to your lovedone, which is what happened when
Sam died.
So when Sam died again I'm 26years old, I don't know anything
about Khavikadisha and myfriends came to me one
particular friend and she saidthat she had brought together a
(20:16):
number of women from ourcommunity and that they had
prepared Sam for burial.
Again, I had no idea what shewas talking about.
I didn't know anything about itand all of a sudden, I want to
know everything about it.
If your child goes on holidaysomewhere or goes on vacation
somewhere, you want to know arethey going to be taken care of?
Are they going to have the foodthat they need?
Are they going to have niceaccommodations?
(20:38):
Who took care of them?
Are you with good people?
Like you want to know all thesethings.
So, as much as I wanted to knowwhat happened to Sam, the
essence of Sam, the soul of Samin the world of souls, I also
wanted to know, like, who tookcare of his body before he was
buried, like I didn't even thinkabout it till she came and said
you know, we did this.
And I said what did you do?
Could you please tell me?
(21:00):
I really want to know, becauseI really want that comfort that
comes from knowing that you tookcare of my baby.
You knew him in life, thatplayed with him, that tickled
him, that, all the things youdid with him.
I don't even remember all thedifferent things he wasn't that
old and he wasn't thatinteractive but people who knew
him in life were people who tookcare of him and did.
And I'm telling you I'm socomforted to that, 35 years
later, I still love those peoplewith an intensity because I was
(21:23):
so open, wounded, my heart wasshattered.
And here's people saying we'retaking care of you and we're
taking care of your baby and welove you and we love your baby.
And it's like thank you, thankyou so much, thank you so much,
thank you so much, like beyondmy capacity to thank them, like
how do you even know to do that?
And then, wanting to be that, Iwant to be that, I can do that.
(21:47):
I'm a nurse by training.
I can do Hebra, kedisha andI've had the opportunity to wash
friends and friends anddaughters of friends and my own
granddaughter I washed.
So you know it's a beautifulthing and it holds the two many
different emotions in your heartat the same time.
You can hold the grief and thesadness and the shattered parts
(22:11):
of you along with.
This is a beautiful thing andthere's meaning in this, and if
there's meaning in this thenit's good and you can hold those
together.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Which part?
The death or the doing, theShabbat.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Kaddish stuff, all of it.
You can hold all of it, becausepeople will say to me how did
you wash that 26-year-old thatjust died in a car accident in
Mexico?
How do you do that?
And you do it because you canand because you want to, because
you're bringing love.
And you're bringing love andyou're bringing the shekhinah.
That's another amazing teaching.
The living are considered emes.
(22:44):
I know people say the chevekazisha chesed shal emes Another
way to understand that term andthis comes from a Kabbalistic
text called the Ma'avah Yabokthat was written in 1626,
kabbalist in Italy, and thisbook, the Ma'avaiyya Bok, is the
source for all of the minhagimof Ashkenazi, hevra, kedisha.
(23:07):
So in the Ma'avaiyya Bok hesays that MS, if you look at the
letters of MS, right, it'sAleph Mem Taf, which is an Aleph
, divine oneness with a mace.
So what are we?
We're a mace with an aleph.
We have this godly soul and aphysical body.
(23:29):
We who are living can be seenas emes.
So any chesed we do is chesedshal emes because it's chesed,
done by the emes is chesed shalemes because it's emes done,
it's chesed, done by the emes.
When we go into the, when we gointo the tahara room to take
care of a sister, mother,daughter, whoever they are.
When we walk into that room,says the Maravai Yabob, we bring
(23:52):
the shekhinah with us.
The shekhinah comes with us.
When we do bichro holim, theshekhinah comes with us.
When we do mitzvot, we bringthe Shekhinah along with us.
So we're also having theShekhinah be there to escort
this neshama on its journey.
There's something about that.
And you walk into this spacewhere there's your fellow Jewess
(24:15):
on the table and the livingwalking in, and there's a
silence that kind of descendsbecause you're just focused on
this and the gravitas of whatyou're doing, that you somehow
are in this space where you getto be the one to help this
person and you'll bring theShekhinah with you and you're
(24:36):
very intent on what you're doingand you're very focused on what
you're doing and it's all forher, aaliyah, it's all for her,
and you're going to do the bestjob you can possibly do and
you're going to center off, withall the kavanahs and all the as
much as you can, all theintentions that in the end God
(24:57):
brings the cleansing and in theend, God brings the cleansing.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Does it feel to you at all like intrusive when
you're doing someone like yourdaughter's good friend or your
good friend's daughter?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah.
Is it intrusive?
No, it's not intrusive.
It's.
Look people watch Sam.
I felt so grateful to them.
This is I want Sam to have akosher burialher burial.
He didn't know what a kosherburial, all the things that
entails till now, so that theydid that and that they took care
(25:28):
of him and that he had a kosherburial.
As the mother, I want to makesure he has a kosher burial and
he did so.
Now, if I can help somebodyelse have a kosher burial.
And this young woman and I wroteabout it in the book this young
woman who was killed in Mexico.
She came to Rhode Island whereI live.
She came after a few daysbecause it was hard to get her
body out of Mexico.
(25:48):
And when she was in and shearrived into Rhode Island, we
were told you know, maybebecause she'd been, you know,
she had died a few days earlier,maybe it wouldn't be so easy to
take care of her body.
And we walked into that roomsaying we're going to do the
best we can.
And the fact is we did abeautiful Tahara, beautiful
Tahara and Danielle.
With permission from herparents, I'm using her name.
(26:09):
Danielle was beautiful and wetook care of her.
It's such an honor to be there.
And it does say again in theMarvaya book that when there are
people who knew the Nifteras inthe Marvaya book, that when
there are people who knew theNiftaras in the room, your
kavana is heightened orsomething.
There's something a littledifferent.
It just is the way it is whenyou know the person or they
(26:29):
related to you in some way.
Or maybe it shouldn't be thatway, but I think the reality of
the situation is, I mean, wetreat everybody the same, but
maybe emotionally there's adifferent, there's something in
addition.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
So when you just said it was a beautiful Tahara, your
whole body showed how youclosed your eyes, like your
whole body showed the intensityof how you felt that it was so
beautiful.
So I'm curious what's thedifference between a more
beautiful one and a lessbeautiful one?
I won't say beautiful or notbeautiful.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, I don't know, I can't really answer that
question.
I mean, everything we do is thesame.
I think that a beautiful Tahara, everybody should get it.
Everybody should be so good tohave a beautiful Tahara.
What is a beautiful Tahara?
A beautiful Tahara is wherethere's as little, as little
like the body is treated withthe utmost, utmost, utmost
(27:19):
respect and dignity and love.
If somebody has been in a caraccident which Danielle was in a
car accident so a body ofsomebody in a car accident could
have a lot of damage to it,which involves a different kind
of involvement of the HefraKedisha, because we have to be
(27:40):
careful about blood and all thedifferent things.
So for Danielle, even thoughshe had been in a car accident,
her body didn't seem to be asdamaged as we were anticipating
it would be, and so the Taharathat we were able to provide for
her was as if she hadn't beenin a car accident.
So I think maybe that's what Iwas trying to say, that it was
(28:02):
that it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Do you feel sometimes the Shekhinah like more than
other times?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
I wish I could say yes, I don't know what I'm
feeling.
Are you feeling the Shekhinah?
Are you feeling the Neshama ofthe Nifteris?
Because that's also in the room.
Right, we have an understanding.
It says in the Gemara that thesoul of the nifter is aware of
its body until burial, until thelid is put on.
You know to move into the.
(28:33):
You know, move up, move on up.
There's a mixture of going onhere and we are aware when we on
the Fevik Disha are in the room, the first thing we do is ask
for forgiveness.
