Kibbud Av V’em: Honoring Your Father and Mother

by Audrey Lichter

Today is my father’s Yahrzeit. He has been gone for 50 years. He died when I was a teenager, from a stroke in his mid 50’s. There is no good time to lose a parent. However, losing a parent when one is in the final stages of growing up is hard for a number of reasons. It depends on what kind of support your extended family and friends make available to you as to whether you can navigate the challenges of leaving home for college and beginning to think about your future away from home. It depends on the culture of your campus, your friends and classes whether they can be a support or are deafened to your vulnerabilities and questions. Both of these were challenges for me.

Life goes on, and we all age, although not all of us grow up. I have been thinking about parents and those around us. now having lost both of my parents (although my mother lived well into her 90’s). I am thinking of the war…  all the mothers and fathers, children, whether enemy combatants or not, that have died and left the remaining family members to continue on with their lives and weather the tribulations of life without them.

Our tradition, like many, places a great emphasis on honoring your parents. It goes into great detail what this means, from making sure they are safe and well fed, to not sitting in their seat or shaming them in public. We remind ourselves in prayer 3 times a day of those who came before us, our “Avot.”

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of something relating to either or both of my parents.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of something relating to either or both of my parents. They leave such an indelible mark on us. Even though I only knew my father for 19 years, he shaped so much of who I am today, but so have others.  It is a hard time, and there is so much to lose.

So, as we prepare for the new year, know that we all can be kinder or accessible to others as we each travel through this uncertain life. Each of us may touch others in ways we are not aware of.  In the coming year, as Rabbi David Wolpe reminds us, each of us will be a messenger at least one time in our lives, even without knowing it, to calm and give comfort to another.

 Shana Tova,
Audrey