We all need to sing with our families.
This past Monday my family and I undertook a most moving and powerful event. Just being together with my parents and my siblings to honor my brother Yossi’s 20th yahrzeit was significant enough, but our shared experience was beyond anything I ever could have anticipated.
We first went to his gravesite at the Montefiore Cemetery. We recited psalms and sang some of the songs that Yossi loved singing at home at our Shabbat table. While we were all lost in the music, we found ourselves reliving and experiencing Yossi again. We were surrounded and overcome by so much power. There was not a dry eye present.
The singing continued and no one made a move to leave. At that moment I realized the strength and power of singing as a tool to bring us together, back to childhood with that innocence and purity around the Shabbat table.
While it was so difficult to see all my siblings and parents crying, there was still a sense of peace knowing Yossi was schepping nachas and singing with us while he was basking and singing with the heavenly angels.
You know, oftentimes, when I think about how much I miss Yossi. I think about how I wish Yossi could have met my wife, Ettie, my children, his nephews and nieces, it becomes extremely difficult to hold back my tears. But I know that tears alone won’t cut it. We have to tell Yossi’s stories to each other and to our children. And we have to aspire to the qualities he radiated so purely and so beautifully
With my arms around my son Mendel, I took comfort from the music knowing the beauty of the moment would be absorbed by him and carried forth to the next generation.
Next on our schedule was a family visit to Sloan Kettering to say thank you to the doctor who helped Yossi during his two years there. He was so grateful to see us and while it has been a long time, he said he will never forget Yossi — his selflessness, kindness and what a gem he was at such a young age. When he was in remission Yossi presented him with a doctor’s prayer and the doctor said that at the beginning of every day he reads the letter before he begins working.
Then we went to Ronald McDonald House and as were giving “Yossi’s treats” to the children, we met a mother and her precious daughter who has the same form of cancer, Ewing Sarcoma, which is very rare. We talked for a long time and found it difficult to leave Alexa, this amazing 12-year old, for whom we will continue to pray.
After this highly emotional day we met for a special gathering in Yossi’s honor with many speeches from friends and family, and then we farbrenged and met informally saying l’chaim until the wee hours of the morning.
As I walked away from all of these events, I realized the impact my brother Yossi left and how 20 years later his spirit is not just strong but even stronger. Just imagine, although he lived only a short life, how many lives he touched, the impact he made and how every moment counted as if instinctively he knew his time was limited. The music of his abbreviated life unites us, as we recall all the positive ways in which he influenced our lives and continues to do so.