We haven't even touched you andwe're asking for the person,
and we're asking for forgivenessfor anything we may have done
that dishonors you or disgracesyou.
Who are we talking to?
We're talking to the Neshama.
(28:54):
We know you're here and we'regoing to do the best job we can,
and if we do something thatisn't coveted, we're really
sorry and we come with the bestof intentions.
So that's the beginning and ourgoal is to move you from a
place of being soiled, whateverthat means, to a place of purity
.
That's our goal.
(29:17):
We're walking in and we declareit.
That's what we are here to do,and then, when we use the water
to do the Tahara.
When we've done that, we sayTahorahi, tahorahi, tahorahi,
kosha, kosha, kosha you are.
Now God brings about cleansingand purification and we have
done our part and now God willdo the rest and you will be
purified.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And then you like go home and eat lunch.
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You kind of take it with you and it's supposed to
take it with you.
You're never supposed to beused to seeing a dead body ever.
It should never not affect you.
And there's a hope, desire,intention, something that the
Hever Kedesh should be in astate of teshuvah, always.
Again, none of us are perfect,but I'm alive, we're all alive,
(29:58):
baruch Hashem.
We're all alive today.
Why am I alive?
What do I have to do?
What can I do today?
Little things, big things,whatever it is, there's a reason
why we're here and whateverthat is, and it might be going
home and cooking for your family, and it might be picking up the
phone and calling your friend,and it might be making, having a
nap, so you have more energyfor other people at another time
(30:19):
or more energy for yourself.
You know, it's not all the bigthings.
This is a big thing, but everylittle thing is a big thing.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right, because when we spoke a few days ago and I
said to you something like Idon't know what it is, I don't
want to know, I can't know, andI was like, but but one second,
I always want to know everything.
So I was like confused and Iwas thinking about it and I
realized that the whole thing Idon't know.
The physical part, I want toknow everything spiritual.
Tell me everything about theNeshama, from the second it
leaves the body until I don'tknow forever.
But the physical part, likewhat happens until burial, I
(30:49):
don't know.
It's so scary to me which isinteresting.
Why?
Yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
I mean, I think that the body is spiritual.
After a lifetime, four months,whatever it is, however long
that body and soul have been incombination and coupled with
each other, there is aspirituality that the body has
absorbed.
Like I say for Torah, it'sabsorbed the words of Torah.
(31:16):
We don't throw that out, wedon't put it in the trash.
It's holy, right, right.
We bury it.
Same with our bodies.
Our bodies have acquiredholiness.
They're not our bodies.
We know that we can't tattooourselves.
We're not supposed to killourselves.
You know it's not really ours,it's a gift that we have, and
(31:44):
then the body is considered likea Sefer Torah, and outside of
Israel we put the Sefer Torah,we put the body, the mace, into
an Aaron.
We don't call the coffin acoffin or a casket, we call it
an Aaron.
We put Sefer Torahs in an Aaron.
We're putting a holy shell ofthe body into the Aaron.
And then we have variousPesukim that we say that relate
(32:06):
to the Mishkan, and when theMishkan moved and you couldn't
look at the holy Kehlem of theMishkan, you couldn't look at
them, they had to be wrapped upout of you.
The same thing.
So I would even suggest thatthere might be a way to
understand our physicality assomething that over our
(32:26):
lifetimes again, however longthey've been, have acquired an
aspect of spirituality to them,that there's this intermingling
of physical and spiritual.
That happens.
So we elevate a physical bodyinto a spiritual garment.
It's a garment and it's goingto come back.
You want to be buried.
(32:47):
So, like a seed goes into theground and the seed
disintegrates.
And then what?
Then you wait till the righttime, when it sprouts and
becomes a tree or whatever.
It's going to become right.
So we bury our bodies.
It has to go into the groundand become one with the ground,
awaiting that time, because, Imay say, where the body and soul
(33:09):
, both purified, will rejoin forall eternity.
Wow.
So what is our goal in thisworld?
Our goal in this world is, onsome level, amongst other things
, to make the physical morespiritual, right?
(33:30):
So?
So I'm going to challenge you onyour.
There's spiritual and thenthere's physical.
Perhaps there's a lot ofintermingling of the two,
especially when it talks aboutour bodies.
Yeah, and we're doing physicalthings all the time, right,
we're doing all the physicalthings that we do in our
lifetime to exist.
(33:51):
We're doing physical things,but we're trying to elevate them
into a spiritual realm.
We eat certain foods and we saycertain things and we pray, and
all the things that we do.
We eat certain foods and we saycertain things and we pray, and
all the things that we do.
So I think that it's a lifetimeof trying to work on how to see
spiritual and physical, forsure, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
It's definitely a timer more than I like, right
For sure.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
For sure.
But these conversations aboutdeath, I think, are so not
necessarily pervasive, right, wedon't talk about death in a way
that we used to Used to be,that people would die at home,
and there was a much moreawareness of beginning of life,
end of life, because it allhappened in your eyesight, in
your dalidamos, it was allaround you and that was more
(34:38):
known to you.
But now we've given death tothe funeral homes or we've given
death to somebody else andwe're not, it's not as familiar
with it, and I don't know.
I don't know.
For me it didn't work well.
Didn't work well for me to nothave any knowledge of death.
When death happened, I didn'thave any beliefs to hold on to,
I didn't know anything Right, itwas just complete beliefs to
(35:01):
hold on to.
I didn't know anything Right,so it was just complete.
I was completely adrift.
Thank God, we have ways toaccess Jewish wisdom that can
help us.
Right, because you want tocontextualize it.
Why is this happening to me?
Am I such a bad person that mybaby died?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I don't see it that way.
So what was it like for youwhen you saw your daughter going
through it, when your daughterlost her daughter?
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Look, as I said before, we want to protect our
children, don't we?
First of all, we don't wantthem to die.
I didn't do a good job.
It wasn't in my domain, itwasn't in my domain to stop Sam
from dying and it was not in mydomain to protect my daughter
from her loss.
We can't protect each other.
We can't even protect ourselvesfrom pain and emotional
(35:51):
difficult struggles that we gothrough in our lives.
So what can we do?
I think I learned the power ofbeing present for another person
, really being present foranother person, and I felt like,
if she wanted me, I could dothat Something.
I could do that Right,something I could do if she
(36:11):
wanted me.
And again, you know she's anadult and she's going through
her experience that God gave her.
That's what she needs to gothrough, and she has parents
who've suffered a loss thatcould be seen to be somewhat
similar and we've survived andthrived.
So perhaps that's comforting.
(36:31):
I never shielded my childrenfrom knowing that they had a
brother who died.
He was my first child.
They knew about him and I hadyearly yacht site gatherings of
women in my home to talk aboutlessons I had learned, and she
was aware of that on some level.
Again, one never wants it tohappen to you or to anybody, you
know, and it's not under ourcontrol.
(36:52):
So it was very, it was veryheartbreaking to see and to know
that she had to go through thisand I also truly believe that
it was not.
That it was very, it was verymuch.
God was here, god was cryingalong with us, and that we had
each other to help each other,through to help each other
(37:14):
through.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Did it bring up all your pain of Sam again, Like
were you crying for yourdaughter, for your granddaughter
and for your son.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
No, I don't think so.
I do think I had very goodgrief therapist.
I went to a lot of therapyafter Sam died.
There were so many therapistsaround in those days.
There weren't so manytherapists, they were all they
weren't.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
I cannot, because he said he went to.
Didn't you say you went to alot?
Oh, you said a lot of therapy,you had a lot of therapists.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Right.
I went to a lot of therapy.
I had to find a therapist, butshe was really great.
Thank God, baruch Hashem, thatI found a good therapist and I
did a lot of very difficult workand very challenging work and
very hard work and it was took alot of strength and it took a
lot, a lot, a lot.
But I didn't have a choice.
