Monday, September 15, 2014

Comings and Goings



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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