By Karin Joy Sprecher (Newton, MA)
Dear Friend,
Though I could not attend your Shiva in person – my husband stood there for both of us – I’ve thought of you every day since our conversation when you borrowed my mother-in-law’s wheelchair.
Funerals are never easy. Shivas are even more difficult, especially when the relationship was less than ideal or even fraught and sad and painful.
How does one sit Shiva for someone who often caused us pain? How does one say Kaddish for a parent who was also mean, nasty, down-right abusive? Two different rabbis and a cantor, in different ways, gave me essentially the same message: try sitting Shiva & saying Kaddish not for who that parent actually was. Instead, try sitting Shiva … try saying Kaddish for the parent you did not have, but that every child deserves.
I had my doubts.
But I was truly surprised that, over time, it felt not only like something I could do. It felt right!
What the rabbis and cantor specifically said — that there was a place in Jewish practice which not only acknowledged imperfect, damaging parenting and how that affected one’s ability to follow Jewish rituals for death and mourning — eventually became, for me, very powerful. It enabled me to find solace in rituals which originally seemed inappropriate, even untenable.
It gave me a place to sit with other mourners in community, even if my feelings were different, even if my raison d’être for being there was the opposite of what others were experiencing.
Over time I remembered there were other warm, loving, nurturing adults in my life who, intentionally or not, filled a parent-like role in my life. Those who became role models for good parenting. Those who enabled me to become the kind of parent I wanted to be … the kind of parent I needed to be … for my children … because I saw the way they parented their children.
I saw that their children felt seen, were nurtured, were loved just as they were, whose strengths were appreciated and whose negative behaviors were lovingly redirected. I saw what was possible, and I saw its wonderful effects. I saw what I believe every child needs and deserves. And, through parenting my own children, I finally realized that I was becoming the parent I deserved to have as a child.
By the end of saying Kaddish, I gratefully realized that there were people in my life who truly loved me, nurtured me, just as I was. They were my “real” parents, just not my biological parents.
Karin Joy Sprecher, an artist specializing in Judaica, was inspired to begin writing again the year before Covid shut everything down thanks to a Hebrew College class “Writing Through a Jewish Lens: A Jewish Women’s Writing Workshop.” She lives with her husband in Newton, MA, where she continues to sing, virtually, in Jewish choirs and take online classes in Jewish and secular subjects.
The Jewish Writing Project 
Thank you for this…I did realize a number of years ago that there was (at least in the siddur we use) a prayer for the less-than-perfect parent, sibling, etc. I latched on to it, and in retrospect was glad that I had said Kaddish for my mother most of the days of the eleven months after her death, sat shiva with my community’s support after my mother’s, and my older sister’s deaths. It was a time I could tell the truth without rancor; it is not something that everyone welcomes, but we have a right, and perhaps a responsibility to ourselves, to acknowledge the truths of things that hurt us.
A beautiful commentary on acceptance and healing and that the effects of our childhood experiences and tragedies linger and hold sway over us for a lifetime! Sharing our secrets is one antidote to healing.
We love to talk about forgiveness; perhaps it makes us feel better about ourselves – almost divine, it’s implied.
But there are people who are so sociopathic, so evil, that one cannot – and should not – forgive them their many tresspasses.
My father was such a person and, when he died, I attended his funeral simply to support my brother and sister. When I approached my father’s open coffin, I put my hand on his chest and said, “I forgive you.” And meant it. But that feeling could not last as memory overwhelmed my best intentions. And, as it turned out, my siblings didn’t need or want my support. I was, as always, the black sheep, the outlier, of the family. Simply put, my progressive ideas about human and animal rights, the environment and one’s right to follow one’s own path were unacceptable.
What I can identify with is the statement:” I remembered there were other warm, loving, nurturing adults in my life who, intentionally or not, filled a parent-like role in my life.”
Fortunately, I, too, had such role models who showed me, by example, what it is to love and to practise kindness and compassion. They doubtless saved my life.
Rabbis tell a story about a deceased man that was hated by everyone in his Congregation. The rabbi knew if he tried to say anything good about him, he would be laughed out the town, so knowing the rabbi for the evil man’s family in another community, he called him and asked his comrade to be mensch and do the service. The visiting rabbi began his eulogy saying: “The deceased’s family belongs to my congregation. And I want you to know his brothers are worse.”