A Mother Struggles with Giving Thanks by Sherri Mandell
The Forward, November 16, 2001
On Thanksgiving we are supposed to give thanks. But what does it mean
to give thanks? It means being grateful for what one has and not dwelling
on what one doesn't have. It means being humble enough to accept what
one has been given.
When my children were babies, I was grateful to have survived another
day. It was so much work taking care of little ones. They so wore me out
that sometimes I would put them in the car and drive around just to get
them to fall asleep.
Now I am also grateful to have survived another day, but it is because
I live with pain as my companion.
When my 13-year-old son Koby was killed this year, stoned to death by
Arab terrorists in the West Bank, I was sure my blessings were over. But
life always surprises.
During the shiva, a woman I know who has 10 children came up to me and
said, "Your son blessed you in life, and he will continue to bless
you." Her 18-year-old brother had died as a soldier in the Yom Kippur
War. She told me that her mother had suffered but had also received gifts
from her brother's death. I didn't know what she was talking about, but
I wanted to believe her.
Now that my son has been dead for almost six months, I am beginning to
understand what she meant. I am forced to reconsider the whole notion
of blessing. If the Torah says that we are blessed, what does it mean
for me? When Isaac blessed his children, "his eyes were dim so that
he could not see." We, too, are supposed to close our eyes when we
bless our children. The reason: we are supposed to see our children as
whole, to overlook their faults.
Blessing doesn't mean that we get what we want. It can mean letting go
of what we think we want so that we can recognize the gifts we have already
been given.
Discovering blessing starts with accepting imperfection, both our own
and that of others.
Because Koby was my eldest child, he shouldered the brunt of my battles
with imperfection. I expected more from him than from his siblings, and
I found it easier to accept the small faults of my other children. In
many ways, however, Koby was simply more of a challenge. For example,
he would often choose to be magnificently lazy, like a prince. He never
felt rushed or hurried. The moment was so precious to him that he rarely
risked spoiling it with chores or studying.
He wasn't always lazy, though. Once I came home and found that he had
cleaned out a year's worth of caked-on ice from the freezer. He would
take care of his younger brother whenever I asked him. He would run to
go pick up a pizza. He could skate miles on his roller blades. The thing
was, he chose when he wanted to move. It was not easy for a mother to
handle.
Getting ready for holidays was especially frustrating. To get him to help
was difficult. I would get angry with him, especially when I saw all the
neighbors' children helping like little worker ants, because I felt his
laziness showed me to be an inadequate mother.In fact, now that I think
about it, the reason he upset me so much is because I, too, am lazy in
the same way he was lazy.
But now, as we get ready for the Sabbath and holidays and I don't have
Koby to yell at, as the pain of missing him is a constant knife in my
heart, I realize that his laziness was a gift. What I perceived to be
Koby's faults actually turn out to be attributes. What irked me so has
been transformed into a blessing.
Mind you, if he were to come back, alive and well, and tell me: "I
went for a walk. I'm not really dead," I would serve him like a king
for a couple of days, maybe months, or even a year. Then, I would still
work on getting him to help us. But I wouldn't feel angry about his laziness,
because now I see it in a different light. I recognize something I wasn't
ready to see before, that there was also a positive part of his unwillingness
to budge himself.
I could have learned something from him: how to be in the moment, how
not to care what other people think, how to enjoy life, how to relax.
In short, I could have been more accepting of his nature. I could even
have been grateful that I had a son whose biggest problems were that he
left his room messy and wouldn't move himself when I wanted.
Now the fact that he didn't help helps me, because it forces me to remember
him as a real person. I cannot romanticize him or put him on a pedestal.
Miraculously, I begin to understand how we should bless the bad as well
as the good. What used to drive me crazy seems so trivial now, so meaningless.
I wonder if one day I will be able to accept the life I have been given,
a life without my beloved eldest son. I already see glimmers that I will
learn to accept this life, to be able to bless it, to put my hands on
my life and close my eyes and see it as the wholeness I have been given.
Ms. Mandell writes from Tekoa, an Israeli community in the West Bank.