I couldn't function like eitherI just stay in bed the rest of
my life or something, or I justhave to deal with this on some
(38:04):
level because I don't want to bethis well.
So the therapist really helpedme a lot, a lot, a lot.
And then all the research I'vedone and then finding the Hever
Ketisha as a place to put mykohos, like I can, that I can do
and I want to do it, and itgave my me a lot of strength to
(38:33):
be able to let go of Sam at somepoint.
I let go of him and I don't.
I don't have any expectationsthat anybody else is doing
whatever they're doing andwhatever they do is right for
them.
On some level I let go of Samlike he was in a good place and
he didn't need me anymore andthank God, I have other children
and I was focused on them.
And then Sonia lost her baby andit was.
(38:55):
She's going to be okay.
I know she's going to be okaybecause she's going to be okay
and I'll be there for her asmuch as she wants, but she's
going to be okay.
The lessons I've learned andthe person I've become because
of Sam I credit Sam, credit Godfor giving us that suffering so
that we could be the people thatwe're trying to be.
(39:15):
We're trying to be the peoplethat we can be, having
experienced that Right, or ifthat makes any sense.
So I want Sam's life to havebeen meaning and if I've changed
and I've learned things, then Iwant to share those things
because I think they could behelpful to other people.
So I'm helping Sonia and I'mhelping whoever comes my way,
and I wrote this book in orderto have this information be more
(39:38):
accessible to people.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
So I want to talk about that, but I know we have
to end soon.
But let me first just ask youabout this, because when you
said you let go of Sam, I knowwhat you mean, but I think a
listener might be confusedbecause they might think letting
go means that you're all fine,you don't think about him and
you moved on, and you moved onand you're good.
But and you let go, but itdoesn't mean you forgot him.
So I guess I just if you could,I definitely didn't forget him.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Very shortly after Sam died, my mother died.
She was 56 and she died.
About six months after Sam died, I felt like I topped and
tailed, like I lost my child andI lost my mom.
So I lost, like these, tworeally important people in my
life, and it took me a lotlonger.
I'm still processing the deathof my mother, but with Sam I
(40:25):
really came to a belief thathe's sitting under the Kisih
HaKavod with Kaddish Baruch Huhe'srah and he's.
He did his, he did.
He did everything he wassupposed to here to do and and
he's good, he is really good.
So letting go maybe means Idon't feel weighted down by
grief.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
(40:45):
But with my mother I'm still alittle bit weighted down with
grief, because I haven't,because it's a different
relationship, but yeah so, buton some level we all live with
grief.
I think we live in a verygrief-filled world.
There's grief all around us andI truly believe for most people
, many people, sharing it andspeaking about it is very
(41:08):
healing healing.
Dr Edith Eva Agar is a survivorof Auschwitz and her little quip
is expression is the antidoteto depression.
Not for everybody, but manypeople feel that when they can
talk about it, that it's helpfulto them.
(41:28):
So, again, I think that's why Iwrote the book and, as I've
been speaking, people want tocome and tell me their stories
and I want to hear their stories.
I want to be an address forpeople to tell their stories
because it's cathartic, it helpsLike that person didn't die.
They died but they're stillalive in your memories, in where
you are in the world, in howyou are attached to those people
, attachment, grief, whereyou're still very much attached
(41:51):
to the person.
Even though they're notphysically here, you're still
attached to them.
And we have that in ourtradition, right?
We have Kaddish and we haveYizkor and we have Yart sites
and we have traditions to go tothe Kavari and we have a
connection with the loved onesthat have pre-deceased us.
So we don't completely let goof them.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Right, right, but I think what you're saying is so
important because when a topicis taboo for so many years, for
so long we don't really talkabout it.
And then you start talkingabout it and then people come
flocking to you and say, oh, Ihave to tell you my story.
It shows how important it is totalk about it.
People need to talk about it.
People need to talk about itand they want to know.
I want to know the spiritualstuff, but other people want to
(42:34):
know the physical stuff, yeah,or they just want somebody to
share their experience with.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
They want to be seen Right.
And when you express it,however you express it, do you
express it by talking about it?
Do you express it by crying?
You know everybody's saying youhave to be strong.
You have to be strong.
I don't even know what thatmeans.
I think it takes more strengthto ask for help and it takes
more strength to let yourselffeel the feelings, feel that
grief, and cry in a safe placewith safe people.
Right.
A good cry is very catharticand very healing.
(43:02):
Yeah, we're frightened ofcrying.
I don't really understand whywe keep holding back.
I have to be strong.
I have to be strong, I don'tknow.
I think actually, it's strongerto let it out.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
It is.
I have a hard time crying, butI have friends that cry so
easily and I always tell themlike I'm so jealous, I wish I
could cry like that.
Yeah, Sometimes it's like Ifeel like I really need to cry
and like I don't know it won't,I won't let it, whatever.
So yeah, Wow, okay.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
So anything like important that we didn't touch
kind of overlap of experiencesthat people have with grief and
they're also very individual andyour way through it or with it
is uniquely yours, and I thinkit doesn't help us to look at
other people and say, well, they, whatever, you think other
people are experiencing, thatyou're whatever try not to
compare yourself to other peopleand to have one or two or some
people that you feel you cantalk to and share your inner
(44:14):
lives with and your grief with.
For me is very important for myfunctioning that this isn't
something that's gone and nevertalked about again.
You know, we want to keep ourloved ones alive and the dignity
of our traditions and what Godput into place for us in terms
of how we take care of the deadand how it's all part of a big
(44:36):
continuum and that this life isa fleeting experience in the
greater realm of all.
That is so.
We live in a box of time andspace, but God created time and
space, so once we leave this boxand we're outside time and
(44:57):
space, then all be had to be theway it is.
So we're behind the tapestry.
We don't see the full picture,right, right, there's a picture
and God's in charge and Godloves us, and it's a beautiful
one, the picture.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, there's a picture, and God's in charge and
God loves us and it's abeautiful one.
The picture, yeah, yeah, I'mcurious.
You know so much.
Do you want to leave contactinformation in case anyone wants
to reach out to you or theycould reach out to you?
Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Absolutely so.
My email's very easyalissafelder613 at Gmail, and
you're welcome to be in touch.
I have a website, alissafalissafeldercom, and you can
look there and um, and I'm I'mhappy, to happy, to come to your
communities and speak, if youlike, to fabricatisha, or to
outreach communities or in reachcommunities, whatever, to
(45:43):
continue having theseconversations and having this
topic be one that we can allhave together and help each
other amazing.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Thank you so so much for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
You've just listened to an episode of the Relief from
Grief podcast with MiriamRiviet, brought to you by Mayrim
.
For more episodes, visit theMayrim website at wwwmayrimorg.
Help us reach more people whomight benefit from this podcast.
If you know someone who couldfind it helpful, please share it
with them.
If you have questions orcomments for the speaker, or if
(46:18):
you'd like to suggest a guestfor the podcast, we'd love to
hear from you.
Email us at relieffromgrief atmayrimorg.
We look forward to having youjoin us in the next episode.
Welcome to the Relief from Grief podcast, hosted by
Mrs Miriam Rebiet and brought toyou by Mayrim.
Mayrim is an organizationdedicated to supporting families
who have experienced the lossof a child.
It was founded by EloiNishmat's, nechama Liba and
Miriam Holman.
Despite her illness, miriamdevoted herself to addressing
(00:22):
the needs of parents andsiblings grappling with the
immense pain of losing a child.
She felt this loss deeply,having experienced it firsthand
when her older sister, nechamaLiba, passed away.
Mehrim continues to uplift andexpand on the work Miriam began,
a mission carried forward byher parents with great
dedication.
(00:43):
If you have any questions orcomments for the speaker, or if
you'd like to suggest a guestfor the podcast, please email us
at relieffromgriefatmayrimorg.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Everyone, thank you so much for joining me here on
the Relief from Grief by Mayrimpodcast.
