Eulogy for Jessica by Rachel
I'm going to read two poems. The first one is not mine. It's author unknown. It's one that I've read during many Shiva Minyanim, often just because I was browsing in the back of the book. But I think it speaks to the occasion, and the second one is one of my own.
In Many Houses
In many houses
all at once,
I see my mother and father
and they are young
as they walk in.Why should my
tears come,
to see them laughing?That they cannot
see me
is of no matter:I was once
their dream:
now
they are mine.
[Author Unknown. In Many Houses. In Rabbi David A. Teutsch (Editor-in-Chief), Kol Haneshamah Daily. (Readings, p. 492.) Wyncote, PA: The Reconstructionist Press. 1996.]
This is my own.
For Madre: What do we do now?
What do we do now? The space that held
your life is sunlight-bright but silent.
As you told my son, your grandson, long
ago when he was small, when someone
dies they'll not be found in any room
or cupboard, not sitting on the couch,
not mixing cookies in the kitchen,
not pouring tea in flowered china
cups tray-carried to coffee table;
nor absorbing all available
books on a single solid topic—
musicians’ biographies, civil
war histories, serious novels.
Neat shelves retain your hands’ deft motion.
So much is still the way you left it.What do we say when the gentle smooth
musical strands of your voice resound
no more, no matter how strong our wish?
We can protest with tears, sway dizzy
with fear at our wide new loneliness,
horizon to horizon not green
nor verdant, just flat empty dusty
brown surface vacant after summer.
Growth, blooms, stems are gone before the cold.
We are bereft. Yet seasons cycle.
As grief's husk holds, releases, sows seeds,
the lessons you lived out before us
will germinate anew, sprout small shoots.
Every candle we set match to,
every visitor we welcome
links our days, nights, weeks, months, years, decades
in a gardener's calendar, prayer.
What do we do now? Weep. Watch. Await
next growing season. Turn soil, blend fresh
nourishment. Extend your life with ours.
[© Rachel Friedlander Tickner
March 4, 2025]
Thank you.