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Joy Serves G*d in Joy as a passionate performing percussionist, poet, publisher, photographer, publicist, sound healer, spiritual guide, artist, gardener and Gemini. "Ivdu Et Hashem B'Simcha" -Psalm 100:2 ....... Joy Krauthammer, active in the Jewish Renewal, Feminist, and neo-Chasidic worlds for over three decades, kabbalistically leads Jewish women's life-cycle rituals. ... Workshops, and Bands are available for all Shuls, Sisterhoods, Rosh Chodeshes, Retreats, Concerts, Conferences & Festivals. ... My kavanah/intention is that my creative expressive gifts are inspirational, uplifting and joyous. In gratitude, I love doing mitzvot/good deeds, and connecting people in joy. In the zechut/merit of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, zt'l, I mamash love to help make our universe a smaller world, one REVEALING more spiritual consciousness, connection, compassion, and chesed/lovingkindness; to make visible the Face of the Divine... VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE and enjoy all offerings.... For BOOKINGS write: joyofwisdom1 at gmail.com, leave a COMMENT below, or call me. ... "Don't Postpone Joy" bear photo montage by Joy. Click to enlarge. BlesSings, Joy

LOVE IN FINAL JOURNEY - day 22 CHESED sh b'NETZACH

Psalms of My Soul  © Joy Krauthammer 

Kabbalistic Sephirat HaOmer  ספירת העומר
CHESED sh b'NETZACH - day 22  Caring and LOVING KINDNESS WITHIN FINAL JOURNEY
as Soul Leaves Body
Counting Omer 3 weeks and 1 day of 7 weeks



Lone Purple Lupine Living & Enduring in the Crack of Life
Soul Leaves Body
Doing it Alone, and with love
© Joy Krauthammer 
Edith taught me to properly pronounce name of this flower, sounds like LUpin, not LUpine.


Edith Endured her final days in the crack of life
with L O V E.
Soul Leaves Body
© Joy Krauthammer 


Purple Lupine Living & Enduring in the Crack of Life
Soul Leaves Body
and with love
Chesed sh b'Netzach
© Joy Krauthammer 


Psalms of My Soul  © Joy Krauthammer 
Kabbalistic Sephirat HaOmer   ספירת העומר
CHESED sh b'NETZACH - day 22  Caring and Loving Kindness Within the Final Journey
Counting Omer 3 weeks and 1 day of 7 weeks 

A Step to Personal Refinement in 49 Days
How can I refine my Chesed and Netzach, my endurance to be of better loving service?
From what or where does my endurance come?


During this Omer day 22, Chesed sh b’Netzach, Loving Kindness Within Endurance, I am registered for "Healing Hand", a half day workshop in being present for the dying...  as if I don’t have enough experience in this topic of life. But I feel that I need more guidance, wisdom so that I can be a better more understanding friend, present for the dying.  In less than the last couple years, I lost about 17 beloved friends, including cousins, one at a time, including an older sister months ago, z"l. Lost more loved ones in the preceding years. 

Two weeks ago it was sad to be with a dying dear friend, Edith, obm. Loving family was always in and out of the room to be with their mother, my friend on hospice in a hospital bed in her own home filled with love. I felt the need to honor friend’s family, and to give them their time without my excess presence.
They all said I was the “best friend”. Edith was my best friend.

I wish I could have had a meaningful conversation at the end, and been supportive more to my friend. The truth is that I’ve been supportive to her for many years, just as she was mutually supportive and loving to me.  Could I have caringly in kindness said anything that could have helped my friend in her final journey on earth? Had the topic of DEATH been opened for discussion, it may have been possible. 

How do I step out of the ‘fear’ of not wanting to be inappropriate, OR how to go forward in Netzach in opening up with Chesed / compassion to addressing the sensitive issue not yet spoken about– the conversation/discussion with a loved one about 'hospice, end of life, death', without thinking I am trespassing on an intimate personal, important reality topic, and thus not saying anything, not creating an opening.  (With a dead person, I can easily have the monologue.) 

I did NOT know that Edith was on Hospice upon coming home from hospital with pacemaker. Prior to my friend being on 'palliative care' and morphine and no longer responsive, I did not know that this was the end of her life journey. We also had never touched upon the topic of 'end of life', nor death. (Couple years earlier I offered to friends a workshop, "Valley Death Cafe". Goal was to have a discussion on 'end of life'. I scheduled this when a friend died after months on hospice and I had daily visited.)

The week before Edith's death, a music therapist was visiting and dear Edith asked me to come by for the appointment. The gentle soft-spoken therapist surprised me when at my request, he introduced himself to me as being from a "hospice". He asked me about the friendship and "love shared" and I expressed out loud some of the ways Edith and I had connected, and how grateful I was for the love. I had no idea at the time that this would be the last of our discussions or friendly visits. Edith speaking became too difficult along with breathing.