So today we have Mrs AlyssaFelder and I'm very, very
excited because she's like Idon't even know how to describe
you.
You're just so warm and easy totalk to.
But let me just introduce youproperly.
Alyssa is the coordinator ofcourse communities of practice
(01:15):
and in this role she facilitatesconnections, conversations and
developments of all the corecommunities.
She also actively managescourse community of practice for
women engaged with traditionalChavikadisha, and I find this
fascinating that to date it'struly an international community
of hundreds of women from allover the US and Canada and the
UK and France and Sweden andEngland and France and Italy and
(01:38):
Israel and Chile and Panama andMexico and South Africa and
even Australia I know that'sincredible to me and the mission
of the community is to shareexperiences, give encouragement,
network and to help to developand support each other.
So thank you so so much.
Oh wait, and I forgot to mentionthat she recently wrote this
book.
I'm holding it in my hand.
It's called From One Life tothe Next the Sacred Passage
(01:59):
After Death, and I'm holding itup for everyone to see.
And I'm holding up for everyoneto see, even though no one
could see because it's onlyaudio, but it's very.
I found the book very, veryphenomenal.
So thank you so so much forcoming on.
Thank you, thank you so muchfor having me.
So I guess we could start withthe beginning.
Let's talk about when yourlittle baby boy was Lifter.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yep.
So I was newly married I'mBritish, in case you don't know
the accent, and I was living inLondon.
I met my American husband inLondon and we got married and we
moved to Washington DC and afew years into our marriage, we
were blessed with a little babywho we called Sam, named Sam,
(02:40):
and he was born with a host ofmedical issues, none of which we
thought would belife-threatening.
We really thought whatever Samhas, we'll just fix it and he'll
be just great and he'll grow upand he'll be this wonderful
person and he'll make us into afamily, made me into a mother,
made my husband into a father.
It was like the beginning ofour journey of parenthood.
(03:02):
However, he wasn't thriving, hewasn't growing as he should, and
this was already now close to35 years ago, and at the time
they couldn't really diagnosewhat was happening.
The biggest issue was his heart, and so he went in for open
heart surgery at the end ofOctober of 1989.
(03:23):
And he was in surgery for many,many, many, many hours.
The doctors kept coming out andtelling us they were trying
this and they were trying that,and then at some point, I looked
at this poor doctor, this poorsurgeon, who's drawing pictures
of Sam's heart, giving us hope,perhaps, that he was going to be
able to do something.
And I looked at this poor manand I said is Sam still alive?
(03:43):
I mean, it didn't occur to methat Sam wouldn't be alive, but
somehow I had this thought toask him.
And he didn't look up and itwas so obvious in his body
language that Sam had died onthe operating table.
And I had never experienced adeath so traumatically like my
(04:03):
grandparents had died.
They were old people, but tohave a baby that you had vested
so much love and hope and desireand dreams into, and then the
finality of losing him was sobig that my world completely
changed from that moment on.
So Sam lasted, he lived in theworld for four and a half months
(04:26):
and he thrived as best as hecould, and he was a sweet little
baby that we got to care forand take care of and we really
feel like he was a gift that Godgave us.
And as much as God gives, godalso takes.
And God took our little Sam inwhat we thought was before his
time, but it was his time, andthe journey since then, which is
(04:49):
now 35 years, has been one ofreally figuring out how to live
and thrive and still hold and beattached to this little baby
that only lived in this worldfor a few months.
Lived in this world for a fewmonths.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
It's really amazing because, like what's amazing,
what I'm saying is amazing ishow our life experiences, they
become so part of us forever.
Some could say, okay, it's 35years ago and the baby was four
months old, like you probablyalmost forgot that you even had
him, and yet your love is sodeep and your connection is
still so real that it's amazinghow our experiences just stay
(05:26):
with us forever.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Right, I mean, I think that I believe perhaps
this is a deeply I really deeplyfeel that there was.
We have soul connections withour family members and
especially your children, one'schildren.
You're intertwined with on asoul, on a cellular level.
That I totally understand.
(05:48):
Why people who havemiscarriages not miscarriages,
people who lose pregnancies itcan be very devastating to them
because it's a part of them.
Your children, whether they'rebiological or they're not
biological, they're a part ofyou and when they come and go so
quickly it shakes your wholeworld, it pulls the whole rug
out from under you and you haveto learn how to walk again.
Right, right.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So you wrote in the book how eventually you came to
appreciate that you had a partin helping Sam, in helping his
Neshama, really complete hisjourney.
Yeah, I found it veryfascinating because I don't know
different parts.
One question that came up forme was like how long did it take
for you to feel that?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, I don't know.
I think it's a process.
They say that grief is like asnowflake.
No, two snowflakes are alike.
So everybody has their ownexperience of grief, and where
you are when you start the griefjourney and where you end up is
uniquely yours.
I didn't come into this deathexperience with much
(06:48):
understanding any understandingactually of what Jewish
teachings are around this topic.
So I didn't have a beliefsystem, I didn't have something
to draw on, and I had to learnthat step by step.
So in the beginning, if you askme personally, my story in the
beginning it was grief that wasso overwhelming.
It wasn't about trying tounderstand why bad things happen
(07:09):
to good people.
It wasn't that.
It was just trying to figureout how to live, how to get out
of bed in the morning, how toreframe a life without Sam in it
, because my whole trajectorygoing forward was with Sam and
then all of a sudden it wasn't.
I had pumped milk for him todrink, post-surgery, post-op.
So I felt a mess, physically aswell as emotionally.
(07:31):
And so the sort of moreexistential questions about what
happens when you die and all ofthose things.
I had them but I couldn'tabsorb them.
So you know, I remembersomebody trying to explain to us
why you know why good peoplesuffer, and it's like in one ear
out the other, like it didn'tresonate, it didn't flick with
me.
However, I did want to knowwhere Sam had gone.
Like where was he?
(07:51):
Did he need me anymore?
Was he going to be taken careof?
Was God taking care of him?
Like where was he?
I wanted to know that and Ialso wanted to try to understand
.
Like then, what it makes youquestion is like why am I even
here in the first place?
What is life all about?
If a four and a half month oldbaby come and go, then what does
that say about our lives?
What's the purpose of our lives?
What are we here to achieve?
(08:12):
Given that we are here toachieve something right?
So it kind of makes youquestion your own life or just
life in general.
Does my life matter?
Did Sam's life matter?
And so, in the bigger picture,as I have now, 35 years later, I
can say Sam was destined tolive for four and a half months.
(08:32):
That was his allotted time inthis life and that he had a job
to do.
Whatever that job was, I don'teven know what that job is.
I can put my own feelings andthoughts into it.
I don't know for sure.
Obviously, I think that he wasan old soul that had to come
into the world to completesomething, some tikkun, some
rectification that he had tobring into the world, and that
we were chosen.
(08:53):
There's a Kabbalistic teachingthat the soul, before it's born,
chooses its parents, thatthat's the family that it's
going to be born into and itbuys into that experience that
these are the people.
So Sam quote chose us and wehelped him in his journey.
And I look back and I feel like, was I as successful as a
(09:16):
mother?
I didn't save him from deathand that was a big deal because,
like, if I'm a good mother, Ishouldn't have died.
So I had to get over that.
So that's out of my control andwhat is in my control is the
kind of life that he had.
Even for that four and a halfmonths, you know, he had a life
in our home, in our care.
I don't think I left him with ababysitter ever.
(09:36):
I took him everywhere with meand I took him to.
I took him to Shawl and I tookhim to Shurim that I went to and
I wanted him to be surroundedby all the good that's in the
world Love and loving people,and Torah and Shabbos, and I
mean, you know he didn't livethat long.
