Loss is in the details I would never have noticed except that Pam pointed it out to me as I looked at her mother Nora sleeping in the hospital bed: She did not have any eyebrows. There were two crescent depressions in their place. “That’s because when Mom was eighteen years old she thought she would be smart and shave off her eyebrows and put makeup there to look like she had them. But they never grew back. So I would always see her, flipping out her little mirror, and making her quick little movements with her cosmetic pencil to make them keep looking like they were there. So it’s weird looking at her face and not seeing anything there where the eyebrows should be. So I miss seeing them there and now that she is too weak to use her liner I miss seeing her fill in those two bare recessed spots on her face.” Thus her mother had surrendered even her stand-in eyebrows for good.
Nora’s granddaughter Merced was there as well, reminiscing about this micro story of the eyebrows as well. Meanwhile I could not help but notice that Pam’s and Merced’s eyebrows were only minimally present on their faces, like the sketchiest of crescents. After everyone ran out of things to say about eyebrows, the talk tilted away from intimacy and more towards small talk, as if they were afraid anything more than a normal pause would hint they had enough of seeing a hospice chaplain and that I should go. Merced announced she was a real estate agent. I said, “I bet you encounter plenty of emotional drama with people buying and selling such an important thing like a home.” “Oh yes,” she agreed. “Each home has its own story.”
I thought about Merced’s remark, and all that it implied. So much emotion and personal history is invested in the places we dwell in, and so much loss and confusion faced when we sell them. Then there is so much disorientation upon occupying another. If one little thing out of place like eyebrows gone missing can throw us off it is no wonder what a confounding experience it is to move into a new place.
Nora of course, who had transferred to a hospice residence, was in alien surroundings. But almost constant sleep guarded her from registering all the other things she had given up besides the mock eyebrows. She still had one more “home” left to move to, and the story about that place is perhaps the one most often told albeit with so little to go on besides the hypotheses of one’s religion.
Rabbi and board certified Chaplain Karen B. Kaplan is author of Encountering the Edge: What People Told Me Before They Died, (Pen-L Publishing, 2014) a series of true anecdotes capped with the deeper reasons she chose her vocation. She has also recently published a collection of science fiction stories, Curiosity Seekers (Createspace Independent Publishing, 2017). She has submitted multiple entries published in Expired And Inspired.
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Gamliel Café
Gamliel Students are invited to a free informal online session, held monthly. On the third (3rd) THURSDAY of each month, different person(s) will offer a short teaching or share some thoughts on a topic of interest to them, and those who are online will have a chance to respond, share their own stories and information, and build our Gamliel Institute community connections. This initiative is being headed up by Rena Boroditsky and Rick Light. You should receive email reminders monthly. The next scheduled session of the Gamliel Café is July 19th, featuring Edna Stewart.
If you are interested in teaching a session, you can contact us at rboroditsky@jewisgh-funerals.org, rlight@jewish-funerals.org, or info@jewish-funerals.org.
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Taste of Gamliel Series
The 2018 Taste of Gamliel series has concluded, but it is not too late if you want to access the recordings. You can Register for the 2018 series, Your’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone: Jewish Practices of Remembrance, or any of the series from prior years. There are usually five sessions in a series, and each session is approximately 90 minutes.
Registration for Taste of Gamliel is mandatory to access the sessions. Registration is free, but there is a suggested minimum donation of $36 for each series to help us defray the out of pocket costs.
Those registered will be sent the information on how to connect to the sessions. To register, click here: register.
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Gamliel Continuing Education Courses
Gamliel students should be on the lookout for information on a series of Gamliel Continuing Education Courses, advanced sessions focusing in on different topics. These will be in groups of three ninety minute sessions (three consecutive Wednesdays) offered twice yearly, with different topics addressed in each series. The goal is to look at these topics in more depth than possible during the core courses. The first course took place in Fall 2017, focusing on Psalms, and the second was on The World to Come and the Zohar.
The next course will be November 28th, December 5th, and December 12th. We will continue to look at death as seen in the Zohar, taught by Beth Huppin.
Registration is required, and there will be a tuition charge of $72 for each three session series. Contact us for information, by email info@jewish-funerals.org, or call 410-733-3700, or simply register online at www.jewish-funerals.org/gamreg/.
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Gamliel Course
The next course in the cycle of core courses offered by the Gamliel Institute will be Course 4 – Nechama/Comfort. It will be offered online during the Fall from October 9th to December 25th on Tuesday evenings, for 90 minutes each week for 12 weeks. The classes will begin at 5 pm PST/8 pm EST. Primary instructors will be Dan Fendel, Edna Stewart, and Janet Madden, with other guest instructors.
Registration is open – click here.
The course planned for Winter 2019 is Course 2 – Chevrah Kadisha: Taharah & Shmirah.
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DONATIONS
Donations are always needed and most welcome to support the work of Kavod v’Nichum and the Gamliel Institute, helping us to bring you the annual conference, offer community trainings, provide scholarships to students, refurbish and update course materials, expand our teaching, support programs such as Taste of Gamliel, the Gamliel Café, and the Gamliel Continuing Education courses, provide and add to online resources, encourage and support communities in establishing, training, and improving their Chevrah Kadisha, and assist with many other programs and activities. There is a matching donation program in progress so your dollars go further. See the website for details.
You can donate online at http://jewish-funerals.org/gamliel-institute-financial-support or by snail mail to either:
Kavod v’Nichum, or to The Gamliel Institute,
c/o David Zinner, Executive Director, Kavod v’Nichum,
8112 Sea Water Path,
Columbia, MD 21045.
Kavod v’Nichum and the Gamliel Institute] are recognized and registered 501(c)(3) organization, and donations may be tax-deductible to the full extent provided by law. Call 410-733-3700 if you have any questions or want to know more about supporting Kavod v’Nichum or the Gamliel Institute.
You can also become a member (Individual or Group) of Kavod v’Nichum to help support our work. Click here (http://www.jewish-funerals.org/money/).
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SUBMISSIONS WELCOME
Please note: this blog depens on you for content. Without you it cannot publish new material. If you have an idea for an entry you would like to submit to this blog, please be in touch. Email J.blair@jewish-funerals.org. We are always interested in original unpublished materials that would be of interest to our readers, relating to the broad topics surrounding the continuum of Jewish preparation, planning, rituals, rites, customs, practices, activities, and celebrations approaching the end of life, at the time of death, during the funeral, in the grief and mourning process, and in comforting those dying and those mourning, as well as the actions and work of those who address those needs, including those serving in Bikkur Cholim, Caring Committees, the Chevrah Kadisha, as Shomrim, funeral providers, in funeral homes and mortuaries, and operators and maintainers of cemeteries.
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