Leading the davening was not the only source of pressure occasioned by my mother’s passing

I

woke up this morning and felt like I was on vacation. No need to review all the nine or so minyanim within a 45-second radius of my front door to figure out where I could lead the davening, no constant checking of my digestive tract to make sure it was prepared for davening, and no waiting for a minyan to gather so I could recite the first Kaddish D’rabbanan after Pesukei D’zimra.

I’m pretty sure the 11 months of leading the davening for my mother a”h, went easier than those for my father, if only because I had done it before and therefore knew I would muddle through in some fashion. My street has, however, aged in the intervening 17 years, which meant more mourners and more schedules to be rearranged as new members joined the mourner’s club and claimed their rightful priority during shloshim.

At the beginning of the mourning period for my father, I would rather have faced the fastball of Roger Clemens in his prime than go to the amud. One of the things I inherited from my father is a certain self-consciousness about things I do not do well, and there were few things I have ever done as poorly in full view as leading the davening. At the end of each minyan, a large group lined up to offer their suggestions. But at least I had the reward of knowing how well my father would have understood my discomfiture and been appreciative of my torments on his behalf.

At the end of the 11 months, I was grateful, however, to have acquired a new skill, and that I no longer had to feel like a Marrano in shul, dreading that some gabbai might motion me to the amud. As I said, this time went easier. But my ArtScroll Hebrew siddur purchased for the occasion still contains a fair measure of underlining and notes, where either my pronunciation or accentuation were found wanting.

In my misspent youth, I used to teach tennis to beginners in the summer. Tennis coaches are taught to focus on one thing at a time, and not to point out new failures in the pupil’s stroke when he is already working on something else. One thing at a time. And I realized this year how good that advice is: The more things I was trying to concentrate on, the less likely I was to nail any particular improvement.

Nevertheless, I’m glad for the review course of the last 11 months and the opportunity it provided to improve my davening, including a better feel for the structure of our tefillos. And most of all, I’m glad for the connection to my mother, whose visage appeared before me in almost every tefillah, mostly in snapshots from my childhood.

LEADING THE DAVENING was not the only source of pressure occasioned by my mother’s passing: Recently, my parents’ apartment was sold, and we had a month to clear everything out before the new owners took possession. As the oldest son and executor of my mother’s will, the ultimate responsibility for doing so, and for dividing the apartment’s contents among five families, and close to 40 living descendants, fell upon me.

While leading the davening and reciting Kaddish falls on the male descendants, dividing one’s parents’ estate is a near universal experience — common enough to be the subject of a recent Calligraphy story. And nearly everyone whom I spoke to about the experience talked about how emotionally wrenching it is.

On the one hand, my role as executor provided an opportunity to reprise my late father’s role as family problem-solver, inevitably providing solutions to whatever conflict arose — e.g., how can five teenage sons and two parents divide use of two cars in such a way as to satisfy all concerned. On the other hand, I have none of my father’s calm, nor his problem-solving abilities.

One of my challenges was that so much of my mother’s furniture dated back to my childhood, and, in the case of two original Eames chairs, were even from their wedding presents. I’m a sentimentalist by nature, and I wanted all those pieces of furniture to remain within the family. Much of it was 70 years old, and looked like it could survive another 70, so there were few opportunities to just chuck stuff that no one would want.

But unfortunately, very few of the greater Rosenblum clan have apartments big enough to accommodate any additional furniture. At one point, I feared that my own apartment would become the Paul and Miriam Rosenblum Furniture Museum, albeit with no room to move. But by throwing out a desk and knocking down a wobbly closet, we managed to find a place for my grandmother’s desk and a set of beautiful glass bookshelves that no one else had room for.

What makes the process so emotionally draining is the question: How can I just throw out furniture, jewelry boxes, children’s letters from camp, etc., that were meaningful enough for my mother to save? (I did not find a finger-painting of mine from nursery school that had once been proudly displayed.)

I suspect my mother had the same problem, for there was a neat file of condolence letters to my grandmother upon my grandfather’s passing in 1957. And it is now in my grandmother’s desk in one of the rooms in our apartment; I just punted the question down another generation to my children.

FOR ALL THE EMOTIONAL DRAIN involved and the hard physical work — for which I’m particularly grateful to one of my nephews and his son, a niece and her husband, and two of my sons — the entire process was a beautiful tribute to my mother and to the family she produced. Every single grandchild, including my three nieces in America, wanted something to remember Savta by, and in almost every case, they specifically knew what they wanted. My mother had promised certain items to particular grandchildren, and all those wishes were honored.

The most hotly sought-after items were a portrait of my mother and some photos of her and my father from younger days. Fortunately, one sister-in-law has undertaken to digitize the photos on the wall so that every family member can have a full set and decide which, if any, they want to frame.

While I cannot say that the monetary value of the items distributed was equal, I did not hear one complaint from a niece or nephew. Nor was there a single argument over any of the items that multiple grandchildren expressed an interest in.

My mother liked to give things away: clothes that no longer fit well, jewelry she no longer needed. So she would have been pleased that almost every item in the apartment found a home, even if some of the clothes did end up at gemachim. Many pieces of furniture greatly beautified their new homes.

I felt that my mother had siyata d’Shmaya in that so little went to waste. I offered the very nice religious man who moved the final large pieces of furniture a black leather recliner that no one wanted, and it turned out that his son’s wife was just about to give birth and the chair would be perfect for her to rest in post-partum.

My oldest son apparently inherited my reverence both for previous generations and books and undertook to bring my parents’ large library to various libraries and secondhand bookshops, in the hope that someone would still benefit from them. He even figured out that Bezalel Art School might want the large collection of works on the Chicago School of Architecture. When my beloved Mishpacha editor read that, however, he mentioned that he has a passion for architecture: He and I will soon go through the boxes my son saved to find the works on architecture.

It pained me that no one wanted a beautiful set of china, of which I had no memory, discovered in an obscure cupboard. But at the last minute, my sister-in-law recalled that she had personally toiveled the dishes decades ago and that my parents had used them for fleishigs in America.

That set went to a young family from Ukraine, the father of which was basically adopted by my brother and sister-in-law as a teenager many years ago, and whose family is fully part of my brother’s family and the larger Rosenblum clan. The china was especially appreciated because his wife does not even serve her six kids on plastic or paper plates.

Perhaps the highlight of the entire stressful process — for me at least — was that so many descendants expressed their appreciation, and some even mentioned that I had done a pretty fair imitation of my father.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1005. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)