He lived, he lived, he livedthrough all the like.
(10:06):
So he was born in June and hedied in October.
So he got some of the year Well, I'm the mom and everything.
He got all that.
He got all the suckers, andthen it was his time to leave.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Look back also and say that obviously we don't
really know what his half kidwas, but you could say that
because of him, this is how Ichanged and that's a credit to
his neshama.
Yes, maybe that's what aneshama needed.
It needed to make you be morecareful with that.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I don't know, I don't know, I actually have another.
I have another, anothersomething I hold on to which is
that, yes, yes, he did come inthe world to change the people
around him, for sure, and I'mI'm very committed to making him
continue to live on through myteachings and through how I am
in the world, for sure, and Ialso think that his soul had
(10:51):
something to complete, whetherhe was a Gilgul, whether he had
come back to complete something.
Maybe he needed a kosher burial, maybe he needed to drink
kosher milk for the length ofhis life, maybe he needed to
experience whatever it is thathe also, as a baby, as a pure
neshama in a little body, neededto experience, needed some kind
(11:11):
of tikkun that perhaps I and myhusband and all the people
around him gave him thatopportunity to finish his soul
journey.
So I think it's both.
I think he expected the worldand we're all rippling off with
that and he had something tocomplete in this world.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I'm like a little bit morbid sometimes, you know so.
Like whenever I have a baby,like after, like I don't know if
it takes three days or, likeyou know, seven days, but I'll
look at it.
I'll be like a week and a halfago.
I didn't even know you.
If something would happen toyou today, I would never be able
to go on Like it's amazing howyou said before just how
connected we are to our childrenand it's just everyone should
(11:52):
just always live.
I guess I wanted to ask youalso about some of the questions
.
I know that you said that youeventually had and that you
wrote about in your book, but Ithink people really struggle
with like the Neshama and thethree parrots, and which parrot
is down here and which parrot isnot down here, and all that
type of stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of differing
opinions in our tradition.
So again, just to disclaim thatwhatever I learned that I found
to be helpful to me fromAmasora is what I'm sharing, and
it's not the only take.
So there are differentunderstandings of what a neshama
is and what it is here toachieve, and et cetera, et
(12:32):
cetera.
So I'm really only sharing thethings that I found to be
helpful.
So the glass blower metaphor isa very commonly used one for
who we are in life.
So we have a physical body thatis the vessel, that is the
container that holds the holyneshama, the shamanashima breath
.
It's a breath that comes fromGod.
So if you take the glass blowermashal, that God, so to speak,
(12:58):
is the glass blower and he'sblowing the breath through this
tube into the vessel, into theglass at the end of the tube,
and the neshama is the higheraspects, or higher aspects even
than the neshama.
Then there's the ruath, whichis sort of the breath that then
rests in the nefesh, which isthe life force that's within the
(13:20):
physical body that we are allblessed with.
So when we're alive, we are acombination of physical,
tangible, organic, dust-likematter, body with a holy neshama
that is constantly being blowninto us.
So go another step and say thatthe people who are alive, all
(13:44):
of us today, the soul comes outthrough our eyes, through our
eyes, through our eyes, likethat's the shine, that's what we
see.
When you look into these eyes,you're seeing the neshamah of
the person, you're seeing theinside.
The Kabbalists say that handsand your eyes are the ways in
which you can access and you caninteract with the soul of the
(14:08):
person.
So when we're alive, that'swhat's shining.
We have this like in Aramaic,in Aramaic so I'm very involved
in Chafikadish and we'll get tothat but the Tahara, the
purification process that we gothrough, tahara means shining
light and what we're doing iswe're somehow cleansing,
(14:28):
purifying the body and the soul.
That's what we're doing.
So when a body loses its soul,meaning that God is no longer
blowing the soul into us,there's nothing coming from the
inside out.
There's no emanation of bright,shining light that is your
neshama coming out of your eyes,out of your hands, out of your
body.
It's not animating you anymoreand it's not cleansing you
(14:50):
anymore.
You have, so to speak, like avacuum of where that neshama
resided in your composite, whichis why we shut the eyes of the
dead right, there's nothingcoming out through the eyes
anymore.
It's a, so to speak, anemptying out and leaving behind
a shell that needs to go throughits purification process, as
(15:12):
does the soul that we have livedwith and schmutzed up
throughout our life.
It has to go through itsprocess until the end of days
where tifkas ha-mesim they'llcome back together as a purified
body and soul together, afterYom HaShem HaShiach in Oram Abba
, so that you know to see lifeas a piece of the whole
trajectory of the soul coming in, living a life in a body,
(15:35):
exiting at death, going into thehigher realms to be purified
and then to reconstitute it.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So how do you ever do any of eras if you're so
involved?
Even when I was reading yourbook, I was like, oh my gosh,
I'm becoming perfect.
Today, as of today, I'm perfect.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
I don't plan to so when you're perfect.
None of us are perfect.
Nobody is perfect, right?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
But when you're so deep in, you're probably living
with such a more like it'salways before you, like you're
probably always so aware of what, like I don't know you.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Just I think it's important to.
I think that's why I'm on thismission to talk about death, and
you're on a mission to talkabout death.
We're on a mission to talkabout death because it informs
our life.
Right, if we're, if we areaware of what life is, then
perhaps we can be more aware ofwhat life is.
And in that awareness ofknowing what life is, it takes
on a greater sense of maybeurgency or importance or
something.
It matters, like it matters,everything matters, and that
(16:29):
doesn't mean that we're perfectand it means that we mess up,
and it means that we don't doall the things and we're human
and we have different you knowYateses that take us in
different directions and allthose things.
And where are you heading?
Where are you heading and whatare you thinking about?
You're thinking about.
You're thinking about who youare in the world and what you're
(16:50):
here to do, and what God wantsof you Doesn't mean that you
live up to it, but it means youhave a sense of it, or perhaps a
little bit more.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Right.
So when you're so involved inthe work that you do that, it's
so much easier to really keepthat vision constantly before
you.
Yes, and yeah, I mean, we'reall regular people, mere mortals
and regular people.
As my friend was saying, someare better than others, but OK.
So I wanted to talk about theChabot Kaddish and how you got
to be part of it.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
But maybe we could cover this when we get up to it,
because when you talked aboutclosing the eyes and the n them
off, I know that you said alsowe close the mouth.
So I was just wondering, likewhy that?
It's all the apertures, it'sall the things, all the places
which allow internal, externalcommunication.
So all the orifices should beclosed.
So what do you do with the noseand ears?
We don't, but it is eyes andmouth, I don't know.
I mean it probably should beears.
Part of it also is his verybeautiful teaching.
Very beautiful teaching as theHevokadisha wash our body right.
(17:53):
So our body is B'tzelem Elohim.
Our body has the capacity tomodel and emulate God and
emulate God, and so each bodypart has a huge potential to it
right and you could say well, soyour eyes will only see good
and your mouth will only speakgood and your ears will only
(18:14):
hear good and your hands willonly do chesed and your legs
will run all the things rightthat your body can bring you to
do.
When we in the Hevogadisha arewashing the body before the
Tahara, before the mikvah,before that immersion, there's a
cleansing of each body part andas we wash each body part.
There's a pasuk from ShirHaShirim that relates to that
(18:38):
body part.
That we say, and our intentionon the Hever Gadisha is to
elevate the body part to themaximum, to the highest
potential that it had.
Knowing that nobody actuallyreached that potential, nobody,
was all everything positivelygood.
Nobody is like.
Most people, I would say, rightAt some point use their eyes in
(19:09):
the wrong way or use theirmouths in the wrong way or
whatever.
But we, you know, on NechevHaKadisha, have the intention
and the kavanah that the personin our care reach that highest
level.
Wow.
