An Everlasting Sign

My father died in 2008 on Yom Kippur. At the time I knew very little about any religion at all, and Judaism I knew practically nothing about, but I did know that Yom Kippur was the Day of Atonement, and I remember thinking at the time through the shock I was feeling, how right and perfect it was that my father had died on that day. We hadn’t been expecting him to die. He had long been in terrible health, but only because of the way he mistreated his body. A heavy smoker and drinker for years, he overate all of the least healthy foods imaginable. He’d had a stroke by the time he was 51, and at that time the doctors said he had to stop smoking and drinking or die, so he did, but he kept on eating and never lost the weight he’d gained after some point in his mid-forties.

I don’t remember my father as ever being thin, though there are photos of him when he was younger, before I was born, when he looked in great physical shape. I also have some clothing he wore – his wedding suit – and I have no idea how he ever fit into it. He’d grown up during the depression and when he was finally able to eat all the rich food and butter and mayonnaise in any quantity he desired, he went ahead and did it, and the father I knew growing up was so heavy that it was difficult for him to walk. That was what finally killed him – he’d gone in for a hip replacement operation because the doctors said either it was that or a wheel chair, but they couldn’t guarantee a good outcome because he was so heavy. He was never one to say yes to a wheel chair – he was way too independent – so he opted for the operation and then afterward when he was in the recovery hospice, he developed an infection in his chest, fluid filled his lungs, and he went into a coma. I got the call from my sister the night it happened. I hadn’t even known he was in the hospital because he hadn’t told me, and when I got home and heard the message I didn’t know what to do. I’d been out with a friend who invited me to a play he was in, and we’d gone out to dinner afterward. It was close to midnight when I got home, and I had to work in the office I was temping in the next morning, but when I got my sister’s messages – this was in the days before cell phones were a regular thing, and she’d left three messages on my home phone, each one more desperate than the last– all I could do is try to call the hospital and then lie down to a sleepless night and wait. I went into the office in the morning, and my mother called me sometime around 11am to tell me he was dead.

I didn’t have what you would call a good relationship with my father, though it wasn’t a bad one either if you compare it with the relationship he had with the rest of his children. He was a very troubled man and very difficult to get along with, and we actually got along. He also had a very strong sense of knowing when I needed his help, and he’d show up or call me at the least expected and most needed times to invite me to dinner, to cook for me, to bring me a bouquet of roses, to wire me money out of the blue that there was no way he could have known by word of anyone’s mouth that I needed. He wasn’t consistent and he wasn’t reliable, but he tried as hard as he could and I can’t fault him for not having the ability to be the father I needed because I know enough about his past to know that his troubled soul was the product of a history of family trouble.

At some point or other over the years I found out that his father had been Jewish. His mother was Irish Catholic and they had lived in Westchester County in the days when being Irish and Jewish were both considered very low class, so they pretended to be Episcopalian and never talked about any other part of their history. I did a play once years ago that was autobiographical for the writer, and the same thing happened in the play to the author’s family only they were living in the South. It amazed me that the same story repeated itself in his life, and doing that play was cathartic for me in a way that I can’t even describe.

If you look up the word cathartic on my computer’s thesaurus, you’ll see the word purifying is the first word that comes up. Afterward it’s cleansing, liberating, releasing, intense and emotional, then therapeutic, and further down there’s healing, beneficial, energizing and invigorating. When I think of the Day of Atonement and what that means to me – not what it means specifically Biblically although that is the basis of my feelings about the day – but when I think of it’s personal meaning for me, those words are the words that fit it the best. It’s a day of forgiveness of sins, a day when God allows us to come before Him to ask for His forgiveness and when He gladly forgives if we ask and we atone, and all of those words seem to me to be part of the feeling that I feel when I know I have His forgiveness and when I have repented and atoned for my sins.

When I looked up Yom Kippur in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur, I found this beautiful image, “’Heavenly Books Opened’ – According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a book, The Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to ‘seal’ the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jewish person tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one hopes that they have been forgiven by God.’”

After I was born again, I spoke with the Lord about my father, because I didn’t know if his sins had been forgiven or not, and as much harm as he had caused in his life, I didn’t want him to be left in a state of unforgiveness and not have access to God. At that time, the Lord spoke to me about so many things that showed that my father had known Him, although he had not found His healing in his lifetime on earth. And the fact that my father had died on Yom Kippur, not the day before or the day after but at the beginning of that day, was a sign from God that he had been forgiven and could now finally enter into His rest.

In Isaiah 55:7-9 the Lord tells us, “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up, and instead of the nettle, the myrtle will come up, and it will be a memorial to the Lord, for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.”

Only God can know what is in another person’s heart, and sometimes we don’t even know what is in our own. But He hears those cries and He answers them, fully, abundantly and compassionately. All he asks is that we return to Him. The door is always open.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan