We don’t get to choose when those we love die.
We don’t get to choose when we are born, to whom and where.
We don’t get to choose the darkness that visits our days, our griefs, our sorrows.
This is hard for me to share. As an Iraqi Jew I was not brought up to share sad or bad news. I discussed this with a friend at the coffee shop this morning. She is also Iraqi and was holding wooden rolling pins her Baghdadi father had crafted. It took her time to tell me that her father had passed away on the 31st of May. I told her it’s because you’re Iraqi, you don’t share bad news. She agreed with a deep recognition we shared as Iraqi Jews and said, “Yes, we are silent about our suffering. We hold it all in.”
But when I write I am not silent.
My nephew was diagnosed with brain cancer three years ago, and we believed in miracles.
I say this and feel my bones grow cold and hot - rebel against this fact. But nothing changes this fact.
I want to press the rewind button. Time travel back. I want a pre-October 7 world. I want a pre-nephew-sick world. The times when we were innocent of such suffering.
I still believe in prayers and miracles, but now I am lighting my candles in his memory. His name was Neriya - נריה. His name means candle, lamp or light of God. He was my brother’s firstborn son. A boy with the most beautiful, bright, curious eyes. A boy with a kickass attitude with no patience for adult lies. I remember when he was diagnosed, how he swore. How suddenly it was allowed for him to swear, because what is the answer to a terminal disease?
And yet he was so kind, so gracious, so forbearing even though he was the one bearing his body’s betrayal. How much I couldn’t understand what he suffered. I knew he had to relinquish his dreams of playing basketball, playing piano, of being a normal, angst ridden, experimental teen. Suddenly it was hard to walk, let alone run. Suddenly he was undergoing so many medical procedures and treatments that sapped his strength. But not his spirit. Not his questions, or keen critiques of my stories. Not his willingness to fight. He was proud of working out at the gym. He didn’t mind his hair turning blonde because of a new medical treatment - or if he did he didn’t tell me.
There was so much he and his parents carried. How he didn’t want to be a symbol of inspiration, or worse pitied. He did not want the free ice cream gifted because the man at the counter saw he was sick. He wanted to be strong. He wanted to be like everyone else. How real his fight was. How he hoped.
What do you do when hope dies? What do you do when hospice care is recommended? I miss the time before - when I sat with Neriya after Passover at an outside table at a coffee shop, separate from the rest of the family because it was too noisy inside, and he was upset, ‘disconnected’ as he explained, because my boys (his cousins) were big, angst ridden teens, experimenting to the edge of life, and he couldn’t. He hadn’t grown big and strong as he should have. He was fourteen, his growth stunted by treatments, and it was difficult to walk. I looked in his eyes and I saw the Neriya before the illness. I looked in his eyes shining with frustration, anger and grief. I said to him, “Your body has betrayed you, but your spirit is the same. It’s strong. You are strong.” I told him, “I remember how you were a superstar before the illness. You are a superstar still. Stronger than most kids who don’t have to deal with what you deal with. Everyone has their struggles, and this is yours, and you are a superstar.”
To be honest I don’t think it was my words that gave him strength. It must have been my tone, my fierce gaze and belief. Seeing him. Insisting that he sees himself. His whole story, and just how much he could/should be proud of. How strong he was, not defined by his illness, despite his illness.
To be honest I believed in him until the end. To be honest I still speak to him. Even though his grave is freshly dug — a raised, teen length mound of brown ochre earth, decorated with so many stones, of many sizes, carefully placed with goodbye.
He has three siblings. Younger. Too young to lose an older brother. I told his sister at the grave on the seventh day, when it’s customary to visit and recite kaddish - the mourner’s prayer and learning in his name, that she could also place a stone. That the stone is a symbol of her love which lasts forever.
Placing a stone gave her something to do. I placed a stone too.
Death changes us. Death is so final. Death makes us question our life.
“We were blessed,” my sister-in-law said at the funeral. “To have him.”
I remember reading Brené Brown (I think Daring Greatly) where she writes about watching her children in their beds and feeling a pain, a fear. Which parent has not felt this fear? This deep love which is also a deep pain. Because the more we love in this world the more we have to lose. Some people block their hearts so they don’t love anymore. So they don’t experience more pain in their lives. Brené Brown makes this essential point, if we don’t know how to bear our pain, we can’t experience joy either.
I want you to know this has been one of the most painful weeks in my life. Yet it was also one of the most intense weeks of love. Loving my brother and sister-in-law, loving my nephews and nieces, my children, holding them all very close. Hearing the stories everyone who visited shared about Neriya. (Why do we share these stories when someone has passed. Sharing celebratory stories should be a birthday practice whilst our loved ones are still alive.) There were eclairs and chocolate babka cake to share, and chocolate and coffee, and even handmade Napoleon pastry sent by my sister-in-law’s grandmother with her sister who traveled all the way from Melbourne to be with them. It wasn’t the taste (which was wonderful) it was all the love, eating it together. Laughing and crying together for the love shared over the years, and now the loss of a most precious son, brother, nephew, grandson, person.
