Saying Goodbye

Goodbye
Rabbi Shira Stutman

There is a rotary phone in a phone booth in Japan that’s not connected to anything.

Mieke Meek on the NPR show This American Life tells the story--

“The booth was purchased by Itaru Sasaki and placed in his garden, in the town of Otsuchi, which suffered from a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. “Otsuchi had been there for 100 years. In 30 minutes, it was gone-- almost totally flattened.The tsunami and the earthquake that went with it killed...over 19,000 people. Another 2,500 are still missing. And in the aftermath, of course, families struggled to figure out how they were going to move forward without the people they loved.”

The phone booth is “an old English-style one. It's square and painted white, and has glass window panes. Inside is a black rotary phone, resting on a wood shelf. This phone, connected to nowhere, didn't work at all.

“But that didn't matter to Itaru. He just needed a place where he felt like he could talk to his cousin [who had died in the tsunami], a place where he could air out his grief. And so putting an old phone booth in his garden, which sits on this little windy hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, it felt like a perfect solution.

“Soon, people started showing up randomly on his property, and walking right into the phone booth. This has been going on for five years now. Itaru estimates that thousands of people from all over Japan have come to use his phone.”

They come to speak to their loved ones lost and missing. They come to say goodbye.

The sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot writes in her book Exits: Visible and Invisible about the importance of honoring, marking, and ritualizing leave-taking. The Jewish tradition would agree. From Havdalah at the end of Shabbat to Hoshana Rabbah at the end of the fall holidays, on which we sing all the greatest hits from Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot; to benching, the prayer after the meals; from the blessing parents say at a bar or bat mitzvah that recognizes that their child is now an adolescent; to the bedeken at a wedding in which parents of the celebrant offer a parting blessing to their child; Judaism asks us to mark the ending with as much ceremony as we do the beginning. This stands counter to prevailing culture, in which “‘stories have a beginning, middle, and an end...and you [focus on] the beginning.’” We love the start-up entrepreneur, the honeymoon, the lede. What if we instead valued what happened at the other end: a reflection on the way a business conducts itself over a century; a blessing on a long marriage, an author’s conclusion? The beginning contains only the faintest hint of all that is yet to come.

We learn in the Talmud that,

Rabbi Eliezer would say: Repent one day before your death. Asked his disciples: Does a man know on which day he will die? Said he to them: So being the case, he should repent today, for perhaps tomorrow he will die....

Yom Kippur serves as a “death rehearsal,” a time to fast, wear white clothing that mimic the shrouds we will wear in the casket, and acknowledge we don’t know when our day will come. Yom Kippur reminds us of the tenuousness of every day. We have to treat each leave-taking as if it might be the last one; because it might be.

American Jewish culture is so close to being great at saying goodbye. Think for a moment of the so-called “Jewish goodbye,” which, according to one article, “can be seen at any event involving more than two Jews:

1. [It] begins...with one Jew moving towards another with an expression of regret, followed by whispers in hushed tones: ‘I’m so sorry, but we must get going.’

2. This, the presentation of the Jewish Goodbye, is received with equal expressions of sadness and the common reply of, ‘What? No, we haven’t had dessert yet.’

3. The third step of the ritualistic dance involves a combination of hugs, kisses, and...a conversation about something ‘important’ ….

4. After what may be 40-50 minutes past the original proffering of a goodbye [and eating dessert], the Jew now feels...bloat[ed]. This generates the final conversation about stomach ailments and other recently diagnosed conditions which may or may not be contagious, operable, [or] terminal....

Then they go.

We intuit that something big should happen at that moment of transition. That’s why we don’t just ghost. But we don’t actually do it.

At its most basic, the process of saying goodbye is a type of gratitude practice. Consider the best office farewell party you’ve ever attended. Or the worst. When we take of co-workers, or anyone who has supported us over a period of time, we may be inclined just to leave--and usually no one would fault us. Often there’s water under the bridge that isn’t worth re-hashing, and we just want it to be over already. What would it mean to pause instead, and to offer words of gratitude? Many of us in this room already cultivate a gratitude practice, but often we do it privately, in meditation or prayer or journals. The grateful goodbye asks us to turn to the actual person or people you may never see again, and thank them. Tell your colleague, or your boss, or your work spouse how much you’ve relied on them, how much you’ve learned. Don’t BS; tell what’s true. And then leave. Done right, there’s closure--freedom--in the act.

The truth is that when we say goodbye, we are of course not wholly leaving each other. Even if we don’t see each other, what we have shared will remain with us forever. We can return to what we have learned--even if we can’t even articulate in words what it is they’ve taught us--over and over again. A really beautiful Jewish ritual called the “hadran” explains this better than I ever could. When we finish studying a tractate of Talmud, we don’t just close the book and move on. Instead there’s a series of blessings we say, beginning with the phrase “Hadran Alach:”  “We will return to you, Tractate,” we say, “and you will return to us; our mind is on you, Tractate ____, and your mind is on us; we will not forget you, Tractate ____, and you will not forget us – not in this world and not in the next world.” No departure is truly final. Not from a book, not from a relationship. With those that matter most, when we go--whether separated by geography or death, whether we leave in anger or sadness--we are never done. We are “armed with the skills, insights, perspectives, and courage that have been forged” by these relationships, with all their blessings and challenges.

