A friend of mine, Harriet, sent me these two readings from the Yom Kippur memorial service she attended yesterday. They were comforting to me; they may comfort you, too.
We turn our thoughts to yesterday...to a world that lives only in our memory.
As we recall the days gone by, we know the past is irretrievable.
Yet --through the gift of memory, we recapture treasured moments and images.
We are thankful for the happiness we knew with those no longer here, with whom we lived and laughed and loved.
We praise the Eternal wellspring of life who links yesterday to tomorrow. We affirm that despite all the tragedy bound up with living, it is still good to be alive.
We understand that there can be no love without loss, no joy without sorrow. May we have the courage to accept the all of life -- the love and the loss - the joy and the sorry, as we remember them.
-by Evelyn Mehlman
ON HEALING
I had thought that your death
Was a waste and a destruction,
A pain of hardly to be endured.
I am only beginning to learn
That your life was a gift and a growing
And a loving left with me.
The desperation of death
Destroyed the existence of love,
But the fact of death
Cannot destroy what has been given.
I am learning to look at your life again
Instead of your death and your departing.
-by Marjorie Pizer
I've been thinking alot about the first one, the idea about love and loss necessarily going together. The idea has crossed my mind that it is better that L have no siblings so she never knows the pain I endure now that Alice is gone. I don't know.
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