Freeing my Mother

Two weeks ago I said goodbye to my mother for the last time. It wasn't the first time I had said goodbye to her. Over the past year I said many last goodbyes to those parts of my mother that used to be there but were now gone, spent, departed. 

And when we stood by her, trying to decide if she was still breathing, or if not, I parted, not from the hollow body and the tight, taut skin, but from my mother the way I remember her. 

My mother who was tall and proud. My mother who would walk Manhattan from top to bottom in the middle of winter without hesitation. My mother, who dragged me along to museums, flea-markets and interesting restaurants. 

I remembered the piles of books we would exchange, often arguing over who got first reading rights, and I recalled the amazing grandma camps, and her incredible Martha-Stewart like crafting skills, knitting, sewing and embroidering keepsakes for the kids.

In those startling minutes I remembered all that. And I was glad that I could remember her like that and not just the past horrible year. And I would like to believe that her body and mind are at ease now and that she is free.



She is free, free.  Free from the body
and free from life and from the blood which is life,
free from desires, free from sudden fears
and from fear for me, free from honor and free from shame
free from hope and from despair, from fire and water,
free from her eye color and free from her hair color
free from furniture and free from cups knives and forks,
free from Jerusalem above and from Jerusalem below
free from identity and from identity papers,
free from round stamps 
and from square stamps
free from photographs and free of clips
She is free, free.
And all of the numbers and all of the letters
that ordered her life are also free
for new combinations, new destinies, and for new games
of all the generations that would come after her.



Yehuda Amichai
Translated by Rabbi Steven Sager