Jewish Life Digital Edition October 2013 | Page 20

suddenly was overcome with a desire to
speak to a rabbi, to find out what I should
do, how to cope with the pain, how to help
my mother’s soul move on to wherever it
had to go. I had heard of shiva, although I
had no idea what it was, but I was certain
that this was the right thing to do. This was
what she would have wanted. I would speak
to a rabbi the first chance I got.
As we left the hospital building, we felt a
tremendous weight lifted from our shoulders. All those years of pain were finally
over. We drove uptown in silence. Miraculously, there wasn’t any traffic and the stop
lights seemed to turn green just for us.
There was a tangible feeling that our mother was flying high above, looking down at
us from the clear blue winter sky. She had
become one with everything.
I sat shiva and learned the aleph beis for
the first time in order to say kaddish. I started going to shul every morning. Soon someone bought me a pair of tefillin. On Shabbos,
I continued to daven at the Carlebach Shul
and have Shabbos meals with all the young
people I had met at the Sufi Mosque. Eventually, many of us stopped going to the mosque
altogether, feeling naturally more con