I have officiated at more than 500 funerals and held the hands of many loved ones as they slipped away. All of my spiritual training, however, did not prepare me for the excruciating experience of my father’s life ending in my arms after his battle with cancer. The death of a parent is commonplace – 12 million Americans bury a parent every year. The world is a different place after a parent’s death, just as the world had been forever changed because of their life. Maybe that’s why the relationship between humanity and God is likened to a parent who has compassion for his children.
Teshuvah – the reconciliation that takes place during this month of Elul – has to reach in every direction. It has to reach upward between each individual and God – but it also has to reach outward between us and other people. After all, if we hasten to ask for reconciliation, we must also hasten to grant it.
Despite the agony of my father’s cancer, nothing was left unsaid. Beyond the “I love you’s,” I asked my dad to forgive me for not always being what he may have wanted me to be (which provided a rare moment of levity since I became a rabbi just like him).
My father’s brave battle with cancer taught me that to be ready to die, we have to be ready to live. Elul comes to remind us that to be ready for Rosh Hashanah, we have to be ready to forgive.
Micah D. Greenstein is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel in Memphis, Tennessee. www.timemphis.org
