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Living Wtih Life's Disappointments
Yom Kippur - Yizkor
September 22,
2007
Rabbi
Harold Kushner recently wrote his newest book
Overcoming Life’s Disappointments. Rabbi Kushner is
the author now of a number of books, the most noted one
being When Bad Things Happen to Good People. As I
mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Kushner wrote that book
a few years after he and his wife and daughter lost their
son and brother Aaron two days after his 14th birthday to
the disease of progeria. While we all have in common here
the sadness of loss and my heart goes out to each of you,
I feel most pained for those who like Rabbi Kushner have
suffered the death of a child at whatever age. There is no
manual of how life is supposed to be but somehow I can’t
help but feel that is not how life is supposed to be.
Rabbi Kushner knows about life’s disappointments in the
deepest way. Instead of a son with whom he could play
ball and dream about college, he dealt with his
debilitating illness on a daily basis.
All of our lives are filled with
disappointments large and small. A teenager gets turned
down by the girl he invites to the junior prom. The
student scores lower than what she hoped for on her SATS
or another student gets rejected from the college of his
dreams. We don’t get the promotion or worse get laid off.
We try a new business and it fails. There is no end to
the list of life’s disappointments. I just read that 50%
of all marriages that would have celebrated their 25th
anniversary since the year 2000 did not because of
divorce, separation or death. Each one something to be
mourned. Yesterday’s greatest promise turns to today’s
disappointment. One loses his job, another her health, a
third her friends and the list has no end.
Rabbi Kushner makes the point that we
cannot control life’s disappointments that come our way
but we can control how we respond to life’s
disappointments. He writes “How will you respond to those
disappointments? Will you respond with bitterness, envy,
and self-doubt, or with resilience and wisdom? On the one
hand there is nothing terribly profound in this
statement, it sounds so simple and yet if we could live
our lives according to this prescription, our lives could
be profoundly richer and happier and more fulfilling.
Of all of life’s disappointments, the
death of our loved ones is disappointment in a class unto
itself, it is disappointment with a capital D. None of us
here have escaped it. No one else will. We have all
suffered loss, but I imagine we have responded to our loss
in many different ways. Some continue to mourn
interminably, for far too long. Some feel there is no
longer reason to go on living or live with anger or
bitterness. In those cases, more than one person has
died. The departed and the survivor as well. Others
suffer terrible and even tragic loss and somehow find a
way to redeem that loss and redeem their life and
transform their own personal loss into some good for
others who still have the gift of life. That doesn’t take
away the pain but it gives the pain meaning and it honors
the life and memory of the loved one.
In response to my sermon on the first
day of Rosh Hashanah, I received a note from someone who
had suffered terrible loss this past year I was very
moved by the note. “I know that my life will never be
the same. I do not have the ability to change what
happened. What I can do is to try my best to make today
and every day better by appreciating each day that I have
here on this earth with my loved ones. What I can do is to
focus on the present and enjoy the life I have now with
the people I love.” After our lives are immeasurably
shattered we can live with the broken pieces all around us
and continue to be cut and scarred by them or we can
gather them and create a work of art like stained glass
and let the sun and illuminate this new piece of beauty we
have created.
Another family who suffered terrible
loss this past year asked me how they go about planting
trees, perhaps a grove in memory of their loved one.
Their immediate response to their loss was to want to give
because their loved one gave so much and this would be the
only way to keep her spirit with them.
A few years ago, I took my Confirmation
Class to the Mothers Day Walk for the Cure for Breast
Cancer. I was moved in seeing the number of survivors
walking but I was moved most in seeing the number of those
walking in memory of a loved one. There was no cure for
their loved one but in their loved one’s name they are
dedicated to helping to find a cure for for someone else’s
loved one and someday hopefully soon.
We are here because we have each
suffered life’s greatest disappointments. That was beyond
our control. We would have saved them if we could but we
could not. At this moment of sacred remembrance, we can
control how we remember. We can remember with anger and
bitterness and despair and burden others with our misery
or we can somehow redeem life’s deepest disappointment of
death and honor the life and memory of our loved one by
becoming more empathic, more loving, more giving and
helping to bring healing for others.
Amen
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