Recently I was talking to a few friends, and the conversation turned to the word hope and its definition. I realized that for me the definition of hope is recognizing that regardless of what comes my way, I can be okay. I might have to work through the emotions of sadness, anger fear… but at the end I can be okay.
A few weeks before my mother died, she called me up. She had just gotten off the phone from the doctor. He had said to her, “I will do my best, but the cancer is all over. I don’t think that there is much I can do.”
She was scared, and she was devastated. She really didn’t want to die. I was on the way out to the grocery store when she called me up with this bitter news.
Once again I was left holding the phone, wondering how I was supposed to know what to say to my mother who was young, who wanted to live, but had just been given a death sentence. I answered something that was probably not so appropriate, but I had nothing better so say. “Ma,” I said, “you have three up there and three down here. Why are you so afraid to die?”
She answered and said, “I am not so afraid to die. I just feel so bad for the three of you down here.”
In her fear and in her pain she was focusing on how the three of us down here, still in this world, and her concern for us. She knew that we would be immensely affected by her passing. She knew that we would suffer terrible pangs of loss. She knew that continuing onward would be a painful journey for us.
Today I wish I could continue that conversation with her. I would tell her that yes, her absence and my father’s absence have left a terrible void in me. I feel bereft and lonely. I feel as if I am left without guidance. I miss them on a daily basis and even more so when there is a simchah or a yom tov.
But I yearn so deeply to continue the conversation with her. I long to tell her how much she and my father have given me. Although I constantly mourn their absence, they haven’t left us with nothing. It is from them that I learned that we can go on, even with pain. We can go onward and feel joyful despite the pain that can arise at any given moment. They left us with the gift of continuing onward. They have left us with the gift of hope.
