Cousin Luvel was not especially religious because his mother wasn’t and as anyone knows, everyone’s sense of the divine comes like guilt directly from your mom.
But when she passed away, Luvel was stricken with grief and didn’t know how to lift its burden so he thought one night to light a candle and say Kaddish. On one of the shelves he found an old book with the English transliteration for he certainly had never heard or said the prayer himself.
Standing solemnly before the flickering candlelight, he held his hands out above the flame the way he had seen rabbis do sometimes and, struggling, he began to read the words of the prayer: “May His great name be blessed for ever, and to all eternity…”
“Stop! Enough already,” said a voice from behind.
Shaken, Luvel turned to see who the intruder was and gasped when he found that it was her, of, of all people, standing sternly at the doorway. What kind of miracle was this? he thought. Or demon.
But the vision at the doorway only made him feel more stubborn, for who was this apparition to tell him what to do or have the nerve to stand between him and his love for his mother. And so he turned back to the candle, closed his eyes, and began again, thinking it was simply his nerves.
“Enough with the prayers,” she said in that voice that she sometimes used with him that was somewhere between a snicker and a snark.
He opened his eyes to see her standing now right in front of him. Not translucent, not floating. Just his mom as real as ever.
“This is not happening,” he said to no one in particular.
“That’s what I’m saying,” she insisted.
“But why?” he asked as though it was the most logical thing in the world to have an argument with your dead mother over a candle. “I’m saying the kaddish for you.”
“Driving me nuts is what you’re doing.”
“But this a blessing for the…well, you know.”
“It’s nothing but one big fat kiss-up to God. May his name be great, may his name be blessed, we exalt him and honor him and extol him. Please! I raised you to be a poet not a schnook.”
“I haven’t written much lately. I’ve lost my voice.”
“Then don’t waste time repeating this drek over and over. It is a complete waste of language. Use your own words. I told you that since day one.”
“I just wanted to…I mean I thought you…that is…”
“You want to honor my memory, bubella? Then write me an ode. Or a song even better. Make me something that never existed before. You can sew your heart shut with other people’s words and it will never sing again.”
Sew your heart, he thought. That was a good phrase. Had he come up with that or she? He closed his eyes for a moment to try to see the answer but there was none and when he opened them again she was gone and only an echo of her lingered.
Luvel thought for a moment that he understood what she meant. He even had a story forming in his mind about it. Just to be thorough, though, he finished the kaddish anyway.
But without the slightest sense of comfort.
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