My Daughter’s Place

RF,

I found it very touching, and I appreciated the vulnerability and creativity.

If the piece is autobiographical (as its plain meaning reads) I’m sorry for your terrible loss.

Brought tears to my eyes. I feel for you.

Being alive gives one the abilty to grow, to achieve, to overcome!

Death is
A heart which will forever be broken
An yearning which can never be filled
A sore which can never heal
A body and mind without the abilty to change

Life is just the opposite

Let’s make the most of it while we still have it!

Thank you for this. Death is a continuation of what we call life.

Ruchy, I really like this piece. The emotions are palpable, the scene creative, and the sadness poetic.

Thank you, all. Michael, the poem is actually dedicated to a friend, so no, it was not my personal loss but it was a reflection of my personal pain.

Wow! RF, even greater than the great creativity in this poem (as in your other writings) I admire your intense sympathy/empathy with – per you comment – a friend’s loss, pain, and suffering.

Also, now having seen your brief bio, I can with more conviction reiterate my admiration for what I’ve sensed in your works: an authentic Beshtianism preserved in a vital and constant freshness that some call modernity.

Thanks again n keep’m coming, but, as they say, [preferably:] “oyf simchas”

Thanks, Quasi. Not sure about the Beshtianism (what is it supposed to imply anyway? intense spirituality?), but I’m glad you enjoy my work.

beautiful

I weep
for all
the Tsurris in the
world.

Well done.

I’ve read the piece and I was deeply moved by the sentiments expressed. Of course I am referring to the me that is my emotions, which on this site shouldn’t really be relevant. It is only logic that matters here, so then I have to be honest and tell you that logically I wasn’t moved at all.

As a matter of fact, logically I have a problem with this piece.

At the end you’re saying:
And I think,
it’s not so bad
being dead.

A sad sentiment, one that was expressed by King Solomon, who was granted the ultimate wisdom. He writes in Ecclesiastes “I praise the dead”. If death is so peaceful and great, why is it then that we living beings will do everything in our power to go on living? Instinctually we fight death, no matter how badly our lives suck.

I don’t think it is the afterlife we’re afraid of – at least not for most on this site So what then is it?

I myself do not have the answer, which is why I beseech to the more educated and knowledgeable amongst us, (like the farmer / psychotherapist from Oklahoma, or the All-Knowing-but-not-Sharing Dr. Laura), to shed some light on this complex matter. So that we the common folk, the uneducated, illiterate, and ignorant, should also be able to grasp why it is that we so badly want to go on living.

I can’t help but wonder why a piece like this is on this site – a site dedicated to writings by and for and about ‘Chasidim on the fringe’.

I guess the writer successfully made it ‘Unpious-worthy’ by including a very important line:
A Jewish tradition
A superstition
inviting the dead to their loved ones’ weddings.

Or maybe the editor had to work extra hard and rewrite this piece so that the poem would accommodate an ‘unpious’ word.

Am I the All-knowing-but-not-sharing Dr. Laura? Is the description an insult or compliment? (The description sounds a lot like God, so perhaps it depends on whether you view God positively or negatively?)

Abe, regardless of whether you meant me or not, I will give you my opinion on the intent of this piece.

I read this poem as more a statement about life than death. Life is difficult, with never ending things to do–things that often seem banal, and the reasons to do them often seem futile. The narrator comes to her daughter’s grave to invite her to a loved one’s wedding. A bittersweet moment. A time for reflection. Yet in her purse are all the prosaic stuff that make up everyday life. All those unfinished things. Endless, endless, all of it. They weigh her down. “The mishmash in my purse weighs a million granite fragments.”
So there’s all the stuff that still has to get done. And then there’s also all the sorrow that probably awaits her. Her and all humanity. When she contemplates this, the heaviness and banality and sadness that must certainly still come, especially against the backdrop of the clean, green, peaceful setting, how could she not say, “It’s not so bad, being dead.”

Peace, my friend.

Abe, the header doesn’t say “about” you can practically write whatever you want as long as HR feels ok to post it.

Who ever said that the will to live is a logical one? When animals run instinctively from fire, have they thought that through? Our isntinct to live, after all, is no different then theirs.
As Chazal say, ‘toiv loi le’odom sheloi nivroh mishenivroh’, and notwithstanding the meforshims explanation that Chazal based that on a spiritual gain versus loss analysis, I suspect that they meant that on a more banal level, similar to Ruchy’s sentiments.

FB, Baal Habos, and Abe, thank you. I’m glad my poem resonated with you. Your question, Abe, about the logic or meaning of the poem, which Laura attempted to interpret (Thank you, Laura) is a good one, but if I respond to it and explain my intention, I will be doing a disservice to you. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with literary theory or literary criticism, but if you’ve studied the discipline at all, you’ve surely heard the term “intentional fallacy.” (For anyone interested, it’s a *New Criticism* term, coined by Wimsatt and Beardsley in their noted essay of that name.)So the meaning (or logic) of the poem must be found within the poem itself, and your interpretation is as good as any other. I’m sure if you reread “My Daughter’s Place,” especially now that Laura has introduced a different slant, you will discover your own logical interpretation of the poem. But even if you don’t, poetry is sensual, poetry is soul. Since you tell me that the words moved you emotionally, I know the poem has done its job.