
There are two verses in Torah, in Parshat Vayigash (Genesis 44:18–47:27), that tear loose all the grief that hides in my heart.
Two verses.
“I’m Joseph, is my father still alive?”
“My son Joseph is alive? I will go see him before I die.”
When I was a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 or 8 years old, my mother liked to sing Vernon Dalhart’s The Prisoners Song. She would sing it to me at bedtime.
Oh I wish I had someone to love me/ Someone to call me their own/ Oh I wish I had someone to live with/ Cause I’m tired of living alone
Won’t you meet me tonight in the moonlight/ Won’t you meet me tonight all alone/ For I have a sad story to tell you/ It’s a story that’s never been told
I’ll be carried to the new jail tomorrow/ Leaving my poor darling alone/ With these cold prison bars all around me/ And my head on a pillow of stone
Oh if I had a ship on the ocean/ All decked out in silver and gold/ Well before my poor darling would suffer/ That ship would be anchored and sold
Oh if I had the wings of an angel/ Over these prison walls I’d fly/ I would fly to the arms of my darling/ And there I’d be willing to die
And I would cry. Because it hurt to imagine loving someone so much, missing someone so much, yearning for someone so much, that it would be enough just to see them and hug them. Just for a minute, and then life would be complete. Then you could die, and all would be well.
And then my mother would laugh. Not a mean laugh, but a sweet laugh, a loving laugh. And she would say, “You’re so sensitive.”
I did not know it at the time, but I was sensitive to the family secret. The adults in our family kept something hidden from me and from my younger brother Dave for as long as they could. And here was the secret: We had an older brother, Freddy. And Freddy died when he was four years old. He had appendicitis, and went to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. This was a simple surgery, even in 1959. But the anesthesiologist made a mistake. Freddy slipped into a coma, and a few weeks later he died.
This was a secret. But there were clues. So when I was ten years old, I asked my mother. “Mom, did we have a brother?” She stroked my hair and said, “Of course you did.” ”Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked her. “We didn’t want you and David to worry that something like that could happen to you,” she said. “I’m not worried,” I said.
Well, I’m now six times ten years old, so I understand more. My mother kept this secret because it protected an even deeper secret. The psychologist Louise Kaplan puts it this way:
Perhaps you have lost a child. Each night you tuck in his teddy bear and whisper word for word his favorite bedtime story as though it were a prayer he just might hear. But, you think, no one must know about your secret dialogue with the dead.
Of course Dave and I were a distraction for Mom, and sometimes we were even a comfort. But grief is complicated. She felt helpless, and victimized, and guilty all at once. But she had no one to talk with. So, she sang, and I cried with her.
Think of Jacob. Imagine him crying, “If only I had protected you, my son, before you died.” Think of Joseph, crying, “If only I had reached out to you, Father, before you died.” Imagine them both, parent and child, wishing they had just a moment to make things right.
A few months after my Mom died, I had this dream:
I am alone in an entertainment complex, after hours. No one has briefed me, but I know that when the elevator opens, Mom will be inside. We will be allowed a short visit. The elevator door opens and, sure enough, there stands Mom. I rush in and throw my arms around her. But Mom starts to weaken immediately. I help her out of the elevator, and we sit on a chair. I cradle Mom on my lap. I say, “If I had the wings of an angel.” Mom says, “And then I would gladly die.” Her vitality is spent. Mom closes her eyes.
Jacob says to his son Joseph, “I can die now, because I have seen your face, and you are still alive.”
And in this beautiful fantasy of grief redeemed, they get seventeen more years together.
**
Find Louise Kaplan’s beautiful book on grief here. Words above offered as a Dvar Torah (sermon) at Or Shalom Synagogue on January 4, 2025.
Your drashes are always evocative for me and inspirational. I have always wondered whether Joseph ever tried to get in touch with Jacob before our Torah story has them meet, or did he assume his father had somehow condoned his death/ or absence. I went to the book you referenced about grief and my question is— was the brother who died, your brother? Is the author of the book you referenced, your mother? I loved your Aunt Susan in the Bay Area, and her art work, and her husband’s poetry. Was she Louise Kaplan’s sister? And Happy New Year to you— I look forward to more drashes in the year to come. Blessings for goodness, peace, and joy!