So it's a beautiful and it's avery comforting experience to
know about, especially in theoutside world, the non-from
world, where American Jews, forsure, are choosing cremation.
(19:30):
They have no understanding ofthe beauty and the power and the
spiritual aspects of what thepreparation for burial is and
what burial is and why we needto be buried.
So all of these pieces that theHevra Kadisha do are to elevate
and purify and cleanse in themost loving and the most
dignified and the most Kabedicway.
And so why wouldn't you choosethat?
(19:52):
It seems like a bit of ano-brainer, but even to know,
like maybe we all, there's noquestion, we're going to choose
Hevra, kadisha and choose burial.
But even to know, like maybe weall there's no question we're
going to choose Khavikadisha andchoose burial but even to know,
like, how comforting andbeautiful it can be to know
what's happened to your lovedone, which is what happened when
Sam died.
So when Sam died again I'm 26years old, I don't know anything
about Khavikadisha and myfriends came to me one
particular friend and she saidthat she had brought together a
(20:16):
number of women from ourcommunity and that they had
prepared Sam for burial.
Again, I had no idea what shewas talking about.
I didn't know anything about itand all of a sudden, I want to
know everything about it.
If your child goes on holidaysomewhere or goes on vacation
somewhere, you want to know arethey going to be taken care of?
Are they going to have the foodthat they need?
Are they going to have niceaccommodations?
(20:38):
Who took care of them?
Are you with good people?
Like you want to know all thesethings.
So, as much as I wanted to knowwhat happened to Sam, the
essence of Sam, the soul of Samin the world of souls, I also
wanted to know, like, who tookcare of his body before he was
buried, like I didn't even thinkabout it till she came and said
you know, we did this.
And I said what did you do?
Could you please tell me?
(21:00):
I really want to know, becauseI really want that comfort that
comes from knowing that you tookcare of my baby.
You knew him in life, thatplayed with him, that tickled
him, that, all the things youdid with him.
I don't even remember all thedifferent things he wasn't that
old and he wasn't thatinteractive but people who knew
him in life were people who tookcare of him and did.
And I'm telling you I'm socomforted to that, 35 years
later, I still love those peoplewith an intensity because I was
(21:23):
so open, wounded, my heart wasshattered.
And here's people saying we'retaking care of you and we're
taking care of your baby and welove you and we love your baby.
And it's like thank you, thankyou so much, thank you so much,
thank you so much, like beyondmy capacity to thank them, like
how do you even know to do that?
And then, wanting to be that, Iwant to be that, I can do that.
(21:47):
I'm a nurse by training.
I can do Hebra, kedisha andI've had the opportunity to wash
friends and friends anddaughters of friends and my own
granddaughter I washed.
So you know it's a beautifulthing and it holds the two many
different emotions in your heartat the same time.
You can hold the grief and thesadness and the shattered parts
(22:11):
of you along with.
This is a beautiful thing andthere's meaning in this, and if
there's meaning in this thenit's good and you can hold those
together.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Which part?
The death or the doing, theShabbat.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Kaddish stuff, all of it.
You can hold all of it, becausepeople will say to me how did
you wash that 26-year-old thatjust died in a car accident in
Mexico?
How do you do that?
And you do it because you canand because you want to, because
you're bringing love.
And you're bringing love andyou're bringing the shekhinah.
That's another amazing teaching.
The living are considered emes.
(22:44):
I know people say the chevekazisha chesed shal emes Another
way to understand that term andthis comes from a Kabbalistic
text called the Ma'avah Yabokthat was written in 1626,
kabbalist in Italy, and thisbook, the Ma'avaiyya Bok, is the
source for all of the minhagimof Ashkenazi, hevra, kedisha.
(23:07):
So in the Ma'avaiyya Bok hesays that MS, if you look at the
letters of MS, right, it'sAleph Mem Taf, which is an Aleph
, divine oneness with a mace.
So what are we?
We're a mace with an aleph.
We have this godly soul and aphysical body.
(23:29):
We who are living can be seenas emes.
So any chesed we do is chesedshal emes because it's chesed,
done by the emes is chesed shalemes because it's emes done,
it's chesed, done by the emes.
When we go into the, when we gointo the tahara room to take
care of a sister, mother,daughter, whoever they are.
When we walk into that room,says the Maravai Yabob, we bring
(23:52):
the shekhinah with us.
The shekhinah comes with us.
When we do bichro holim, theshekhinah comes with us.
When we do mitzvot, we bringthe Shekhinah along with us.
So we're also having theShekhinah be there to escort
this neshama on its journey.
There's something about that.
And you walk into this spacewhere there's your fellow Jewess
(24:15):
on the table and the livingwalking in, and there's a
silence that kind of descendsbecause you're just focused on
this and the gravitas of whatyou're doing, that you somehow
are in this space where you getto be the one to help this
person and you'll bring theShekhinah with you and you're
(24:36):
very intent on what you're doingand you're very focused on what
you're doing and it's all forher, aaliyah, it's all for her,
and you're going to do the bestjob you can possibly do and
you're going to center off, withall the kavanahs and all the as
much as you can, all theintentions that in the end God
(24:57):
brings the cleansing and in theend, God brings the cleansing.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Does it feel to you at all like intrusive when
you're doing someone like yourdaughter's good friend or your
good friend's daughter?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah.
Is it intrusive?
No, it's not intrusive.
It's.
Look people watch Sam.
I felt so grateful to them.
This is I want Sam to have akosher burialher burial.
He didn't know what a kosherburial, all the things that
entails till now, so that theydid that and that they took care
(25:28):
of him and that he had a kosherburial.
As the mother, I want to makesure he has a kosher burial and
he did so.
Now, if I can help somebodyelse have a kosher burial.
And this young woman and I wroteabout it in the book this young
woman who was killed in Mexico.
She came to Rhode Island whereI live.
She came after a few daysbecause it was hard to get her
body out of Mexico.
(25:48):
And when she was in and shearrived into Rhode Island, we
were told you know, maybebecause she'd been, you know,
she had died a few days earlier,maybe it wouldn't be so easy to
take care of her body.
And we walked into that roomsaying we're going to do the
best we can.
And the fact is we did abeautiful Tahara, beautiful
Tahara and Danielle.
With permission from herparents, I'm using her name.
(26:09):
Danielle was beautiful and wetook care of her.
It's such an honor to be there.
And it does say again in theMarvaya book that when there are
people who knew the Nifteras inthe Marvaya book, that when
there are people who knew theNiftaras in the room, your
kavana is heightened orsomething.
There's something a littledifferent.
It just is the way it is whenyou know the person or they
(26:29):
related to you in some way.
Or maybe it shouldn't be thatway, but I think the reality of
the situation is, I mean, wetreat everybody the same, but
maybe emotionally there's adifferent, there's something in
addition.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
So when you just said it was a beautiful Tahara, your
whole body showed how youclosed your eyes, like your
whole body showed the intensityof how you felt that it was so
beautiful.
So I'm curious what's thedifference between a more
beautiful one and a lessbeautiful one?
I won't say beautiful or notbeautiful.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, I don't know, I can't really answer that
question.
I mean, everything we do is thesame.
I think that a beautiful Tahara, everybody should get it.
Everybody should be so good tohave a beautiful Tahara.
What is a beautiful Tahara?
A beautiful Tahara is wherethere's as little, as little
like the body is treated withthe utmost, utmost, utmost
(27:19):
respect and dignity and love.
If somebody has been in a caraccident which Danielle was in a
car accident so a body ofsomebody in a car accident could
have a lot of damage to it,which involves a different kind
of involvement of the HefraKedisha, because we have to be
(27:40):
careful about blood and all thedifferent things.
So for Danielle, even thoughshe had been in a car accident,
her body didn't seem to be asdamaged as we were anticipating
it would be, and so the Taharathat we were able to provide for
her was as if she hadn't beenin a car accident.
