Sorry for My Loss

August, 2010 on the steps of our beach rental in Maine.

"Sorry for your loss."

How many times have you heard that?

On Facebook.

Or on Instagram.

On TV.

(I'm hearing it now, in my head on the show Blue  Bloods, which my husband still mistakenly calls NYPD Blue.  One of the Reagans and his partner walk in to the widow's apartment and blurt out "Sorry for your loss," before they interrogate her and surreptitiously snoop around the pantry and breakfront for clues.)


It's been quite a long time since I've heard it "in real life."

Sorry.  For your loss.  My loss this time.

My Mother-in-law, Lois Barr, passed away on Friday, Feb. 3, just a few weeks before her birthday. which, not coincidentally, is today.  She died in her home, surrounded by her four sons, her husband, her cat, and me.  At that moment, two health care workers were also there, providing wonderful attentive care, for which we were all grateful.

I have known her for 39 years, having been an official part of the family since I married her third son Michael in '84.   Since at least 83, if not earlier, we have spent a glorious week at beach together in a rented cottage in Old Orchard Beach, Maine (which I've written about here).


Lois worked hard all her lifetime, and left a legacy of helping others, building a family, and being the communicator, the glue and the strength of the family.  She enjoyed life to the fullest, tried new things and took risks. Even when her health began to fail, she took pleasure in the lives and pursuits of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  Until the very end, she still made her famous brisket and chopped liver for her boys, and coffee chiffon pie if you were very lucky.

 Lois was famous for another thing - and that was her dark brown beehive hairdo. When she was near the end, and bedridden, her dear friend and hairdresser Reina made sure that the every hair in the hive stayed neatly in place.  On the day Lois died, she still had less gray hair than I do.

You might wonder, how did this elegant coiffure stand up to long days at the beach?  I don't really know.  In fact, once, when her wonderful friend Dotty was commenting on my own mass of un-comb-able salt-air-infused curls in our summer beach rental, Lois was heard to reply, "Yes, well, she likes it that way," in a  somewhat less than complimentary tone.

I thought that I'd honor her memory today by sharing a story that makes us smile whenever we think of it.

It was during an event-filled trip to Israel that really put the hair-do to the test.  Come to think of it, that trip put a lot of things to the test: our nerves, our stomachs, and our tolerance (or lack thereof) to the heat.  The year was 2000.  Our son Zachary had become a Bar Mitzvah in May, and he requested to have small luncheon following the service, and celebrate with a trip to Israel in the summer after the school year was over.

We invited anyone among our friends and family who wanted to come, and once we knew who was joining us, my mom and I sat together and made an outline of the type of trip we thought would work.  My own mother was a pro - she had spent many years organizing trips of this type for our local JCC, and knew everything from secret spots to the perfect guides.  We matched that with the people who said yes, and by July, we had ourselves a perfect itinerary.

Our Group: Back Row, L - R Yossi (Greatest tour guide ever), Michael, Me, Dotty, Lois, Ben, aka Bunny, Cat, Geof, Henry, Dana, Paula, Bill.
Front Row L - R Zachary (13), Madeleine (10) Jacob (winking, 7), Talia (3) Ben (7)

One of the most special aspects of this trip was taking my in-laws to Israel for their first, and as it turned out, only time. How powerful to stand side by side with my father in law, as he saw Jerusalem for the first time, and sat in silence at the Holocaust memorial, knowing that he was a World War II veteran and liberator of Buchenwald.

Lois held onto her Judaism through childhood  and even kept Kosher, until that was no longer possible (Zack wrote about that here) and she raised a Jewish family in Maine, making sure that all four of her sons  had a Jewish education along with their secular education.  All four boys became B'nai Mitzvah.  (I actually attended the last one as Michael's date!)

