They’re Just a Phone Call Away
What follows is my meditation from Yom Kippur afternoon’s Yizkor service. You can watch this service on our congregation’s YouTube Channel.
People often share that months, and even years, after their loved one’s death, they still reach for their phone and start calling their parent or sibling. For husbands and wives, it is more often that they find themselves whispering to their loved one while lying in bed. These are natural reactions. They are reflexive actions, learned after years of living with someone or after decades of calling them on a regular basis. We reach for the phone when there is a happy occasion or a child’s achievement. And midway through the unanswered rings the realization occurs, they are not answering. The tears begin to flow again.
And so it may come as a surprise or perhaps a logical extension of these one-way phone calls that after years of officiating at the funerals of people who were my friends and congregants—and your friends and relatives, I find myself unable to delete their contacts from my iPhone. Every once in a while, while searching for another contact, I come across the names of Todd or Richard, Bettina or Harry, Judy or Annie or countless others. I do not know why I cannot bear to delete their names. It seems to represent some kind of fear. It is a fear that I might forget them if I delete their contact. It is a fear that I will blot out their name from my memories if I press delete.
Then it occurs to me perhaps it is almost as if I am waiting for them to call me. I am longing for another conversation. Let me have just one more phone call with them.
And so, on this Yizkor I would like us to imagine, and perhaps even have, that conversation. I would like to speak with Todd again. I would like to speak with him about a recent swim or with my cousin Richard about the new drummer for Rush or with Harry I would like to argue about the mess of our politics or with Bettina I would like to remind her how much her friends miss her and how she bound them together.
On this Yom Kippur I would like us to imagine what your husband or wife, mother or father, sister or brother, son or daughter is saying on the other end of the phone line. We know what we long to say to them. We know how many times we caught ourselves reaching for the phone to tell them about a child’s engagement or a grandchild’s birth or even something as mundane as the restaurant we just dined at or the Broadway show we just saw or the deal we just closed at work or the fantastic dinner we just prepared or…. The list is endless.
But what are we waiting for them to say on the other end of the line? Perhaps it is as simple as, “Well done!” Or “That’s amazing.” Or just “I love you.” I think in the end that is all we want to hear from them one more time, “I love you.”
Imagine they are calling. What more do you long to hear?