IHOP Girl: Oh, Sunny Day!

Monday, April 17, 2006

Oh, Sunny Day!

I hope that you all had a fabulous Easter, mine was nice enough although I wish that I would have gotten to go to a Sunrise Service; they are my favorite. I love really early on a summer morning when there is just a hint of coolness in the air and mist kinda hides the sun...Not to mention it gives me a really good excuse to go hang out in a graveyard. I mean at anyother time of year I would just be considered strange, but Easter, its tradition! :-) It is so fun to go read all the names of dead people, especially if it says something interesting on the stone. Just for your information if you die please put something worth reading on your stone, otherwise Jess 1 and I will make up really interesting stories about you... I mean think about all those people, and Jess 1 and I are probably the only people who ever cared to look at their grave...apart from the actually funeral itself. Anyway, while I'm on the topic of graveyards there is a really neat one at home that has this mosoleum (spelling?) which contains an entire family, and Jess 1 and I had a blast the other summer, trying to piece together who died first and who was related to who and how. Yeah I know were strange, but come on perhapes it is the authors in us, but I like to imagine people's life stories. Ok, enough of dead people...sorry...

Anyway...

Ahh yes, beautiful summer weather has finally reached my happy home, and now I'm ready to leave. My perfect temperature is about 75 degrees, and unfortunately we were at about 90 degrees the past two days...way too hot for me. I guess it is nice though to through on a t-shirt and not have to wear a jacket in the morning, but still I wish it would just stay a tad cooler...

Ok, well since I'm at the computer lab, and there is a line I should sign off.

2 comments:

Clair Bannerman (alias) said...: Well then, I guess with the particulate plan I will not have to invest in a flower company...Although could we at least have an urn? Man, this is weird...Actually, I don't really think we'll have to get to that place, but that is new topic. As to the inscription it was almost freaky but I totally understood it...weird I know...; 6:27 AM
Jess said...: Clair, my dear! How are you? I personally am much better than I have been in previous weeks.

How soon do you come home again? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? I can't remember the exact date...but I do know sooner is better! :D :D :D

Hope all is going well for you. Sounds like you had a nice warm Easter. I miss strolling through cemeteries with you! Did you hear we are probably going to Batavia again this year? Wait, though. Hang on a minute. How could you have been at Batavia last year, in October, if you had to go back to school by Hamlin, in August? I remember being at Batavia with you though...so it must have been two years ago. Oh, I don't know. All this involves numbers. ;-P

Anyway, here's to our getting the chance to make up more great stories about the people who are buried at cemeteries (or in mausoleums. That mausoleum really has great acoustics, doesn't it? Even better than St. Feehan's Church at Mumford!).

*sigh*

Re-enacting starts in a month, Clair darling! Are you ready?!?!?!?! :D; 12:45 PM

Movie Night In...I love a good movie!

Mega Mind
Taking Chance (Will make you cry like a baby)
Charlotte Grey (A bit of a different take on Nazi Germany)
Series - Merlin (I LOVE BBC)
Robin Hood (Okay, a love Russell Crowe, you'll have to understand that about me...)
Kingdom of Heaven (Chuck full of acting power with an epic tale)
Miss Potter (Such a great film! Story of the creator of Peter Rabbit)
How to Train your Dragon (Possibly my favorite animated movie ever...I'm like a little kid, I watch it over and over)
Buck (Sundance winner, Biography of Horse Trainer, heart touching)
Lost in Austin (Modern day spin on Pride and Prej.)

Life as a nurse...

Great words by Reb Jeff: Vayishlach: Facing Death

"Rachel died. She was buried on the road to Ephrat — now called Bethlehem. Jacob set up a pillar above her grave. It is the pillar at Rachel’s grave to this day."–Genesis 35:19-20

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidui http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_(Judaism), and preparing the notifications to the community, feel like little fragments of the sacred. I have been entrusted with the care and tending of the most powerful, complex and difficult emotions that a person can experience in life. I have been made, in some small part, a guardian of the memory of a departed soul — a life that touches upon many other lives.After dropping off my older daughter at her high school this morning, I made a stop at Treasure Coast Hospice http://www.tchospice.org/, a remarkable organization that sets a very high standard for the loving and respectful care of the dying. There, I visited a lovely man whom I have seen a few times in his hospice room. I sat by his bedside and listened to him (in full possession of his faculties) as he told me about his worries about his family, the support of his wife after he is gone, and the future of his children and grandchildren. I was deeply moved by the way he put any concern for himself — even while facing death — in a distant backseat to his concerns for his family. When my own time comes, I can only hope to have his awareness of the way that one life can touch so many others.Also at hospice, I visited a woman I have known for the past two years — a dear soul who is a former Jewish religious school director. I sat with her, too, singing psalms to her as I listened to her heavy and labored breathing. I have no medical training, but I have come to know the sound of a person who is close to death. The body begins to fight for each breath as it slowly looses it grasp on life. As I held her hand and sang, I realized that being a rabbi is no protection against becoming one of the people caught in the web of connection. I, too, am changed by the loss of a life that has touched mine.Later in the day, I met with a couple from our congregation. She had just learned that her brother died yesterday in a car crash. Coming to terms with the loss is made more difficult for her by the fact that she and her brother had not seen each other or spoken in five years. Sometimes, people think it is easier to mourn the death of someone who has moved out of your life. In my experience, though, it's harder. Grief is magnified by wounded love and regret. I have no magic words to say to ease the pain of mourning. All I can do is listen, become a vessel in which people place their stories, and offer compassion.Actually, there is one more thing I can do. I can have faith that "all I can do" is all that I need to do. It is enough.In this week's Torah portion (Vayishlach) Jacob watched Rachel, the love of his life, die in childbirth. He was overcome by grief. Jacob had worked for his cruel uncle Laban for fourteen years to earn the right to marry Rachel. Now she was gone. Because she died while they were traveling, Jacob had to bury her by the side of the road. He built a pillar of stones on the spot to mark the place as sacred.This is what we all do, in one way or another, when death enters our lives. We grieve and our hearts break. We wish that we could continue to walk along the path of life with our loved ones forever, but the dead cannot fully join us. We have to leave something behind in order to resume our own journey. So, what do we do? We mark the moment as sacred. We erect monuments — both in cemeteries and in our hearts. The stones we place on top of stones remind us that a life may end, but its sanctity is forever.The Torah says that the monument Jacob built for his beloved continues to stand until this day. A life that touches the lives of others never ceases to send living reverberations throughout the web that binds us all.