{"id":10261,"date":"2006-10-16T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-16T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/production.ou.org\/life\/other\/remembering_liz\/"},"modified":"2015-10-22T07:41:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T12:41:22","slug":"remembering_liz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/remembering_liz\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Liz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image\"<\/div>\n

Something reminded me this morning of a teenager from my hometown, but I couldn’t recall her name. About forty years ago, she killed her mother by mistake.<\/p>\n

She was one of my sister Amy\u2019s friends from high school, so my first thought was, I\u2019ll ask Amy<\/i>, and the next was: But I can\u2019t<\/i>! Amy died last year.<\/p>\n

The unremembered name hung around all afternoon, bothering me the way a vaguely bad dream can insinuate itself underhandedly into the daylight hours. I thought, what difference does it make<\/i>? But it was unnerving that the central detail of a potent episode in my childhood, a whole long story which had once upon a time loomed up larger than life –much larger than life — could have simply been mislaid<\/i>. There was a sense that without my having noticed, crucial events in my personal history were being shown in the grand scheme of things to lack significance, and were being duly crushed \u2013 as if by some grand garbage compactor — under the pileup of years.<\/p>\n

I emailed one of my other sisters:<\/p>\n

Dear P, <\/i><\/p>\n

A memory came to mind today of Amy\u2019s friend from high school who was driving her little sports car with her mother in the passenger seat when she looked away from the road for a second (I think it was for something that in retrospect looked especially petty and selfish: to check herself in the mirror, or change the channel on the radio) and back-ended a truck (or a school bus?) The car went right underneath the larger vehicle. Her mother died.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure you remember this \u2013 I hope so — but do you remember her name?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no practical need on my part to know, just that I read a news report today about a woman in NYC whose drunken boyfriend killed her mother, and I remembered that whole episode. I think it was one of the most horrifying things I ever saw in childhood \u2013 her being responsible for her mother’s death. It filled me with fear, awe, curiosity. I used to think of her situation with amazement, and with relief it wasn’t me. I think she, also, came from a family of all girls. How could her sisters not hate her forever? Not to mention hating herself.<\/p>\n

I think she stayed with us for a while after the accident. She was tall and good-looking, big-boned, with a flash of a smile. I remember looking at her brushing her long, thick, reddish-brown hair. I wondered how she could go on. She acted normal. I can see now that that\u2019s what probably horrified and fascinated me as much as the crime itself.<\/p>\n

I wonder what happened to her. She loomed so monstrously large. So, do you remember?<\/p>\n

* * *<\/center>One of my father\u2019s oft-repeated lines (which along with his other favorites, such as \u201cNo one gets out of this world alive,\u201d used to elicit eye-rolls of boredom from his daughters) was \u201cLife is an adventure in forgiveness.\u201d As far as I was concerned, this was the kind of corny, sanctimonious stuff adults just loved spouting. Why they made such a big deal about things like that was beyond me.<\/p>\n

I don’t recall his using that line specifically in relation to Liz (for that was her name; it appeared to me out of the blue, even before my sister in America emailed back) but what happened to her made me conscious for the first time, really, that forgiveness was something a person might really need sometimes, like food (not that I ever went hungry) or good grades. Yes, she\u2019d committed her crime by mistake \u2013 isn\u2019t that what people say, we all make mistakes? \u2013 but as far as I could see, that wouldn\u2019t do her much good. Her name would always be associated in peoples\u2019 minds with what she\u2019d done. How could she ever get married and have children and live happily ever after? Checking how she looked in the mirror\u2026Switching channels on the radio\u2026<\/i> Not only had her mother died, which in itself was too nightmarish a thing even to imagine, but it was Liz\u2019s fault, it would always be her fault, wouldn\u2019t it? Her life had ended before it began.<\/p>\n

It couldn\u2019t have made it any easier for her, having Amy\u2019s little sister staring up at her all the time with curious eyes, taking peeks at her grief. For that little girl, the world was divided into two kinds of people. On one side were all the really bad people, who do really, really bad things like murder or lying or cheating. And on the other side (where my family, and all our friends and relatives were) was everyone else.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

