NEFESH: The International Network of Orthodox Mental Health Professionals

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In My Mind (and on the couch)
Mindy Blumenfeld, LCSW

Click here to view my clinical profile

A Selection Of Articles, Musings, And Information Detailing The Struggles Of The Ordinary Person; A Celebration Of The Individual's Resilience To Overcome Challenges And Live Authentically.

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Open reader view When a Father Dies, and so Does the Passover Seder

Mindy Blumenfeld, LCSW

April 2nd, 2017

This beautiful piece was written by my teen client who allowed me a glimpse into her pain, and wanted to share it so that others can understand the impact of a father-loss.

Pesach is probably the hardest time for a fatherless family. Because it's all about the father and the child and the seder.

Here are her words: Originally published in Binah Magazine

Totty. Dark, untidy frizzes border his soft, pale face. He is my father…..my dear father. Glancing at a picture of Totty, all the good, old memories come flooding back to my baffled mind. I feel the heated tears trickling down my face. First one, then another, and then they become too many to count. I feel submerged by my warm tears. I ask them to stop flowing, but they seem to be ignoring me.

This matter repeats itself close to every night, and thus, it became my almost nightly routine. Every time I think about Totty, even for just a split second, I get carried away by my thoughts, and I then find myself deluged in a wet puddle of tears, and in a pool of lingering, unanswered questions. And every night, while I cry myself to sleep, I ask Totty just one of my endless, bothersome questions; “Totty, why did you leave me here alone?”

And although I propose the very identical question numerous times a day, I was never fortunate enough to receive a response.

For some odd reason, my family seems to have gotten way past that stage already, but I didn’t. My family thinks I’m ridiculous. I consider them strange. Perhaps they don’t love Totty as much as I do. But often I stop to think, that maybe I am the weird one. Maybe, after all, there is something wrong with me. I ponder about it lots of times.

Actually, it has been a long while since Totty’s gone, yet to me, it seems like it just occurred yesterday. It’s still so vividly etched in my puzzled mind.

In school, I’m also considered weird. I constantly feel people’s eyes following me. Sometimes it’s my classmates, and sometimes it’s my teachers. Occasionally, it could be my principals too.

In the morning, during our davening break, there is an uncountable amount of eyes glaring at me. Sometimes people think I don’t know that they’re looking at me, because every time I look at them, they quickly look away. But little do they know how wrong they are!

At times, it feels a bit strange that I’m the only girl in my entire school that cries by davening. I sometimes think that I’m the only one who wants to have a relationship with Hashem, which means that there must be something seriously odd about me. It appears to me that I’m the only one who desires to share a bond with the Creator of the world. But frankly, why wouldn’t someone want to talk to Hashem? Why wouldn’t someone want to express their feelings and their worries to Hashem? Isn’t He the source of all the blessings? Isn’t He the only One in the world who has any power?

I wonder about this plenty of times, but I hadn’t come up with any reasonable clarification, meanwhile.

H unched over my Chumash in class, my mind is anywhere but there. The next thing I know, I’m sitting in my principal’s two-by-two feet office. If she thought for even one twinkling second that she was being helpful by sharing her advice, she may have wanted to think again. My principal thinks that because she was granted the title “principal”, that already gives her the freedom to do and say whatever she wishes to. I wish I would know why so many principals tend to think this way.

“I know that your father was a great person, but it comes to a point when you need to stop grieving over him,” my principal tells me.

The first thing I wanted, was to take off my shoe and throw it at her. I have to say, she’s pretty lucky I was able to control myself. I mean, what the heck was she thinking? Where in the world did that woman take the guts to say that to me without a trace of shame?! She never even experienced a loss in her life. Who is she to come tell me how long to grieve over my father’s death? And I like the way she tries to comfort me by saying that my father was a great person; as if she knew him!

But she hadn’t finished yet.

“Hashem knows exactly how much time a person needs to recover from the loss of a loved one, and He therefore set certain time periods to mourn,” she unremittingly continued.