My family is moving, and I've been going through the ritualistic process of deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Notebooks from college. Books I once skimmed but know I'll never read again. Photos of friends with whom I'm no longer in touch. As I drop things into the give-away pile, I say goodbye. Not to the objects themselves, in a Marie Kondo, you-no-longer-give-me-pleasure sort of way, but instead to the people and experiences these objects represent. It’s a moment of recognition, of reflection, of gratitude. But it’s by no means permanent. While I say goodbye to the physical book, the experience of reading it is somehow still imprinted on me, still shapes who I am. If we are the sum of our experiences, I am made of each class I've sat in or college roommate I spent a year with, even if the physical artifacts are gone, even if the people are as well. I have the memories, some of which are not even conscious.

Every relationship contains layers of learning. Often they’re understood in the moment. Sometimes, though, they’re only understood in retrospect, once we move on to a new place, a new love. We can return to the memory of old relationships to mine new learning that we will take with us into the future.

But of course there’s still a loss. There will be no immediate future with this person; you will be apart. In that case, you have to gird yourself to face the future and accept that there will be new dreams with new beloveds. Even as the present moment is suffused with fear and loneliness. In the phone booth in Japan,

One call...was from a young father, with rectangle glasses and a long black jacket.

He lost his family-- both parents, his wife-- her name was Mine-- and one-year-old son, named Issei.

[He speaks to them on the phone.]

Dad? Mom? Mine? Issei? Issei? It's already been five years since the disaster. If this voice reaches you, please listen. Sometimes I don't know what I'm living for. Issei, Issei, please let me hear you call me Papa. Papa. Even though I built a new house--Dad? Mom? Mine and Issei--without all of you, it's meaningless.

I want to hear your reply, but I can't hear anything.

He hangs up the phone, takes off his glasses, and covers his eyes with his hands.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't save you.

To say a final goodbye from what you can no longer have--which often but not always takes place in the context of a death, divorce, break-up--takes a certain sort of courage. We acknowledge our own fragility; we acknowledge our loss. Megan Mayhew Bergman, in writing about elegies, notes that

Joan Didion wrote that “when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” It is sometimes not the actual person or place at the heart of a literary elegy, but our relationship to the lost thing, our essence in the wake of its absence. Didion is right. The heart of a[n]...elegy is ourselves. Who we were once and are no longer. What we can no longer have.

Even as we take our learning with us, if we’re being honest we have also to acknowledge how much we lose by their leaving, or by ours. If we are really saying goodbye to a person we once were, then we'll inevitably have to become someone new.

We talk about Shabbat as me’eyn olam ha’ba, a taste of the world to come. Saying goodbye to someone while they’re still alive is me’eyn ha’mavet, a taste of what it will be like when the person--or when you--die. And perhaps that’s what’s most difficult of all. When we say an authentic goodbye, we acknowledge that this might be the very last time we see them. We expose our own neediness, at this precise intersection of two deep truths: we are deeply dependent on each other to survive and grow; and at our core, we’re alone. I don’t know which is more terrifying. “These moments [of parting] are pregnant with paradox--the counterpoint and convergence of vulnerability and toughness, inertia and movement, urgency and patience, chaos and control.” It’s a banquet of all our messiest emotions, and we have to choose them all. It’s exhausting just to think about; perhaps it’s easier to sit back and have more dessert, instead. Or to ghost.

Think for a moment about the people who are important to you. Now imagine them through the lens of goodbye. If you knew they were leaving you for a week, for a month, forever. What would you say? What would you value? Appreciate? What petty disagreements would you let go of? How would you hug them, kiss them? What kind of house would you build for them? What would you say face-to-face so that you wouldn’t need to say it into a phone booth that connects to nothing?

I think back to the people I have had to say goodbye to over the years--Rabbit, my Outward Bound Instructor from the parent-child trip I took with my dad when I was 16, who taught me how to jump off a cliff and take risks I never thought possible, who i’ll never see again and wouldn’t even recognize if I did. My dear college friend Beth Samuels, who taught me what it means to be a welcoming presence to all types of Jews and who died, too young, at 28. My counselors Grace and Mohammed, from Legacy International camp, which I attended when I was in middle school, and who taught me to love Israel while also fighting for Palestinian dignity. My rabbinical school chevruta Adam, who has no interest in mediocrity and with whom I spent untold hours deciphering the arguments of the ancient Talmudic rabbis. And I marvel that most of these people don’t know that I stand stronger in my rabbinate, as a mom and a partner, as a human because of their influence. How much richer my life is because of their teaching, prodding, generosity of spirit, humor, support, arguments. They don’t know that the table they set for me--scratch that, the table I set with their support--is filled to overflowing, and I am grateful beyond measure.

Somewhere in Japan, there is a booth, in which people who without warning lost their loved ones pick up an old, ratty black phone connected to nothing, and talk with people who have died. And some of us in this room will need to find our way of saying goodbye to people who have died, of putting regrets and gratitude and farewells into the ether. But there are plenty of people, still alive, to whom we owe heartfelt words of transition. The framework of an open-hearted and loving leave-taking is an invitation to a new orientation--a new way of appreciating the people in your life. We stand in the liminal space, one hand on the mezuzah, and reach up, reach out, with a kiss. Thank you, we say. Or I’m sorry. In some way, we will return to you, and you will return to us; because of the teachings you have passed on and the way you are in this world, our mind is on you, and your mind is on us; we will not forget you, please do not forget us – not in this world and not in the next.

G’mar tov, everyone. May we be signed and sealed for a meaningful new year.