For the sin we committed in Thy sight unintentionally, reads the Yom Kippur <\/i>Machzor. For the sin we committed in Thy sight willfully or by mistake\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Little did I know, in the charming ignorance called childhood, that innocence and guilt are Siamese twins, entwined inextricably in every human heart, and that even grown-ups have a hard time differentiating between \u201cintentional\u201d and \u201cunintentional,\u201d \u201cforgivable\u201d and \u201cunforgivable.\u201d We can take it as a given that anyone we come to love will at some point appear unlovable and bad in our eyes, because — as it says in the Yom Kippur prayer book — none of us is without fault. Contrary to what I gathered from 1950s sitcoms such as \u201cFather Knows Best,\u201d it doesn\u2019t come naturally — even for someone who\u2019s basically good-hearted — to choose good, to become good.<\/p>\n

Liz must have seen me trying to unveil her guilt, to weigh it against her suffering and see where she ended up, which side. But she wasn\u2019t doing much to help. She didn\u2019t look tormented. I never heard her cry. If she\u2019d come out of the guestroom with red eyes, if she\u2019d walk with a slump, show us she was hating herself, she would have been less an object of wonder.<\/p>\n

One of the million things I had yet to learn was that it doesn\u2019t take a car crash. The raised eyebrow or the raised voice, the putdowns disguised as jokes, jealousy in the garb of praise, the comment made behind someone\u2019s back, which you wouldn\u2019t have said it if the person were right there\u2026 On any sunny, normal day, that\u2019s how we the good ones kill and are killed.<\/p>\n

Our ambivalence about who we are is such that we get secret satisfaction from the next guy\u2019s fall. What a relief \u2013 for a moment or two \u2013 from the burden of our own selves! It\u2019s not just some quaint literary exaggeration \u2013 forgive me, Daddy!<\/i> — to say life is an adventure in forgiveness, because I\u2019ve learned belatedly that that\u2019s what it must become: a matter of getting to know ourselves well enough that we\u2019re no longer so shocked and baffled by our own and our fellow man\u2019s selfishness, self-centeredness, insincerity, stupidity, betrayal, pretension, hypocrisy, deception, cruelty\u2026to become tolerant of the fact that it\u2019s G-d Who\u2019s holy, but Mortals \u2018R Us. Someone once told me that she and her husband and children had made an agreement to forgive each other an infinite number of times, because that\u2019s how often their actions would make it necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sin is ever before me,\u201d wrote the Psalmist, King David, of a misdeed he could never forget. What can one do with inescapable guilt? Maybe Liz became the kind of person who can forgive and forget in others what they can\u2019t in themselves. Maybe she doesn\u2019t have to understand everything before forgiving, and granting her love.<\/p>\n

The main thing I didn\u2019t know as a child was that fortunately, there\u2019s a dimension to forgiveness beyond our human capacity for it. Ultimately we\u2019re not dependent on our own scant store of generosity and understanding for the complete forgiveness we all need, unceasingly. Our Creator has the final word, and with Him it\u2019s easier. All we have to do\u2026is ask.<\/p>\n


\n* * *<\/center>My sister replied:<\/p>\n

I remember Liz and I remember an older sister (or two?) Jennifer? I even have a fleeting memory of their mother\u2019s face. But I don\u2019t remember anything about Liz being responsible for her mother\u2019s death. Maybe I had already left home?<\/i><\/p>\n

That my sister has no recollection at all of all this almost makes me wonder: to what extent was my experience — which figured so prominently in my child\u2019s eye view of the world — a product of my childish misunderstanding or misinterpretation? My memory is at once so long and so short — some details so vivid, others so vague \u2013 that whatever it was that happened, the reality is beyond my grasp.<\/p>\n

But isn\u2019t that always the case? What a vast amount of information we\u2019d need in order to get a fair, complete version of anyone\u2019s deeds, including our own! Only G-d has the whole story, and after apologizing to our fellow man, it\u2019s to Him we turn. As we say on Rosh Hashana:<\/p>\n

He will suppress our iniquities and cast into the depths of the seas all their sins\u2026to a place where they will neither be remembered, considered, nor ever brought to mind\u2026 <\/i><\/p>\n

For all these, O G-d of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, atone for us.<\/p>\n

\n

Sarah Shapiro’s most recent books are <\/i>“A Gift Passed Along,” and <\/i>“The Mother in Our Lives”. She writes for a number of publications in Israel and the United States, and teaches writing in Jerusalem, where she lives with her family. <\/i>This article originally appeared in American Jewish Spirit Magazine. Reprinted with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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