Thanks so much, Cheryl for this kind note.
The medieval commentators wondered why Joseph didn’t try to contact his father. Below, I paraphrase from earlier notes.
Ramban says, “Joseph’s first objective was to fulfill his dreams of being successful.”
Another commentator replies, “Quite the opposite—Joseph did not know his brothers told their father he was dead. He thought his father knew he had been sold into slavery. So, for years, Joseph wondered, ‘Why hasn’t anyone come to rescue me?'”
More recently Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch says, “Joseph wanted to contact his father, but he did not know how to tell his father he had been sold by his brothers. If he let his father know where he was, the truth would come out, and the family would be even more fractured.”
Thanks for remembering Susan and Morton. Susan and I are Duhans. (She was my late father’s much younger first cousin.) Kaplan is my husband’s family name. We are not related to Louise Kaplan. I did not know Louise, but a friend gifted me with her book at an important times.
Wishing you a wonderful 2025! Goodness, peace, and joy seems like a great blessing. Thank you.
Dear Reb Laura,
I am deeply touched by this story and hearing a small part of you and your family’s history. While never having had children I have suffered grievous loss with the death of my brother Jack, I have been opened by hearing Dale’s experiences of her history. And your drash has opened me up as little else could. From your words I come to believe that some losses are never reconcilable or consolable, and then some are. Perhaps not by “forgiving” rather only through understanding.
I only knew the last line of The Prisoner’s Song from my days in Habonim summer camp. I am very grateful to learn the whole of it. Thank you for stimulating my learning, creating community and connection for me, and contributing to my life’s meaning.
Shabbat Shalom,
zelik
Dear Reb Laura,
This photograph of Freddy holding you, and you crying, is heartbreaking, especially after learning of your mother’s covert grief and your difficult inheritance.
with love,
Marianne
Marianne, thank you so much for this kind note.
It is such a precious photo. I love the look on Freddy’s face, how delighted he is to have a baby sibling.
My mother said it was snowing that day, even though it was April.
Laura
How wonderful to enjoy Reb Laura and Charles at the bimah yesterday, taking me back to those “good old days” .
I so enjoyed this Dvar which delivered all the essentials i can count on findng in your Dvarim: personal memory, dream, Bible and symbolism.
And i can be comforted by knowing that as the tears start pouring down my cheeks, i am not alone in my sadness.
Thanks, Julie, for this sweet note! We enjoyed last Shabbat as well. Shabbat Shalom!
Zelik, thank you so much for this very moving note.
I had the opportunity to meet your brother Jack, and remember his kindness and sense of humour.
I think often of a line in Mary Oliver’s poem *For Example,*: about “the place where, sometimes, sometimes not, things can be mended.” You say something similar, and very beautifully. Thank you.
Laura
Thank you rabbi Laura for your piece. The picture of Freddy holding you is poignant as is the story of your mother holding her grief and not wanting to worry you and your brother about death. The dream about your mother is also moving. Yes, there is a happy ending not only for Joseph and Jacob, but also his brothers/sons. I wished for a happier ending with my mother, but she was ripped from my dad and me in a senseless car accident. One thinks: if only the car she died in had been held up by a traffic light, the driver had gone just 1 km slower, the journey had been delayed by one minute. What I have is what you have and those blessed enough to have: loving memories through which we find ourselves in our grief and by which our loved ones are with us. Through memory we can re-member and put together the shattered shards of loss and grief. The broken mirror memory constructs from those shards often distort what they represent, but it can also be instructive: that life is fragile, easily broken, often distorted by the ways we see ourselves and those around us. Yet we are in a sense who and how we remember. Thank you for your wisdom and sensitivity.
Thank you, Harry, for this beautiful comment. You acknowledge that what is broken cannot always be repaired; yet we do make of it something precious that holds our love and our memories. Blessings — Laura