So this was a very special trip.  We planted trees, coated ourselves with mud and swam in the Dead Sea, we ate great food, we celebrated Zack's Bar Mitzvah on our friends roof top with a fabulous dinner with a lot of wine, and sang into the night.  We rode donkeys and made pita over an outdoor fire.  And we went white water rafting on the Jordan River.  All of us.

Lois helps Jacob off the donkey.

The two moms, dressed up for the special night.

The Bar Mitzvah Boy!

This was my second experience white-water rafting, the first having been on the rapids of the American River in Northern California back in the 80's.  So I was pretty confident that this would be very tame.  I took the aft of our raft, with my daughter Maddie (then age 10) in the middle, and Lois in the front.  I don't recall much about who was with whom in the other boats.  I remember that the first thing that happened was that Michael fell out of his raft, into the shallow, and slow moving Jordan River.  This was a humorous way to begin.

The flotilla moved its way down the river, which was really anything but rapid.  At times there were a few rocks, but basically it was a very easy, gentle ride.  Except that our raft kept going into the sides of the river, where willows and other branches overhung the water.

I'm not an expert, but I understand basic paddling (I did learn how to canoe in camp, and it is pretty intuitive) and I could not understand why we kept going into the sides of the river.  We also were going very slowly and sometimes getting turned around.  Finally our guide Yossi came over to "help us" and by help us I mean scold us and make us feel worse.

But through it all, we kept our spirits up.  Well, let me rephrase that.  Maddie and I did.  Because, for the first and only time ever, Lois was cursing her head off.  Words that would make a gangster blush.  Maddie heard words she had never heard before in her life, and maybe not since.  Each time we grazed the side of the river, my hair got tangled up in the overhang of the bramble, and I guess so did Lois' perfectly coiffed 'do, which had been covered with a silk scarf.  I cannot reprint the words she used, but imagine the ones your grandmother would NEVER use, and add some adjectives to make them more colorful.

Finally we made it to the end of the run.  Someone helped Lois out of the raft, and Maddie and I jumped in the water for a swim.  As I mentioned, it was not really rushing anywhere, though it was pretty cold.

I was teased for a long time of my lack of paddling ability.  It wasn't until I unearthed this photo and found out why I couldn't keep us on track.  My mother in law kept putting her paddle on the wrong side of the raft!

This is the way we will remember my mother-in-law.  72 years old and having the hutzpah to try something new and maybe a little dangerous, cursing her head off down the Jordan River.  Wearing stylish white shorts, oversized sunglasses and a Jordan Marsh scarf keeping her hair perfectly in place.  I guess she liked it that way.

Lois and Benjamin Barr Summer of 2015

Her memory will be a blessing.

Good-bye Dear Friend

A beloved friend, Aharon Bezalel, passed away about 3 weeks ago.  I have known him more than half my life, and have come to think of him more as family than as a friend.

I can't think when I first met him.

But I do know exactly when I last saw him.  My dad and I were spending a few days in Jerusalem this past January, and I could see that Aharon was not his usual self.  I didn't know this would be the last time I would see him.

Aharon was an Israeli, born in Afghanistan where the climate was not particularly friendly to Jews.  (Not like now!)  According to Bezalel legend, he was a little boy when he and his family walked to Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) so they could live in freedom as Jews.

When I really got to know Aharon, his wife, and his three daughter, Butzit, Tali and Yael, I was living in Tel Aviv for my Junior Year of college.  They were the closest thing I had to family, and Aharon insisted that I join them on many weekends.  I can remember arriving just in time for a lively family meal, where I was included at the table and enjoyed great dinners and conversations that I could barely understand at first.  Saturday, Shabbat, I was left to my own devices as the sisters all went out on their own, and Aharon disappeared into his workshop in the morning and then he and his wife would spend the afternoon napping. I'm now quite a fan of the Shabbat nap!  But back then I'd take long walks and explore Jerusalem, or sit and read in their fantastic garden.  It was here that my Hebrew got better and better, I felt at home in Jerusalem, and in their house. By the end of my semester, they had become my Israeli family.   