Somehow, Neriya’s parents gave everyone who visited them a lot of strength this week. My sister-in-law said she does not want darkness, only light. It’s a decision. My brother repeated this to my aunt. He said, “We choose to see the good. We were blessed.” My aunt asked, “Do you really feel this though?” My brother, his face stubbled, unshaved, his shirt ripped as a mourner, rubbed his knees, thought for a moment and replied, “It’s a good question.”
Death brings many questions.
“The soul is still there,” I tell my kids. Sometimes I think my belief drives them away from God. I have enough belief and faith and soul talking for an army. They challenge me. They rebel. They say they don’t believe. This week, they did not say that.
“When the soul leaves the body, you realize it’s just a body,” My sister-in-law said.
We are all just bodies, walking, eating, talking, breathing. It’s the soul that interests me. It’s the place the soul comes from. The place the soul goes to. The place that when we dare to truly love and connect with another person we feel inside of us. The connection between us is an invisible thread between heaven and earth — it never dies.
In Proverbs 20:27 it says,
נֵ֣ר יְ֭הֹוָה נִשְׁמַ֣ת אָדָ֑ם חֹ֝פֵ֗שׂ כׇּל־חַדְרֵי־בָֽטֶן׃
The lifebreath of man is the lamp of the LORD
Revealing all his inmost parts.
With every breath we breathe the breath of each other - God’s light
Some things never die.
***
Here is the YouTube clip of a song “Through the Desert” Neriya wrote with the help of some amazing Medical Clowns. We all have our individual arid deserts of travail. He was brave enough to share his.
This is Not a Cholent is dedicated to Neriya and his siblings as they were the first to hear (critique) the story and Neriya recommended (insisted) I put the t’bit recipe at the back. Neriya really loved and was proud of his Iraqi Jewish heritage as well as his Polish and Russian Jewish roots from his mother’s side.
For Your Interest:
Latest Published Lyric Essay - A Forest of Jews
I feel blessed to share this lyric essay recently published in Yad Mizrah, a new Mizrahi and Sephardic literary journal. It was painful to write, but important for me to explore, express and share.
This is Not a Cholent Picture Book Interview and Give Away - I really enjoyed doing this interview with Kathy Temean for her wonderful blog Writing and Illustrating. I love what Kathy writes in her review:
Kids will love how Amira keeps believing in her families Jewish Iraqi family’s special recipe. Children will cheer for Amira and her Nana and learn an important lesson: drown out negative people and keep believing in yourself. They will want to try out Nana’s T’bit Recipe at the end of the book. Parents might also want to say “Yes” to trying something new.
Latest Favorite Book Recommendation - Joan by Katherine J. Chen (Hodder & Stroughton, 2022)
Joan is a beautifully written historical novel about Joan of Arc, who is portrayed as a strong, complex and unforgettable character. It’s full of beautiful writing, thoughts and feelings, truths like this:
“She doesn’t like war. She doesn’t like the stories she hears, the same ones she’s heard all her life: convents desecrated, churches plundered, wheat days away from being harvested reduced to cinders, livestock that the attackers can’t take with them slaughtered, blood and meat to feed the flies. It is bad enough that some years the corp is ruined by bad weather. Winter alone, she thinks, is sufficient to starve and kill. We don’t need the English and the Burgundians to aid winter. It isn’t the work of the English that makes a calf stillborn or a child stop breathing in its cradle.”
How do we explain human-made suffering? Is not God-made suffering enough?
I remembered this paragraph this week as at Neriya’s shiva my cousin’s wife tearfully said she had was on her way to another shiva - another house of mourning. It was her neighbor’s son - a fallen soldier.
From mourning house to mourning house. Choose life. I hear the whispers. Choose life over hate.
Favorite Comfort Recipe - Just to share some comfort, Healthy Banana Oat Muffins - because this for me is the ultimate comfort food that can be stored in the freezer. My boys like it too. I added lots of good quality European dark chocolate chips, and when my blender broke I ended up hand mixing the ingredients and it was just fine. (Okay I’ll admit it tasted oaty - but I love the porridge taste of oats.)
For more about me and my writing visit my website www.sarahsassoon.com
To support my work please consider buying my children’s books, the award winning Shoham’s Bangle, and my latest This is Not a Cholent. My mission is to spread and educate about Jewish Middle Eastern culture.
Read my free online, award winning poetry collection, published by Harbor Review - This is Why We Don’t Look Back.
Note - My Substack will be fortnightly. Maybe more often… I appreciate all comments, all conversations, and all sharing.
Further - All mistakes are proof that I am human, and this is not an AI publication.
With Blessings,
Sarah
Just beautiful, and heartbreaking, Sarah. Sending love your way. And what a beautiful name, Neriya. All love to your family.
Oh Sarah, just reading this now. Sending a big hug to you and your entire family. May Neriya's memory be a blessing.