So I think maybe that's what Iwas trying to say, that it was
(28:02):
that it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Do you feel sometimes the Shekhinah like more than
other times?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
I wish I could say yes, I don't know what I'm
feeling.
Are you feeling the Shekhinah?
Are you feeling the Neshama ofthe Nifteris?
Because that's also in the room.
Right, we have an understanding.
It says in the Gemara that thesoul of the nifter is aware of
its body until burial, until thelid is put on.
You know to move into the.
(28:33):
You know, move up, move on up.
There's a mixture of going onhere and we are aware when we on
the Fevik Disha are in the room, the first thing we do is ask
for forgiveness.
We haven't even touched you andwe're asking for the person,
and we're asking for forgivenessfor anything we may have done
that dishonors you or disgracesyou.
Who are we talking to?
We're talking to the Neshama.
(28:54):
We know you're here and we'regoing to do the best job we can,
and if we do something thatisn't coveted, we're really
sorry and we come with the bestof intentions.
So that's the beginning and ourgoal is to move you from a
place of being soiled, whateverthat means, to a place of purity
.
That's our goal.
(29:17):
We're walking in and we declareit.
That's what we are here to do,and then, when we use the water
to do the Tahara.
When we've done that, we sayTahorahi, tahorahi, tahorahi,
kosha, kosha, kosha you are.
Now God brings about cleansingand purification and we have
done our part and now God willdo the rest and you will be
purified.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And then you like go home and eat lunch.
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You kind of take it with you and it's supposed to
take it with you.
You're never supposed to beused to seeing a dead body ever.
It should never not affect you.
And there's a hope, desire,intention, something that the
Hever Kedesh should be in astate of teshuvah, always.
Again, none of us are perfect,but I'm alive, we're all alive,
(29:58):
baruch Hashem.
We're all alive today.
Why am I alive?
What do I have to do?
What can I do today?
Little things, big things,whatever it is, there's a reason
why we're here and whateverthat is, and it might be going
home and cooking for your family, and it might be picking up the
phone and calling your friend,and it might be making, having a
nap, so you have more energyfor other people at another time
(30:19):
or more energy for yourself.
You know, it's not all the bigthings.
This is a big thing, but everylittle thing is a big thing.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right, because when we spoke a few days ago and I
said to you something like Idon't know what it is, I don't
want to know, I can't know, andI was like, but but one second,
I always want to know everything.
So I was like confused and Iwas thinking about it and I
realized that the whole thing Idon't know.
The physical part, I want toknow everything spiritual.
Tell me everything about theNeshama, from the second it
leaves the body until I don'tknow forever.
But the physical part, likewhat happens until burial, I
(30:49):
don't know.
It's so scary to me which isinteresting.
Why?
Yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
I mean, I think that the body is spiritual.
After a lifetime, four months,whatever it is, however long
that body and soul have been incombination and coupled with
each other, there is aspirituality that the body has
absorbed.
Like I say for Torah, it'sabsorbed the words of Torah.
(31:16):
We don't throw that out, wedon't put it in the trash.
It's holy, right, right.
We bury it.
Same with our bodies.
Our bodies have acquiredholiness.
They're not our bodies.
We know that we can't tattooourselves.
We're not supposed to killourselves.
You know it's not really ours,it's a gift that we have, and
(31:44):
then the body is considered likea Sefer Torah, and outside of
Israel we put the Sefer Torah,we put the body, the mace, into
an Aaron.
We don't call the coffin acoffin or a casket, we call it
an Aaron.
We put Sefer Torahs in an Aaron.
We're putting a holy shell ofthe body into the Aaron.
And then we have variousPesukim that we say that relate
(32:06):
to the Mishkan, and when theMishkan moved and you couldn't
look at the holy Kehlem of theMishkan, you couldn't look at
them, they had to be wrapped upout of you.
The same thing.
So I would even suggest thatthere might be a way to
understand our physicality assomething that over our
(32:26):
lifetimes again, however longthey've been, have acquired an
aspect of spirituality to them,that there's this intermingling
of physical and spiritual.
That happens.
So we elevate a physical bodyinto a spiritual garment.
It's a garment and it's goingto come back.
You want to be buried.
(32:47):
So, like a seed goes into theground and the seed
disintegrates.
And then what?
Then you wait till the righttime, when it sprouts and
becomes a tree or whatever.
It's going to become right.
So we bury our bodies.
It has to go into the groundand become one with the ground,
awaiting that time, because, Imay say, where the body and soul
(33:09):
, both purified, will rejoin forall eternity.
Wow.
So what is our goal in thisworld?
Our goal in this world is, onsome level, amongst other things
, to make the physical morespiritual, right?
(33:30):
So?
So I'm going to challenge you onyour.
There's spiritual and thenthere's physical.
Perhaps there's a lot ofintermingling of the two,
especially when it talks aboutour bodies.
Yeah, and we're doing physicalthings all the time, right,
we're doing all the physicalthings that we do in our
lifetime to exist.
(33:51):
We're doing physical things,but we're trying to elevate them
into a spiritual realm.
We eat certain foods and we saycertain things and we pray, and
all the things that we do.
We eat certain foods and we saycertain things and we pray, and
all the things that we do.
So I think that it's a lifetimeof trying to work on how to see
spiritual and physical, forsure, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
It's definitely a timer more than I like, right
For sure.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
For sure.
But these conversations aboutdeath, I think, are so not
necessarily pervasive, right, wedon't talk about death in a way
that we used to Used to be,that people would die at home,
and there was a much moreawareness of beginning of life,
end of life, because it allhappened in your eyesight, in
your dalidamos, it was allaround you and that was more
(34:38):
known to you.
But now we've given death tothe funeral homes or we've given
death to somebody else andwe're not, it's not as familiar
with it, and I don't know.
I don't know.
For me it didn't work well.
Didn't work well for me to nothave any knowledge of death.
When death happened, I didn'thave any beliefs to hold on to,
I didn't know anything Right, itwas just complete beliefs to
(35:01):
hold on to.
I didn't know anything Right,so it was just complete.
I was completely adrift.
Thank God, we have ways toaccess Jewish wisdom that can
help us.
Right, because you want tocontextualize it.
Why is this happening to me?
Am I such a bad person that mybaby died?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I don't see it that way.
So what was it like for youwhen you saw your daughter going
through it, when your daughterlost her daughter?
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Look, as I said before, we want to protect our
children, don't we?
First of all, we don't wantthem to die.
I didn't do a good job.
It wasn't in my domain, itwasn't in my domain to stop Sam
from dying and it was not in mydomain to protect my daughter
from her loss.
We can't protect each other.
We can't even protect ourselvesfrom pain and emotional
(35:51):
difficult struggles that we gothrough in our lives.
So what can we do?
I think I learned the power ofbeing present for another person
, really being present foranother person, and I felt like,
if she wanted me, I could dothat Something.
I could do that Right,something I could do if she
(36:11):
wanted me.
And again, you know she's anadult and she's going through
her experience that God gave her.
That's what she needs to gothrough, and she has parents
who've suffered a loss thatcould be seen to be somewhat
similar and we've survived andthrived.
So perhaps that's comforting.
(36:31):
I never shielded my childrenfrom knowing that they had a
brother who died.
He was my first child.
They knew about him and I hadyearly yacht site gatherings of
women in my home to talk aboutlessons I had learned, and she
was aware of that on some level.
Again, one never wants it tohappen to you or to anybody, you
know, and it's not under ourcontrol.
(36:52):
So it was very, it was veryheartbreaking to see and to know
that she had to go through thisand I also truly believe that
it was not.
That it was very, it was verymuch.
