At 78, my mother has outlived my father by 32 years. That’s long enough for her to have acquired rheumatoid arthritis, osteo-arthritis and, most recently, Parkinson’s disease. Stress of any kind exacerbates her symptoms.
That’s one reason the e-mail my sister, Debby, sent to me two weeks ago was so upsetting.
The sentence snippet, from the rabbinic biography on a congregational Web site Debby had found, read: “…when he went to Temple Emanu-El in Utica, N.Y., for two years as the interim rabbi after the suicide of its founding rabbi.”
Rabbi X’s reference to our father was not appreciated.
Debby’s first question was the same as mine. “Should we say something to Mom?”
Neither of us was sure of what to do. When it comes to discussing Dad with her, any deviations from the script she’s established are potential stressors. We say the wrong thing, she explodes, and we end up feeling like criminals.
After consulting a local rabbi, I wrote an e-mail to the president of Rabbi X’s congregation. In it, I tried to summarize in a dispassionate way why the sentence should be revised.
“Our father’s death was extremely painful for my mother, my sister and me,” I wrote. “The circumstances surrounding it were devastating and highly ambiguous. Our mother never referred to Dad’s death as anything but accidental, and Debby and I were unaware of any other explanation until we were well into our 20s.”
My rabbi advised me not to tell. Debby’s rabbi, who knows our mother, had the opposite response. “She says mom can handle it, and that referring to Dad’s death as suicide in the Web site is unconscionable,” Debby told me.
“She said that even if he’d gone to the town square and hung himself in front of thousands of people, it would still be wrong to say ‘after the suicide’ instead of ‘after the death.’ In death we all deserve dignity.”
Dad couldn’t have put it better himself, but he might have added that in life we also deserve dignity. That is why I have chosen to speak publicly about something that is very private.
I would rather not but if doing so might help another family avoid the damage that occurs when mental illness is ignored or covered up, remaining silent is not an option.
History of illness
My father died in 1974, but it wasn’t until 1985 that I discovered that bipolar disorder and depression run in our family.
By the time I made those discoveries, I was the pregnant mother of a two-year-old. I had also been in therapy for a year, working on issues that were making it difficult to sustain a healthy marriage. One of those was my father’s death.
On erev Purim, Dad had driven us to school, dropping off Debby first and then me. He was the person I loved the most in the world, and I am the last person to have seen him alive. The congregation reported him missing when he didn’t show up to read the Megilla.
His car was found the following day on a country road surrounded by woods, just shy of a bridge that crossed a lovely little lake. A search ensued, but turned up nothing. Fifty-four days later, a floating body spotted by an off-duty state trooper was identified as Dad’s.
In Utica where the Jewish community comprised about 1 percent of the population — enough to support one Reform, one Conservative and two small Orthodox congregations and a kosher butcher (my Uncle Sam) — my father’s position as the Reform rabbi meant he was a public figure and community leader.
To Debby and I, Rabbi Waldman was Dad. To Mom, he was the great love of her life. But 17 years of congregational and community involvement had made him an important figure in other people’s lives, too. Twelve hundred people attended his funeral; his closest friend, a Hebrew Union College classmate, delivered the eulogy.
Dad was great at encouraging other people to seek professional help for psychological problems. But he knew that seeking treatment for mental illness was not a smart career move for someone in a leadership position.
What happened to our family was tragic, but family tragedies aren’t unique. Dad always said, “When I die, cry for an hour and then get up and go about your business.”
The truth is that everyone did the best they could under awful circumstances. Many of the people my mother had considered close friends deserted her, because, as Rabbi Waldman’s widow, she no longer had the same social cachet she did as Rabbi Waldman’s wife. She was a single mother with two teenagers.
I hate using the word “suicide” to describe how my father died. It reduces his life to a single act, and that feels like a betrayal of all he was and all the good he did. Mom, Debby and I have a lifetime’s worth of great memories and funny stories to talk about with one another. Reaching any kind of comfort level talking about his death continues to be an ongoing process.
Telling Mom about Rabbi X helped move that process forward. The sentence was revised, and Mom gave me the ultimate compliment when I pointed out the gift he’d given our family.
By dying at 46, I told her, Dad robbed us of the opportunity to care for him as he aged. Rabbi X gave us the opportunity to have a little taste of something we otherwise would never have experienced.
“That’s a good way of looking at it,” she said. “Your father would have been proud.”
Milwaukee-based writer Amy Waldman is on the board of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations.
Loading ...