by Rabbi Peter S. Knobel 
Yom Kippur - Yiskor 5760

The Butterfly by Leon Hilton

The black-cloaked figures
Cloud around the deep pit,
A muffled sob is heard.
The brilliantly green grass glistens in the bright sun.
A yellow butterfly appears.
It dances briefly on the wind
Before settling onto the slowly descending wooden box,
Wings still silently beating.
It rests for a while atop the coffin.
And when it reaches the bottom,
Up it soars,
Disappearing into the endless blue sky.

Leon wrote this poem in response to the death of his grandmother. The butterfly ascending and disappearing is a beautifully poignant image. In death, the soul the ephemeral animation of our bodies ascends into the divine abyss. At that moment all is changed forever. Our dear ones are seen and felt and heard only through the receptors of memory. Their presence is an absence. We long for more tangible and direct contact. Photographs, a piece of clothing, the smell of perfume, a song, and a moment we wish to share return them to our side and fleetingly we and they are together again .

The white fast of Yom Kippur is a spiritual shroud that wraps mortality about our consciousness. We are here to assert that eternity is more than a dream. Our loved ones reside in the bosom of our eternal Father swaddled in her divine love. Today we dare to speak the names of those who created, nurtured, sustain and preserved us. The names are sacred for they distinguish them from all others. I am stuck by how much I miss those who died. They mean so much to me and I still long for their touch, to hear their voices and to speak to them. So many things still need to be said. So much business remains unfinished. So much continues to be unresolved. If only… just one more time…It would, I know, be different. I miss you.

At this service I feel time passing rapidly. As I survey the congregation my eyes strain to see the faces that are preserved only in memory. So many seats have different occupants. I remember those whose voices were yesterday but a telephone call away. To this day at Sunday at 1:00 pm, it is my instinct to find a telephone and call my parents. It was a weekly ritual from 1960 when I left for school until 1990 when my mother died. In rapid succession people who are important to me pass from the scene. On Rosh Hashanah morning when I rise to give the Devar Torah I think of Rabbi David Polish z"l whose words inspired us. As I scrutinize the list of those who died between last Yom Kippur and this Yom Kippur. My mind is flooded with images. Especially poignant is the death of Julie Gutterman, the wife of our friend and colleague Rabbi Leslie Gutterman. Only a year ago I implored you to be bone marrow donors on her behalf and after a valiant but futile struggle her soul is bound up with bond of eternal life. Barbara Baum who challenged us every day to remember or brothers and sisters in the Newly Independent States is now in Heaven pleading their case. Through her Donetsk became more than a small dot upon the globe. My temptation is to multiply names for each person is worthy of mention, worthy of public memorial but alas it is impossible. But in just a few moments each of us will in silent devotion remember and ask God to remember and we will recite a litany of names of those who joined the heavenly hosts this year.

Each of us knows the pain of loss. Some of us bear the open wounds of recent bereavement and for some our wounds have been covered over by the scars tissue of the passing years. For most of us the new wounds are intertwined with the old. The surface of our soul is always raw.

The poet Merle Feld has written about observing her mother’s Yahrzeit:

It is almost midnight
And I’m sitting here in the living room
Keeping your yahrzeit candle company.
It is so many years now
I closed my eyes to remember
Something real about you
And you what I thought of?
I saw you ironing—
his underwear!

When I was a girl I wondered if someday
I’d love someone enough to iron his underwear.
Well I’ve been married twenty years
And I love him very much
But I don’t iron his underwear
I don’t even fold it
I sort of stuff it in the drawer.
Truly I love him very much
But I still think what I thought when I was 11—
No one sees your underwear.

I’m all grown upon now
Completely grown up now
And still I do not get it—
No one sees your underwear.

I am not being critical
I’m not making fun
It’s just that we have to face it –
I’m a different kind of wife.

You’re gone
And he’s gone
The foyer is gone
The ironing board is gone.
All that remains is me
sitting in this chair
looking at the yahrzeit candle
remembering.

Ah the small memories that transport us back! Often in a crowded airport or at rush hour on Michigan Avenue, I see you pass me at distance. I want to run and catch you but I know that it is not you because you have died. The dead are with us and they are not with us. What strange irony memory creates! The mind tricks us and yet it is memory that makes meaning possible. Life is a series of memories lived and re-lived. Our repertoire of behaviors is the accumulation of what others have taught us by their words and deeds. As I examine myself I am acutely aware that my words and mannerisms are unconscious maybe not so unconscious imitations of the people who touched me deeply. In the best and worst sense each of us the living memory of our ancestors.

Now during the hour of recollection let us take to heart this services message of consolation. Let us be attuned to the rhythm of time passing. Each heartbeat marks our journey from birth to death. May we recall for good and for inspiration our dear ones whose souls like the butterfly floats in the endless blue sky. Their eternity and ours are locked in the grasp of memory. May our hope transcend our scientific skepticism and may we have faith that more than memory joins the past and the future. Our Judaism teaches that the grave is not our eternal home.

Birth is a beginning and death is destination
Life is a journey
a sacred pilgrimage
made stage by stage
from birth to death
to life everlasting.

When all is said and done our final words to all of our family and friends are: I miss you. I will never forget you. Do not forget me.

Amen.