20 Elul, Monday, September 15
Main Street, Limestone, ME 2010 trip
I usually begin Elul in Limestone, Maine. For the past
nine years a group of us have made the annual trip, a seven-hour drive straight
north from Boston to a magical place, from a different era, where the sky is so
expansive you could watch it all day long. Where the blueberries grow fat and
sweet on the low bushes. Where we can’t look at our phones without paying
Canadian roaming rates, so we don’t look. Much.
It’s a time to step out of time, to work with our hands,
be with community, hear stories, make new friends, and dig deep into our souls.
This year was our final visit to our friends in
Limestone. Nearly a decade has passed, and the years have touched us all. The
kids, who are now adults, independent and strong, skilled with the power tools
and more importantly, skilled in figuring out how to do things for themselves.
No longer children, they have lives that beckon them to go elsewhere in late
August.
The parents, also more skilled, more confident. Some of us with aching backs or shoulders that limit our strength and mobility. Some of us a little slower to hear, to understand, or to move. The church people in Limestone are getting on in years, too. They used to bring us snacks throughout the day, dropping by with cold washcloths for our sweaty shoulders, leaving bottles of water and fresh-baked cookies.
Nothing lasts forever. But how do we know when the end is
here? Do we wait for it to stop us in our tracks, without warning? Do we push
on anyway, despite signs that we have passed the finish line? Is it possible to
meet an end gracefully, without resentment, anger or fear?
It took me all year to accept this loss, beginning with a
hushed conversation at the church last summer. Over the course of the year I
went through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s classic stages. First denial—this can’t be
true, there must be some mistake. Then anger that we had not been given a say
in the matter. Followed by bargaining, perhaps we could find a way to keep it
going? Depression set in. And finally, as we packed our bags and counted each
day’s “last” event: acceptance.
We will continue the Tikkun Olam Family Work Project into
the future. We will investigate a new place, a place that has all the
ingredients that made Limestone work so magically and that made us love it so
much. We will recruit new families and train new teens (and their parents). We
have been blessed to have these nine summer visits. We have been blessed to
know the warm-hearted folk in Limestone. We have been blessed to feel that our
week together has been filled with meaning and purpose, as well as blueberries
and potatoes. That blessing has not come to an end.
Just as we say about loved ones we have lost, “may her
memory be a blessing,” it is the memory of all of those days in Limestone that
will continue to bring us joy, and inspire others to carry on this holy work.
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