Sometimes friends have been on hospice for many extended months. I followed the visiting hospice music therapist out to his car when I too was leaving, and asked him, "Why hospice?" Of course he legally couldn't tell me. I didn't ask in the moment in the room then, "Why?" I didn't ask my friend. (I was silently upset with the hospice music therapist because two weeks earlier my friend said that she had requested two spiritual songs for the next visit, and therapist on this last visit was not prepared.)

Until a couple weeks earlier when lungs then weakened, my friend was so much stronger and alert with the 'pacemaker' she was given two months earlier.

My reality is that I am in mourning again, with a loss of a best friend. I'm feeling that maybe there was more I could have verbally been for Edith, while holding a hand, gently stroking her arm and forehead, and kissing good bye, saying "I love you". 

Family, caregivers and nurses were in and out of the room for the last few days. Could I have spoken with Edith, obm, about the transition she was in? Could I have said anything to ease her journey in releasing her body? I did silently speak to her soul about her loved ones who had died. Could I have said anything comforting to Edith about her eternal soul?

Thus, this Sephirat HaOmer Day 22 represents for me my Chesed, my Loving kindness and compassion in determination to be present at the end of life for my dear friends. How can I be better to help contribute wholeheartedly to loved ones in the face of death? To help ease the journey of their soul.

Couple decades ago I studied with a group called Compassion in Action, AKA the Twilight Brigade.  The weeks of driving into LA were to learn to be present for the dying. Between that and all too many of my experiences with loved ones dying and supporting their caregivers with Bikur Cholim  / visiting the sick, I still feel to be ‘not enough’ and yet, I know this journey is not about me. I have learned to walk into the hospice room empty, without a plan, and just be present. That can be in silence.

In the last days of my friend Edith’s, obm life, she could not speak, she was in a morphine comatose state, so there was no conversation.  But that did not stop me from telling my friend what she already knew, that I love her, and so did my family. I put my cell phone to her ear so she could hear my daughter’s voice sharing love. I know Edith's soul heard my daughter, and me, and my soul is feeling it deeply as I write.

My Reb Zalman, z"l, had taught us, his students, that after death we can still have conversations with our loved ones (while 'holding their hand' by holding our own hand). We can ask about "Forgiveness, Gratitude, Compassion and Love". I've even created a MEMORY FLAME card with that advice to give comfort to mourners, and I've given away hundreds.  I need to remember that while loved one is still alive, we can open the gates of conversation on "Forgiveness, Gratitude, Compasson and Love", as my card says. 

During day 22, today, it is the memorial for my friend Edith (minutes following the 'Healing Hand" workshop'), and I will be sharing many hugs with Edith's large family, for the last time. They do know I loved their mom.  With hugs, I have written a few loving notes to her family in the days following death, extolling virtues of our friendship and experiences. 

When I see single flowers growing in cracks in cement, I see the perseverance needed to live. In the flower breaking through, I see the soul separating from the body. My 95 year old friend knew her time had come. She had out-lived all her peers, she told me years ago. I would have liked to somehow be more supportive to Edith (and others) at end-of-life, more than I was, but maybe I was present for her with nothing left unsaid nor undone.  I realize now that I was very present the prior year when a dear friend was preparing to die but this 86 year old friend continually herself brought up the topic maybe because she had no family.

I’m going to the 'Jewish Wisdom and Wellness" workshop in a few minutes, just in case there is anything I can learn and be conscious and wise about, when in Chesed I say goodbye to my loved ones. I wonder, did any of Edith’s family speak to her about death, her death. Or were these words unspoken? LOVE was shared.


- Joy Krauthammer


P.S. 
In the Kalsman Institute with Cedars-Sinai hospital's "Healing Hand" workshop (with Sue Knight Deutsch) that I attended in morning before friend's afternoon memorial, I was reminded while visiting the dying:

–To walk in empty, and to breathe "out, and in", like blowing up and deflating a balloon.
–To listen.
–To also share that the person's "life had meaning". (My sister, z"l, and I had really discussed that when she was not well and I shared with her so many of her contributions to making the world a better place. I also reminded my family so they too could reiterate meaningful facts.)
–To ask for permission to touch the person. (I do this also when blesSing another.)
–To be on their right side facing you, if possible.
–Not to touch the crown of the head because the soul exits from the crown. (I know not to be by the head because angels visit by the head.)
–Give permission to the person for them to "let go" (of their earthly body)
~ ~ ~

The afternoon MEMORIAL for Edith was absolutely loving and attended by all extended family. 
We sat in Edith's garden that she dearly loved.




© Joy Krauthammer 


Screen shot of a PhotoBooth Selfie, shared with Edith's 90th birthday movie, story of her life.


Screen shot from birthday movie of Edith and Joy, loving friends

Sharing Love LINKS TO EDITH:





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