“First there is a levayah. Then there are seven days of shivah. Next, there are thirty days of shloshim, followed by a year of aveilis. And after that year, the grieving has to end. It simply can’t go on forever.”

I don’t know if it was more out of misery, of more out of anger that I started to cry, but it was awfully awkward, to put it mildly.

Crying in front of a principal is one thing I hate doing. But my tears don’t ask for permission, they just do as they please.

Walking home from school that day, my mind was in a twirl. Without even realizing, tears started descending from my eyes. And before I knew it, they were pouring down by the gallons. I had to look up to ensure it was my eyes and not the rain, by chance. But no, it had to be my tears. Every time I cry, I ask Totty the same question in hope of receiving an answer. “Totty, why did you leave me here alone?” Perhaps this time he’ll respond, I silently hoped. But the response never arrived.

When I got home, before I had a chance to do anything, I proceeded to my bed. I assume that I fell asleep, because when I woke up, it was quite a few hours later.

Heading downstairs, I happened to pass by the tall, rectangle shaped mirror hanging behind my bedroom door. Just to sneak a quick look of myself, I peeked into the mirror, and I noticed some ugly, sore, reddish, scabs by the side of my two, bleak eyes.

It was only at that moment that I came to the realization of how much I’ve been crying lately. But in fact, there was little I could do. Life is tough, so I cry. Totty left me here alone, causing me to feel so isolated from everyone and everything. All I ever think about is Totty, and how much easier life would be if Totty would still be around. I would be able to live a normal life just like everyone else. Don’t get me wrong! I know no one has a one-hundred-percent perfect life, but definitely more fair than mines.

Curling myself up in bed that night, my tears immediately emerged. I didn’t even try preventing them this time. I decided to let them flow freely.

Again I attempted to ask Totty my dreary question, and this time I was positive that he will answer me. I asked him; “Totty, why did you leave me here alone?”

And deep down in my heart, in a place that only Totty could reach, I heard him answer me; “My child, my dear, you are never alone.”

“When we go to the seder, my cousins are also there,” she said. “And they all get afikomens from their fathers, but in our family, only one of us can steal it from my grandfather.”

Small things. Huge hurts.

So I speak to the hosts of fatherless families, for those of you who so graciously open your homes and hearts to others, only with the hope to help. And yet so much pain is inflicted in the little things where we are oblivious.

Years ago, my children had this adorable babysitter who was like a little sister/daughter to me. Her father had died when she was an infant and her family joined us at the seder for a number of years until they grew up and built their own beautiful homes.

Yesterday, I called her. “Tell me how I could have done it better when you were our guests.”

She protested that she could think of nothing; that she is so grateful for what we had given her. But I said, “I was young and naive and had no idea what it meant to lose a father. There must be something I should have known.”

She said, “You didn't let me help. I wanted to give back to you just a little what you were giving me.” she thought some more. “But thank you for using humor. Your husband was funny and that broke the tension. It's important to make jokes, even if the seder is serious because laughing makes it just a little bit more okay.”

I attended a LINKS Shabbaton, a weekend that brings teen girls together from all over the United States. And what they have in common is that all have lost a parent. I gave a workshop; I forget about what. But what I do remember is this most marvelous girl who was full of personality and simchas hachayim. Except when she spoke about Pesach at another's family's seder.

“What would you like Binah Readers to know?” I asked her, “when they invite families without fathers to their seder?”

These are her words:

“I would like hosts to remember to include us in the seder
They should remember to ask us to repeat divrei Torah and special things we learned in school
We shouldn't have to to keep trying to ask “Can I say something?”
They should give us their full their attention the same way they give their full attention when they listen to their children. It's very hurtful to feel like no one's interested in what we are saying and don't really care.
Please seat us in the middle of the table and not all the way at the end with no one to talk to. It further reminds us that we don't have a father that is making sure we are enjoying the seder.
My ten year old sister says she would tell the host to know the order of everyone's ages when everyone is asked the Mah Nishtanah
My 12 year old sister says, “They should let me say my divrei Torah and LISTEN TO ME!”