Transcription:
Part of visiting the cemetery is the ongoing relationship. But in the cemetery, there’s an understanding that the relationship has clearly changed because you’re standing at a grave. If someone finds it difficult to go to a cemetery, the question would be, is it because it’s so painful? What is it about the cemetery that’s a causing the barrier or causing the difficulty? Is it because it’s so painful? In which case, the larger question is, what’s remained unresolved? What is it about that relationship that makes it painful to stand there and engage in those memories? It’s not a question of, is it painful to be in the cemetery? It’s a question of why? What’s happening that’s making it so painful? The practice, Jewishly, of putting a stone on a tombstone. When we visit someone in a cemetery, there’s a lot of reasons. As I said before, there’s never one answer to anything in Judaism. But one of the legends says, one of the midrashim say that memory is so important in Judaism. It’s what we leave behind. It’s our legacy of what we leave behind. When we curse someone, we say, yeemach shemo v’zichro. His name should be erased and his memory should be erased. And that’s the worst thing we could wish someone, is that they leave no memory, no trace. When we go to a cemetery, we’re actually saying, there is a memory. There is a trace. It’s not gone. And one of the midrashim says that to maintain memory at night, and we’re not supposed to go to cemeteries. Traditionally, after nightfall, cemeteries become very spiritually vibrant places after sunset. And one of the things that happens is the angels of memory move through the cemetery and whisper the names that are on the tombstones so that no one will be forgotten, no memory will be forgotten. We leave a stone on the tombstone. So we’re saying to the angels, you don’t need to whisper this name because this person is not forgotten. I was here. And so we put a stone, and when the stone is seen, the angel knows no need to mention that name. And it’s our way of communicating beyond where we are, because we’re standing in a cemetery, and everything about a cemetery is beyond where we are. Everything beyond our knowledge, our understanding, our processing, our understanding of time and infinity, our understanding of community, it’s beyond everything. So to be able to leave a stone and say, I can only connect to beyond everything with this stone. In saying that what is still active is memory and the name. And we name after people because for that exact reason. So the cemetery becomes the place of that. And if someone says, I can’t go to the cemetery, I’d really want to have a conversation about. Can you find words to tell me why? What is it? Is it the memory of that day? Is it the memory of loss? Is it pain? Is it. What? What is it? Because it could be so many things. But cemeteries shouldn’t be places of blockage. For us, it’s just the realm of where we acknowledge how little we really know our channel.