Yes, that's me with the short hair, making matzah with Aharon in 1980.

  Over the next 20 years, we would see each other whenever we could.  Aharon's art was famous on an international level, and he frequently travelled to New York, among other places.  He was a guest at our Passover Seder on more than one occasion, and he loved it when I told the story of making matzah in his brother's garage when I celebrated Passover with his family in 1980.  I saw his daughters less often, but we tried to stay in touch, and finally with email and then with Facebook, we started to reconnect in ways that we could not have done before.  I remember conversations with Aharon in my parents' living room that showed how deeply he understood me, and the love he had for me and my family.  It was startling sometimes to see how much could be conveyed without and beyond words.

Perhaps the most moving, emotional and uplifting time we shared as a family was when my oldest son, Daniel, became a Bar Mitzvah in 2000.  It had been his dream, and ours as well, to celebrate in Israel.  But of course, we also knew that we wanted Daniel to be called to the Torah here in the US, so that we could share this simcha with the family here.  So that is what we did.  In May of that year, Daniel became a Bar Mitzvah at our synagogue in Suffern NY, and when school ended we took a family trip to Israel with Maya, who was 10, little Jack, who was 6.  Joining us were my parents, my in-laws, my brother's family, our best friends, and a dear friend of my mother-in-law.  My mother, who has spent more than half of her life dedicated to leading trips to Israel for our local Y, sat with me and helped me to plan the trip of a lifetime for this family group.  We'd get our own bus, and we'd have the most remarkable tour-guide.

But where should we have Daniel's Bar Mitzvah ceremony?  

Since Daniel had already become a Bar Mitzvah, I had been working with him to write a short, meaningful service, which could include a few different readers. We immediately eschewed the idea of the Western Wall, as we would not be at all comfortable with separating men and women for an event like this.  Another popular option for many tourists is on top of Masada, but this did not sit right either.  And because it was July, we were not sure everyone in our group would even make it to the top of that mountain in the desert.  

My mom was researching restaurants that be big enough to accommodate our whole group, as well as the ever-growing Bezalel family.  But there was no need for her to make the phone calls.   Aharon lived in a great place just above his sculpture studio.  He invited us to bring our party to his house! Although our group would never fit inside his house, we could dine on his rooftop.  

We were thrilled with the idea and when we got there it was overwhelmingly beautiful. He had ordered wonderful  food from a Lebanese restaurant in town and his daughters had decorated his rooftop with fresh flowers, candles, and tiny little lights strung from poles across the walls.  By now his three daughters were parents as well, and their children couldn't wait to meet their American "cousins" and try out their English.  Daniel led the short service, and they all ooh'd and ahh'd at his flawless, yet American-accented, Hebrew.  Then we ate,  drank, and sang songs, while the lights of Jerusalem danced in the distance.  After a while, the kids disappeared to play inside, and the grown-ups continued to eat and drink and sing some more.  Aharon sat contentedly at the head of the table, with a huge grin, knowing he had brought his family together.  Hebrew and English were co-mingling right there at the table, and it was a truly a celebration of much more than one young man's rite of passage.  It was the joy of two families sharing a real bond that transcended beyond age and  language.

Aharon, in the center of things, has made the crowd laugh.

I couldn't resist.  Young Daniel, at 13, leading us in prayer.

Since then we have been together many more times.  

When Daniel turned 20 and took his Junior Year in Israel, he spent many weekends at Aharon's house, and spent a Passover there that was unforgettable.  Although we missed him at our Seder table, at least we knew he was with his "other family."

Tali, Yael, Me, Butzit, January 2012

And this past January, my Dad and I took a trip there.  I was so glad that I spent time, meaningful time, with Yael, Butsit, and Tali, my Israeli family.  And I saw our beloved Aharon, this patriarch, for the last time. 

May his memory be a blessing to us all of us who knew him, and may his story inspire all those who are fortunate enough to be touched by it.