My good friend Michael is dying. A man of great warmth and gentleness, he had a seizure a year ago and doctors found a cancerous tumor in his brain. In spite of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, in spite of a positive outlook and the prayers of the small, devoted, congregation he has served as a rabbi for thirty years, he has lost the use of his left side and the vision in his left eye. And in a few months, two or three at the most, he will lose everything else.
I call him my good friend because, although we are not intimates, he is the kind of man we all hope to know. He is a man who loves music and words and the pleasures of a thoughtful mind, a man without ego or pretense who genuinely cares about others. He is a man with an unhurried handshake, whose smile is like an embrace.
But now his walk has become an unsteady shuffle while he clings, trembling, to a walker. And this articulate man, who has always used words to forge a connection with others, can’t find the words he seeks. A few tumble out, like loose rocks tumbling down a hillside, and then there is a pause, knit brows, a frown, and he starts again, from another direction, hoping words won’t fail him this time. But they do.
I am going to miss Michael. I wish I knew him better, beyond the trivialities of sociability or the confines of pastoral obligation. I feel that going to see him now, when he is too weak to make it to the synagogue, too tired for visitors, and pained by his difficulty speaking, would be more imposition and intrusion than comfort for him. I’m afraid it would drain strength from him, rather than imparting it. And to see him so diminished and vulnerable feels to me somehow like Lot’s daughters looking at their father’s nakedness, shaming him; I feel that I should spare him from my prying eyes. So now, I don’t know how to comfort him in this lonely business of dying.
Many of Michael’s parishioners aren’t ready to face losing him. They are hoping for a miraculous cure. So, being a gentle man, he does not speak to them of his dying. This isolates him all the more, I think. The last time I saw him, more than a month ago, I gave him a sudden hug that shocked both of us, I think, and blurted out, “You don’t owe me any pastoral obligation.” What I meant, in my fumbling way, was, you can talk to me about your dying if you need to. At least I can do that for you. He gave me a tired smile and said nothing.
Now it is Yom Kippur, the most holy day of the Jewish year, the day of atonement and forgiveness. It is the one day that even the most unobservant Jews come together to feel their shared humanity. But Michael is too weak to join us; he sits home alone.
The Yom Kippur service begins with the haunting Kol Nidre prayer, a murmuring of ancient Aramaic that sounds like a thousand years of souls united in supplication. It has been set to music by Max Bruch, a melody so poignant and beautiful that it brings tears to my eyes and stills me as if I am in the presence of something sacred, beyond words or conscious understanding.
My son Jonathan has come home from San Francisco, where he is the Principal Violist of the Symphony, to play Kol Nidre for our small congregation this year. He is doing this as a gift to his father, a transplanted Israeli whose maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were wiped out in the Holocaust. For Jacob, Kol Nidre, is an act of communion with his lost family.
As the service begins, the lights in the synagogue are dim and the glowing Sabbath candles cast flickering shadows on the wall. The congregation is hushed and expectant. Jonathan quietly takes his place in the front of the sanctuary, raises his viola to his chin, and begins to play. His eyes are closed, his face serene with concentration as his body sways gently to the music. The notes begin as a deep-throated whisper, a reverberation I feel in my chest. Then the music swells and bears us with it like a surging tide. As the last note lingers in the air and fades, there is a moment of silence, like the darkness left after a candle has burned out. It seems like more than mere silence; it is like an absence, and I think of Michael, who is not there to hear it.
The next day, an old woman from the congregation, who is herself struggling with lung cancer, calls and asks, hesitantly, if Jonathan might be willing to go to Michael’s house to play Kol Nidre for him. She hates to ask, she understands if it is too much of an imposition, perfectly alright if he can’t …
“Of course,” Jonathan says, gathering up his viola and bow.
I’ve never been to Michael’s house before. It is a modest 1960’s ranch on a quiet street of trees whose leaves are beginning to drift silently earthward as the days grow short. His son Yoni, his only child, meets us at the front door. ‘Yoni’ is short for Yonatan, Jonathan in English, the same name as my son’s. In Hebrew, it means “given by God.” Yoni has left graduate school in New York City to be with his father.
He leads us into the living room where Michael sits swaddled, bundled up like a frail pensioner taking one last trip on the deck of a steamship. I am struck by the swollen, purple ankles that peek out below his pant legs. His face brightens crookedly when he sees us; only the right side responds. Deep lines have etched into it and he looks drawn. His hair, shaved for the brain surgery, has begun to grow back in silver tufts, but a raw, red scar is visible beneath it. It is an effort to see the Michael I know in this face.
On a worn couch along one wall sit three elderly congregants, lined up as if at a wake, stiff and awkward. There is minimal furniture in the small living room and the walls need a coat of paint, but there are two pianos in it. One is scuffed and dull, , like an old slipper worn down at the heels. But the other is a gleaming Steinway upright, it’s glossy ebony case as black as a velvet sky, its keys gleaming like pearls. Michael sees me looking at it.
“I got a new piano,” he manages to say, with effort. He frowns. “I didn’t get a …. a … a …”
“A grand piano?” I ask. The secret dream of every pianist, I know. I’ve had such a dream myself for many years.
He nods.
“Why not?” I ask, smiling. “Too big in here?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s … Not me… I’m dying. It’s … Yoni. His apartment. It’s… it’s … it’s …”
“I know,” I say, meaning, ‘I know you’re dying.’ I pause, looking at him. “It’s not for you, it’s for Yoni; a grand would be too big for his apartment in New York City.”
“Yes.” He nods, looking relieved, and closes his eyes. His head sags back against the headrest of his chair.
Yoni has left the room and is standing just out of view, around the corner. I wonder why. Maybe he doesn’t want his father to see his tears. Maybe he can’t bear to stand so close to his father’s suffering. Or maybe he’s just too exhausted to have to feel anything at all right now.
“This is Jonathan,” I say to Michael, introducing my son.
Michael opens his eyes again, and Jonathan bows his head to Michael slightly, almost imperceptibly, and raises his viola to his chin.
“Ready?” he asks.
Michael closes his eyes and nods. Jonathan takes a deep breath and begins to play. Music fills the bare room, resonant, alive with longing. The poignant melody envelops and fills us. The people on the couch begin to weep quietly and pass tissues back and forth.
I see Michael’s face relax, the lines furrowing his brow ease. He takes on a serene appearance, the same sweet look I have seen on an infant at the breast. He smiles. And as the music rises, anguish and ecstasy sweep fleetingly across his face like clouds passing during a summer rainstorm. Tears come to his eyes, and then he becomes composed again. And as the last notes linger for a moment in the air like a passing perfume, and then fade away, Michael smiles.
“Thank you,” he says, simply. “Thank you.”
Jonathan nods. “A little more?” he asks. “Perhaps some Bach?”
“Oh, yes,” Michael says. “Please.”
Jonathan brings the viola up again and plays part of a Bach Cello Suite. Michael sighs, then moans. Tears come again, streaming down his face, and pass. His face contorts with grief. I am struck by how much Michael will miss this beauty and these acts of sharing in it. Tears well up in my eyes. As the music ends and Jonathan slowly lowers his bow, Michael is smiling and has the look of someone who is within himself somewhere, at peace. But he also looks spent.
It’s time to go.
We say goodbye, and Yoni sees us to the door. His eyes are moist. I hug him, and tell him he is a good son, a beloved son.
“How long can you stay?” I ask.
“As long as it takes,” he says.
As we walk away, the sound of a piano comes to us from the open window and hovers in the autumn air.
END