God was here, god was cryingalong with us, and that we had
each other to help each other,through to help each other
(37:14):
through.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Did it bring up all your pain of Sam again, Like
were you crying for yourdaughter, for your granddaughter
and for your son.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
No, I don't think so.
I do think I had very goodgrief therapist.
I went to a lot of therapyafter Sam died.
There were so many therapistsaround in those days.
There weren't so manytherapists, they were all they
weren't.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
I cannot, because he said he went to.
Didn't you say you went to alot?
Oh, you said a lot of therapy,you had a lot of therapists.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Right.
I went to a lot of therapy.
I had to find a therapist, butshe was really great.
Thank God, baruch Hashem, thatI found a good therapist and I
did a lot of very difficult workand very challenging work and
very hard work and it was took alot of strength and it took a
lot, a lot, a lot.
But I didn't have a choice.
I couldn't function like eitherI just stay in bed the rest of
my life or something, or I justhave to deal with this on some
(38:04):
level because I don't want to bethis well.
So the therapist really helpedme a lot, a lot, a lot.
And then all the research I'vedone and then finding the Hever
Ketisha as a place to put mykohos, like I can, that I can do
and I want to do it, and itgave my me a lot of strength to
(38:33):
be able to let go of Sam at somepoint.
I let go of him and I don't.
I don't have any expectationsthat anybody else is doing
whatever they're doing andwhatever they do is right for
them.
On some level I let go of Samlike he was in a good place and
he didn't need me anymore andthank God, I have other children
and I was focused on them.
And then Sonia lost her baby andit was.
(38:55):
She's going to be okay.
I know she's going to be okaybecause she's going to be okay
and I'll be there for her asmuch as she wants, but she's
going to be okay.
The lessons I've learned andthe person I've become because
of Sam I credit Sam, credit Godfor giving us that suffering so
that we could be the people thatwe're trying to be.
(39:15):
We're trying to be the peoplethat we can be, having
experienced that Right, or ifthat makes any sense.
So I want Sam's life to havebeen meaning and if I've changed
and I've learned things, then Iwant to share those things
because I think they could behelpful to other people.
So I'm helping Sonia and I'mhelping whoever comes my way,
and I wrote this book in orderto have this information be more
(39:38):
accessible to people.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
So I want to talk about that, but I know we have
to end soon.
But let me first just ask youabout this, because when you
said you let go of Sam, I knowwhat you mean, but I think a
listener might be confusedbecause they might think letting
go means that you're all fine,you don't think about him and
you moved on, and you moved onand you're good.
But and you let go, but itdoesn't mean you forgot him.
So I guess I just if you could,I definitely didn't forget him.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Very shortly after Sam died, my mother died.
She was 56 and she died.
About six months after Sam died, I felt like I topped and
tailed, like I lost my child andI lost my mom.
So I lost, like these, tworeally important people in my
life, and it took me a lotlonger.
I'm still processing the deathof my mother, but with Sam I
(40:25):
really came to a belief thathe's sitting under the Kisih
HaKavod with Kaddish Baruch Huhe'srah and he's.
He did his, he did.
He did everything he wassupposed to here to do and and
he's good, he is really good.
So letting go maybe means Idon't feel weighted down by
grief.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
(40:45):
But with my mother I'm still alittle bit weighted down with
grief, because I haven't,because it's a different
relationship, but yeah so, buton some level we all live with
grief.
I think we live in a verygrief-filled world.
There's grief all around us andI truly believe for most people
, many people, sharing it andspeaking about it is very
(41:08):
healing healing.
Dr Edith Eva Agar is a survivorof Auschwitz and her little quip
is expression is the antidoteto depression.
Not for everybody, but manypeople feel that when they can
talk about it, that it's helpfulto them.
(41:28):
So, again, I think that's why Iwrote the book and, as I've
been speaking, people want tocome and tell me their stories
and I want to hear their stories.
I want to be an address forpeople to tell their stories
because it's cathartic, it helpsLike that person didn't die.
They died but they're stillalive in your memories, in where
you are in the world, in howyou are attached to those people
, attachment, grief, whereyou're still very much attached
(41:51):
to the person.
Even though they're notphysically here, you're still
attached to them.
And we have that in ourtradition, right?
We have Kaddish and we haveYizkor and we have Yart sites
and we have traditions to go tothe Kavari and we have a
connection with the loved onesthat have pre-deceased us.
So we don't completely let goof them.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Right, right, but I think what you're saying is so
important because when a topicis taboo for so many years, for
so long we don't really talkabout it.
And then you start talkingabout it and then people come
flocking to you and say, oh, Ihave to tell you my story.
It shows how important it is totalk about it.
People need to talk about it.
People need to talk about itand they want to know.
I want to know the spiritualstuff, but other people want to
(42:34):
know the physical stuff, yeah,or they just want somebody to
share their experience with.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
They want to be seen Right.
And when you express it,however you express it, do you
express it by talking about it?
Do you express it by crying?
You know everybody's saying youhave to be strong.
You have to be strong.
I don't even know what thatmeans.
I think it takes more strengthto ask for help and it takes
more strength to let yourselffeel the feelings, feel that
grief, and cry in a safe placewith safe people.
Right.
A good cry is very catharticand very healing.
(43:02):
Yeah, we're frightened ofcrying.
I don't really understand whywe keep holding back.
I have to be strong.
I have to be strong, I don'tknow.
I think actually, it's strongerto let it out.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
It is.
I have a hard time crying, butI have friends that cry so
easily and I always tell themlike I'm so jealous, I wish I
could cry like that.
Yeah, Sometimes it's like Ifeel like I really need to cry
and like I don't know it won't,I won't let it, whatever.
So yeah, Wow, okay.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
So anything like important that we didn't touch
kind of overlap of experiencesthat people have with grief and
they're also very individual andyour way through it or with it
is uniquely yours, and I thinkit doesn't help us to look at
other people and say, well, they, whatever, you think other
people are experiencing, thatyou're whatever try not to
compare yourself to other peopleand to have one or two or some
people that you feel you cantalk to and share your inner
(44:14):
lives with and your grief with.
For me is very important for myfunctioning that this isn't
something that's gone and nevertalked about again.
You know, we want to keep ourloved ones alive and the dignity
of our traditions and what Godput into place for us in terms
of how we take care of the deadand how it's all part of a big
(44:36):
continuum and that this life isa fleeting experience in the
greater realm of all.
That is so.
We live in a box of time andspace, but God created time and
space, so once we leave this boxand we're outside time and
(44:57):
space, then all be had to be theway it is.
So we're behind the tapestry.
We don't see the full picture,right, right, there's a picture
and God's in charge and Godloves us, and it's a beautiful
one, the picture.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, there's a picture, and God's in charge and
God loves us and it's abeautiful one.
The picture, yeah, yeah, I'mcurious.
You know so much.
Do you want to leave contactinformation in case anyone wants
to reach out to you or theycould reach out to you?
Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Absolutely so.
My email's very easyalissafelder613 at Gmail, and
you're welcome to be in touch.
I have a website, alissafalissafeldercom, and you can
look there and um, and I'm I'mhappy, to happy, to come to your
communities and speak, if youlike, to fabricatisha, or to
outreach communities or in reachcommunities, whatever, to
(45:43):
continue having theseconversations and having this
topic be one that we can allhave together and help each
other amazing.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Thank you so so much for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
You've just listened to an episode of the Relief from
Grief podcast with MiriamRiviet, brought to you by Mayrim
.
For more episodes, visit theMayrim website at wwwmayrimorg.
Help us reach more people whomight benefit from this podcast.
If you know someone who couldfind it helpful, please share it
with them.
If you have questions orcomments for the speaker, or if
(46:18):
you'd like to suggest a guestfor the podcast, we'd love to
hear from you.
Email us at relieffromgrief atmayrimorg.
We look forward to having youjoin us in the next episode.
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