COMPASSION WITHIN ENDURANCE - day 24 TIFERET sh b’NETZACH

COMPASSION WITHIN ENDURANCE - day 24 TIFERET sh b’NETZACH

3 full weeks  and 3 days

PSALMS OF MY SOUL - CLICK photo for full Omer

Kabbalistic Sephirat HaOmer -  ספירת העומר

© Joy Krauthammer
http://sephirathaomer.blogspot.com/2015/04/compassion-within-endurance-day-24.html 

HOPE collage by Joy Krauthammer ©

COMPASSION WITHIN ENDURANCE - day 24 TIFERET sh b’NETZACH

HOPE collage I created while serving as Caregiver Angel Warrior for my husband, z"l, in the years preceding his 2006 death.

Creating HOPE gave me more serene, quality time in enduring the battle I was fighting along with my husband. It can be meditative when gluing down little words torn from magazines. (Like deleting tiny pixels from photographs in PhotoShop.)

Hope was my enduring commitment for the one I loved, and for others.

Hope as I've known it may be for a peaceful ending to a difficult life or challenging illness.

Sharing HOPE in a balanced heart-felt way, maybe with truth on a medical journey, one of endurance filled with years of illness and challenges, is best shared with compassion. Hope is the last notion to go or else we can not endure challenges to be victorious, successful in reaching our goal– here to live, to not die, or to die in peace with dignity, and without prolonged suffering.  I find HOPE is an important attribute in Tiferet sh b'Netzach.

Wanting to refine my compassion attribute, especially during Counting of the Omer, this week I took a class "Healing Hand" with Sue Knight Deutsch, part of the Kalsman Institute's "Jewish Wisdom and Wellness" two week learning 'festival'. Teacher Sue said "Hope matters" and I thought of my Hope collage. I felt the need to take this class to learn if there was a better way for me to be in the future with dying loved ones. Years ago I had studied with "Compassion in Action" but presently I needed live 'closure' for a best friend who had just died and I didn't have it due to her medical circumstances and that I did not know she was on hospice until it was too late. Lacking proper communication was at fault. What could I learn to be more present? I wanted to be able to be present with compassion for the needs of the dying.  I find it not easy to begin have a discussion about death with the dying.

I participated in a memorial for my best friend, Edith, obm, on same day as Healing Hand class.  I'd lost 17 people in prior two years (including my older sister, z"l), and more beloved ones, friends, chevre, family, teachers died in earlier years. When death is not unexpected and not sudden, there is a chance for HOPE.  

Part of that HOPE is for a peaceful transition, preparing for and going smoothly to 'the light', after soul releases the body. Prior to the soul's trip, the neshama can be filled from loved ones with love, and forgiveness and gratitude. There can be sharing, reading, listening, silence, singing, music, dance, blesSing, prayers, play, kisses, touching and hand holding. 

When another dear friend Marilyn, z"l, died years ago, I had been holding out "hope" for her, I said to her as we sat in her living room during my Bikur Cholim visit. My friend was upset with me for that hope because it did not feel real to her that she could have hope. She believed the cancer was too far along. I vowed to myself not to again make that mistake, and 'to hear' what the person was saying to me and acknowledge that truth. 

When my mother, z"l, was dying in late 1960's, I lied to her, feigning hope. With compassion, with Tiferet, I told my mother, and showed her, that I bought little seashells for her to make me cuff links when "she returned home from hospital". She loved seashells but I didn't believe she was coming home, and neither did she. In great sadness, there was no closure to this relationship, no truth shared, no forgiveness or gratitude spoken of, although LOVE was shared. In those years, at Mt. Sinai hospital in New York, one was not allowed to speak truth to the patient. I was threatened by the MD with no visitation rights if I dare mentioned "cancer" or death to my dying mother. (I still feel the anger.)

Hope can be a balance between reality, truth, sadness and not giving up, and with endurance for health and peacefulness.

I share my HOPE collage with anyone who desires HOPE.

Summer of 1988, Russian refusenik and human rights activist (now Israeli politician) Natan Sharansky came to California with compassion to personally visit my husband, z"l, comatose a few months in hospital, to offer him "courage", because Natan as a Soviet prisoner for nine years understood when hope was needed to endure. He left his book for my husband who had great faith, trust (emuna v'bitachon) and indomitable spirit.

This HOPE collage is printed on suede cloth as part of a large hanging quilt at Mt. Sinai cemetery in Simi Valley.  See photo.

Joy's HOPE square on far right side of quilt

© Joy Krauthammer