Saying Goodbyes

Well, today one more door has been closed. Marit Hansson was laid to rest. It was a simple ceremony at Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetary) on the southern edge of central Stockholm. It’s a very beautiful place, with gentle hills and tree shaded burial plots.

There weren’t many people at the service. When you live to be 92 there aren’t many friends left to see you off. The Swedish präst or pastor was very young, maybe thirty. We got the conventional service – 2 psalms, the Lord’s Prayer, some words about Marit and of course some words about The Lord. The young pastor didn’t know Marit, he didn’t know any of us. He had spoken perhaps once or twice to my husband, Håkan, Marit’s son. So what was he to say? He probably knew that the woman lying in the casket wasn’t a big believer in God or even religion. And he probably assumed that those of us sitting on the hard benches in the chapel weren’t especially religious or serious church goers either. So he just did his job. He seemed kind at least.

As I sat there in the lovely chapel listening to his words, I kept thinking back to my own mother’s funeral just a year and a half ago. Two mothers, two funerals, so close together in time. My mother’s service had a rabbi who didn’t know her either. The rabbi for the congregation she had belonged to had retired many years back already. And since she stopped driving, she was unable to go to services even if she wanted to. The rabbi who did the service for my mother was the one who came with the Hospice care that took care of my mom during her last days. By the time he met her, she couldn’t really respond to anyone, even him, anymore. But he and I had a chance to talk those last days and get to know each other a bit. I was glad and relieved when he said he would be pleased to do the service for my mom.

And it was a good service. Coming so close together, I couldn’t help but to compare them in my mind. Mom had a good send off. We filled the small New Jersey chapel. My mom still had friends young enough to drive the distance to be there. Mom’s baby brother and his wife were there. Their three children, my cousins, came with their families. Even the hospice people came, who I had gotten to know those last weeks. And of course my husband and my son. The rabbi said the words he needed to say, in English and in Hebrew. And he had charisma, he held the stage, he made one feel that he saw you, he was there for you. That what we were doing there in that chilly stone chapel was important. He made me feel welcome, to come up and talk about my mother to the gathering. To bring my uncle up to talk about his sister, to say goodbye to her. And I think that was the big difference between the two services for me. While the Swedish pastor was kind and almost overly polite, he was also so unintrusive, so retiring, so grey, that it was like he wasn’t even there. No charisma. Nothing. Dried up, like dust. And this was a representative for God? Well, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to get me to believe. While on the other hand, Rabbi Bill Krause’s service, though being contemporary, modern and very Reform, made me feel like I was participating in something that was part of a 3000 year old tradition, a rite of passage that was part of life and connected me to my people. It was a good service.

After the paster was finished, we slowly moved out of the chapel into the sunlight. Once outside again, after saying a few words to each other, everyone separated and we drove off to another section of the cemetery to look for the gravesite of Marit’s sister Else. Håkan’s cousin Anne Marie and her husband Tord and their son Fredrik were also looking so we joined them. After locating her gravestone, everyone stood around talking for a bit. I went in search of a stone but all I could find were small pebbles on the walking path so I took a pebble back to where everyone was standing and put it on the top of Else’s and her husband Berth’s gravestone. I explained that when Jews visit a cemetery they leave a small stone to show that they had been there.

There had been 10 of us there at Marit’s service – a minyan. And though it hadn’t been a Jewish service it nevertheless felt good to me that we had at least been able to gather 10 people on a bright sunny day, to say goodbye to Marit.