When a Parent Mourns

by Miriam Metzinger | More from this Blogger

06 Nov 2009 06:11 AM

The esteemed Torah scholar Rashi describes the loss of a child as the ultimate bereavement. It is something for which we have no words, cannot understand even if there were an ultimate Divine purpose that we were able to comprehend. When someone passes away, we bless G-d and call him "The True Judged." Kaddish, the prayer of mourning, is not an outpouring of grief, but praise to a Creator who gives us life on loan, who allows us to live in His world for a certain amount of time, and takes us to another level of existence, closer to where he is, where there is a life of the soul rather than the life of the body.

But still, a child? Why?

I was pregnant with my now 3 1/2 year old Yosef Yitzchok when I ran into an acquaintance named Hindel Swerdlov at a wedding. She was also pregnant, due the same month. When we ran into each other at lectures or on the street, we always exchanged news about our children. She was always kind enough to ask after them and remembered their names.

Shula, Hindel's 3 1/2 year old, was coming home from school two weeks ago, and was swept under the wheels as she was getting off the van. Her brother, Avraham, stood and screamed "My sister, he hit her" as the driver sped away, apparently unaware of what had happened. After an hour of trying to revive the girl, she died, but not before feeling her mother's embrace. Just the night before, she went to a celebration of a new sefer Torah and danced and danced. It was hard to believe that a child who was laughing and dancing could be absent from the world just a day later.

Shula's grandmother, the esteemed speaker Miryam Swerdlov, pointed out that when a child dies young, G-d forbid, it is a reincarnation of a soul that has only a few tasks to perform before returning to Gan Eden. Not only this, but the soul is asked before it comes into the world if it will volunteer to do the task and leave the world early. "Her neshoma (soul) agreed."said Miryam Swerdlov.

"She was a child who always got what she wanted....I am sure she is in heaven now yelling to Hashem "Moshiach Now! Moshiach Now!* And he will have to give in to her."

*Moshiach=the Jewish Messiah

Learn more about Miriam Metzinger

Miriam is a freelance writer, a work-at-home mom and lives in Jerusalem with her two sons, Schneur Zalman (3), Yosef Yitzchak (6 months and counting) and her husband, Yehoshua, who is a rabbi and i...

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