Parashat Vayera: Where is My Angel of Intervention? A Midrash on Grief and Loss
Re-reading Vayera is always a challenge, and one that prompted me to write midrash on the spiritual toll of loss, especially those who lose a child or a creature who essentially was their child. The pictures above are the last two pictures I have of my kitten Howl before he passed to heart failure at 11 months old. Going through Parashat Vayera I thought of him, and of every parent grieving the loss of a child or pregnancy. Who sees the angel sent down from Hashem halting Abraham to stop his sacrifice of his child, Issac, and send a ram instead in his place. After finding out that Hashem would be blessing them with a child in their old age, Abraham and Sarah laughed with disbelief and joy. They finally were going to have a child after a lifetime of grief over the impossibility. Yet their blessing turns sour when Hashem tests Abraham's faith by telling him to now kill and sacrifice the very child they never thought they'd have; it's an incredibly tense and devastating chapter to read.
I will never have children, but I do have animals who mean the world to me. Reading about the angel coming down to spare Abraham the most devastating blow, it's hard not to wonder where our angel was when deep in grief. Where was the angel when I adopted two beautiful kitten siblings - both six months old, only to come home one day several months later to find Howl in respiratory distress. Where was the angel when I took him to the emergency vet and found out he was in heart failure and would likely only have months at most to live? These sweet young kittens were all I had ever wanted after leaving home, after a lifetime of pain and searching for comfort and love. I had found that love with these precious animals, and no sooner than that blessing came into my life, it was taken away. Howl passed five months after I brought him home, never making it to his first birthday.
The death of my first boyfriend at the age of 15 was such a shock that it took over a decade for me to finally move past being numb and begin to process it. In my processing and doula studies, I began to think more about his parents. How I had known him for only a couple of years and felt such immense grief over the loss of someone who had such a profound impact on me. How this grief must be present with his parents every single day; losing a child does not make you less of a parent. It's something you will always be no matter where the spirit resides. There's something so bitter to me in reading Vayera, where the beauty of the parent-child relationship is manipulated into a test of faith. Where people who cannot have children are magically blessed if they happen to find very randomly given and taken favor with Hashem. The vast majority of us are not favored the way the matriarchs and patriarchs were; the vast majority of us will not have an angel intervening when it comes to the hardest goodbyes we have to face. To me, there is no peace that comes with losing a life so young and precious, nothing will ever ease the unfairness of the loss. Even if we are so lucky to have met these souls for however short of time we did, even if we can appreciate that they are no longer in human pain, there's nothing that comes close to easing the pain of the loss. A loss that under better circumstances, should not have happened. To watch the divine play with the human emotion of love and grief in such a callous manner feels like a gut punch over and over again.
To grieve the loss of close kin is a universal feeling: think of the whale that carried around the corpse of her calf for weeks after it passed. Think of the elephants who had emotional trauma and rage after losing their parents to poachers. I think of my kitten Ponyo, who normally very silent, began vocalizing every night for extra attention after the loss of her brother. What Abraham and Sarah experienced was a cruel test. What everyone who loses a child experiences is the most cruel of probabilities. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Yet we all carry on and carry the memory of our loved ones close to our hearts, invoking them in prayers and gentle reminders of their love. Love never leaves, it just changes form and evolves when someone passes. I may not be able to speak to my first boyfriend any longer or pet my kitten, but no matter how much time has passed they still hold space in my life. Their love still reverberates through everything I do. In the love I give to my cats, in the love I give to everyone, especially those deep in mourning. It's a pain that only learns to linger, but never leaves, and it shouldn't. Hashem chose the test they did because they understood it so deeply: a love like that can never be severed. It is the most pure and beautiful of energies in existence. It moves mountains and makes flowers bloom. It heals. That love will never leave you, not even for a second.