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January 25, 2002/12 Shevat 5762, Vol. 54, No. 19
A life ends, but a story continues
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Leonard Fein
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What do you do if you are confronted by something as painful and imponderable as the loss of a child?
If you are Leonard Fein, you write a book.
"Against the Dying of the Light: A Father's Journey through Loss" (Jewish Lights Publishing, $19.95 hardcover) chronicles the loss of Fein's beloved middle daughter, Nomi. It takes the reader from the awful news of Nomi's untimely death of a heart attack at the age of 30 through the unreality of the funeral and mourning period and on to Fein's struggle to accept what he refers to as "the one unappealable verdict" in life.
"It's a very small book," Fein remarks during a telephone interview from his Boston home. "(But) it took me five years to write."
Nomi died in 1989, leaving behind a 17-month-old daughter, Liat, a loving husband, David, as well as a raft of other family members and friends. Fein began writing just days after her death, the first section of the book really a series of journal entries that intersperses recollections of Nomi, alive, with Nomi, dead.
He explains that the exercise of writing was cathartic, helping him to bring his daughter closer by immersing himself in his memories while at the same time pushing her away.
"I was creating distance between us," he says of the writing process.
A very public person - a veritable dean of American Jewish letters, the founding editor of Moment magazine, who is published widely and lectures frequently - Fein says he never considered not publishing what was a very private book.
"It seemed natural to me to publish," he says. "And from the responses I've had, the book has been useful to others."
Fein knits together his personal story with observations on the rituals of death and mourning and the solace that comes from those who reach out to the bereaved.
"The rituals are enormously comforting," he says, "partly because you don't have to ask what to do, so much of it is prescribed."
In the book he describes the kriyah, the rending of a garment, that signifies mourning. Fein explains how he had assumed that he would simply rend his tie, but in the end, makes a tear in his suit.
He writes: "(The funeral director) cuts, I rip, and the ripping of the suit feels right... This is my garment, now ruined. It matches what has happened inside me."
Later, he tells of the burial, as the mourners fill the fresh grave.
"I try, vainly, to let the earth slide off the shovel softly, even tenderly. But the grave is deep, and the sound of the earth hitting the casket is a bitter punctuation mark: Now begins the ending, the real ending. My child is being buried."
Fein's simple language and elegant prose capture the experience, transporting the reader, especially one who, too, has suffered the death of a loved one, to any funeral parlor, to any cemetery. His words, his images, resonate.
He is able to evoke similar echoes in his depiction of the shiva period which envelops the mourner in a comforting stream of visitors, home cooked meals, letters, cards and memorial contributions.
"It is never too late to express your condolences," he says he has learned. "If you miss the first week, the first month, the first year, it is still appreciated, noticed, it still means something to reach out."
He tells of the need to talk and of the one sensitive visitor, who simply sat down next to the grief-stricken father and said, "Tell me about your daughter."
Fein says that he is still learning to live with what he describes as "the enduring presence of an absence."
"There is this hole and it is real and that is where she is and who she has become," he says.
Asked if the loss has changed him, Fein pauses. He says that friends tell him that he is a tad less judgmental and a better listener since Nomi's death. "It's humbling, so out of your control," he says of a child's death, a telling response from a man whose life is one of prodigious accomplishment. Fein is the founder of Mazon: The Jewish Response to hunger and of the National Jewish Coalition for Literacy. He has also served as director of the Commission on Social Action of the Reform Jewish movement.
But, as a father, says Fein, losing a child evoked an enormous sense of failure.
"It's a father's job to protect your children. You've failed."
But life goes on, particularly with the next generation. The poignant last chapter in his book is a letter to Liat, Nomi's daughter and his granddaughter. He writes: "The story never ends. All that changes is who gets to write it. It's your turn now: write honestly and well."
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