Writing shared by Faigy,
member of The Mending Word: Sukkot Edition

I let myself be hugged by grief,

Sometimes the squeeze is too tight

And sometimes I could barely feel it

But I know its always there

I like to question it all,

To see the stars and to ask whats behind it

I like to pretend she sits near me in the succoh like she always would

And I like to wait a minute in line before I shake the lulov, because she's older then me and that means she should go first.

I like to fill up all the spaces in it all, with more of her.

When I close my eyes In the succah and feel g-ds embrace, I’ll feel a lot of her too, because I bet she comes down with him too, it's not like she would want to miss out on it all.

I don't really know where I'm going with all of this, but in my heart and in my mind I know that this succos she’ll be right with me all the time.

Writings shared by Michal,
member of The Mending Word: Sukkot Edition

Sukkot.

My favorite holiday growing up. My mother’s special dishes - split pea soup and stuffed cabbage. Consistent goodness to look forward to all year. My father’s favorite yom tov. Only a short time after his birthday, his favorite season, he’d sit in his little sukkah proudly, inviting guests and hosting family from out of town.

The sukkah itself was small - yellow and green, simple, no décor, but filled with warmth. 

“I like it, it’s cozy,” he’d say when asked why he wouldn't buy another one. 

The last sukkos. 

In and out, weak energy, slowly dying, I held his hand and sang this one nigun - this wordless melody, that held so much, over and over and over again. I couldn’t remember any other one. I couldn't even remember this one from beginning to end. Instead, I sang the middle, for hours, all night, he’d gently try picking up his hand, his soft voice would help me carry the tune.

“Come on, ta, how does it start? Start it for me. Sing it for me. Sing tatty, sing, please, show me how it goes.” His voice would rise and fall as his breath labored to stay with me. His hand became wet with my tears. I closed my eyes from the image before me, the gray hospital walls, the ugly and loud monitors, the sunken body of my strong father before me, and I tried to go back, to reach deep into my memories of my father and my mother, both healthy and strong, sitting in the sukkah together and singing these songs. 

I have felt in these moments what it means to have your heart ache, to have your heart splinter and crack and shatter into a million fragmented pieces, to try and hold all these pieces together just for one moment.

I’ll never forget this last holiday spent in Cornell Hospital. As a man slowly weakens and feels his body break, he tries with all his might to sing this wordless melody with his daughter, to transport him back to his sukkah, to his beautiful wife and family, to his cherished home, his favorite holiday, and he tells my sister, as he miraculously lives another day,

“We had the best sukkos of my life. We sang and danced till 3 am.” 

I cried as I told my sister the events of the night before, how he couldn’t lift his head, or keep his eyes open, how he whispered the tune with me falling in and out of consciousness, how they made me leave at 9 pm, how I know he was there all alone the rest of the night, knowing it would be his last sukkos ever, how he probably fell asleep to the songs he remembered, still whispering his favorite tunes. 

Maybe, this is why the wordless melodies were created.