Haifa, April 3rd 2013
Danny Rabinowitz:
Last Sunday, on the eve of the final day of Pesach, a day before Mom passed away, we experienced a unique moment.
It was dusk, and Mom, extremely frail in her big bedroom in 19 Panorama Road, her home for the last 62 years, requested assistance to sit up. She then asked Guy, one of a number of musically gifted grandchildren she has, to sing for her. Guy sang Dillen’s ‘Blowing in the Wind’. Then Mom asked for all the grandchildren to come in and sing for her some more.
They gathered swiftly, appearing from various rooms in the house like characters in a Yehouda Amihay poem, and after a brief consultation decided to sing a Hebrew version of Lennon and Mcartney’s ‘Penny Lane’, written in 2008 for Mom’s 90th birthday.
The song, ‘Sarah Lane’, is about the ordinary people Mom meets as part of her routine on Mount Carmel. The man in the stationary shop who, seeing her coming in, hands her the evening paper; the driver of the bus to the local shopping center who knows where she alights; The baker, with her favourite cheese cake; the elderly repair men who comes to mend a fuse, knows where all the wires run and stops for a moment to listen to her practicing the piano; the bank clerk, smiling at ‘Saraleh’ as she walks in; the telemarketing agents, impatient to dial her number for another persuasive call. And family and friends who come as guests to the house on the mountain, overlooking the sea.
The grandchildren sang, their sound attracting us to Mom’s bedroom like butterflies to light. It was magic. Like so often in Mom’s life, an ordinary instance became a moment that touched your soul. The banal – youngsters and their granny in a bedroom – became poetic. The remains of the day assumed a transcendental meaning.
The grandchildren’s farewell was unforgettable. 24 hours before her final breath, in the twilight of her life, Mom created a brilliant bridge of consciousness that would usher her, and us alongside her, from this transient life to the eternal fields beyond.
This moment arrived three days after Mom decided that her journey on this earth was over. On the morning of the previous Friday she indicated that she will no longer eat. She stopped taking her medicines. She waved away the tube supplying extra oxygen. And she began to bid her farewells in the most explicit manner.
In intimate moments she dedicated to each of us separately – moments we will all cherish for the reminder of our lives – she spoke with no uncertain terms: ‘we are parting’, she said. ‘We need to say good-bye’; ‘This is the end of the road for me’; and ‘it is sad, but it is over’.
She told us she dreamt she had died. She discussed the newspaper announcement of her departure. A number of times, when she woke up from the drowse she was in most of her final days, she announced to those around her bed: ‘I am still here’ – a message conveying a most lucid awareness of the alternative.
At first it was too difficult for us. But by and by her fearless determination, supported by the compassionate professionalism of Dr. Omer Goldstein and Dr. Michael Harding, and by the tender loving care of Liza Kareda, helped us overcome our own fears. Our new role became clear: to give our blessing to the impending next stage of her journey.
Bringing us to this delicate position was a tribute to her sensibility and courage, but also to something all of those who knew Mom loved so much: her innocence, directness and integrity. The bridge she built was stabilized and will remain that way because it was designed with sound mind and a truthful heart. As often in her life, Mom did what she wanted to do in blissful liberation from calculations of what anyone might think of her.
This freedom had been the essence of her personal and professional life. Mom knew how to transform a brief chat over a cup of tea into a soul-searching conversation. She moved with ease and elegance from mundane rants on work and family and politics to genuine, profound discussions of the big issues that intrigued her: what is the world? Why was it created? How does the brain function? What is the consciousness made of? Where do feelings come from? And the ultimate question: how will the world – and this family – continue when she is gone? These queries on her part were not meant to impress or amuse. Curiosity about this missing link between the earthly and the metaphysical was a genuine element of her inner self.
The link between the concrete and the sublime was also in the heart of her music, as a pianist and a teacher. Mom was an exquisite musician, but not a musical celebrity. She often admitted that the top of her profession, the roof of the music world, alluded her. But that did not deter her from using consistent hard work, attention to detail and perseverance to harness music for her life’s mission: to take herself, her followers and listeners on magical tours in lofty spheres where anything could happen.
Such efforts do not always guarantee success. In music as in other fields, there are moments when instead of finding purity, unity and concentration, the soul goes wondering and becomes distracted. But when we meet someone like Mom, forever willing to embark on yet another quest for the muses, we fall in love.
Mom, who spent 88 of her 95 years in Haifa, was for us a bridge to history as well. She was born in Kiev to the sounds of gunfire in the final stages of the October Revolution. As a child she experienced the ideological and geographical consequences of her father’s epiphanic discovery of Zionism, as her family came from Europe to Haifa in 1925. In Haifa she became part of the effort to build a new society. She contributed to the development of the town’s cultural and music life, before and after 1948. And through Dad’s roles as district attorney, judge and various civil society institutions, she was involved in public life. She saw wars and crises, times of hope and inspiration as well as periods, such as the recent years, which made her genuinely worried about our common future here.
But even as she neared her own centenary, preserving a unique, somewhat archaic vocabulary of Hebrew and Yiddish expressions that made us laugh so often, Mom refused to freeze in time. The role of living monument did not suit her, and she repeatedly evaded becoming a living representative of bygone eras. Her dynamism, her vivacious spirit and her obsessive interest in the future were much stronger.
Vislava Shimburska, translated by Walter Whipple, wrote:
Nothing’s a Gift, everything is borrowed.
(…) It has been appointed that the heart must be returned,
And the liver, too,
And each individual finger.
It’s too late to cancel the contract.
Debts will be extracted from me
along with my skin.
(…) I can’t remember
Where, when and why
I consented to open
this account.
The protest against this account
is what we call the soul.
And it is the only thing
not on the list.
It is sad to part with you, Mom. But the celebration of your good, long life, the memory of your vitality, the light you radiated and the way you bid farewell remain with us, ready to chase the tears away.
After the grandchildren sang for you on Sunday night we congregated at your bed for second Pesach Kiddush. You liked it. You said so. And then you made two dictates: go to the dining room and eat your dinner, which we promptly did; and always stay together, as this is more important to you than anything else.
We will.
May your memory be blessed.