Kneeling
My mother is mellowing with age. She is getting softer and softer everyday. I feel as if I am caring for a helpless child. She is bringing out the best in me now. The most compassionate, patient and sensitive person at my core. The other day after a doctor’s visit, I watched my sister in law kneeling down next to my mother in her wheelchair and I remembered how I had once kneeled before an old woman I did not know and held her hand and told her how sorry I was for her loss. It was in the early 1990’s when I was working for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago. A co-worker’s brother died. His family was originally from Persia. I went with many of my co-workers to pay a condolence call in the evening at his home. When we walked in he greeted us and pointed to the couch where his elderly mother draped in black sat next to some other relatives. He felt worst for her he said than he did for anyone else. I understood immediately knowing my grandmother had buried two of her own children and how that violated some underwritten law of nature, a child passing on before his parents. I instinctively walked over to the couch, knelt and gently put my hands over her soft wrinkled folded hands sitting on her lap. I did not know if she could understand or speak English. I remember my grandmother usually speaking Yiddish in response to my English. I told this woman I had never met before how sorry I was and how I remembered my own grandmother losing her daughter and her son. She nodded and moved her right hand out from under mine and over so now my hands were securely wrapped in the warmth of her old flesh. After several minutes someone else came over and wanted to speak to her. I got up and took my place among my other co-workers gathered in a corner. My boss was there. He looked at me and smiled. The next day in the office my boss said seeing me kneeling in front of the grieving mother was one of the most incredibly touching and sympathetic moments he had ever seen in his life. It sounds silly, but that comment meant more to me than any praise I may have received for being successful in my job.
I was thinking about those kind words and how they have lasted longer in my memory than almost any other feelings I got while I was in the work force as I watched my sister-in-law talking softly to my mother, her hands on my mothers lap. For a second I was almost jealous, ashamed that I was not the one kneeling this time, even though I have spent many similar moments with my mother over the last several months. I thought of how melancholy we are all feeling on the last leg of this journey. Then I realized how lucky I am to have a mother who inspires so much love from everyone. How my sister-in-law has become my sister over the last 26 years. How my mother went from having one daughter to two and I could not be more proud if my mother won the Nobel Prize, finished the New York Marathon, or built a corporate empire. There is always enough love to spare. That is my mother’s legacy. How did I get so damn lucky? I knew to kneel so many years ago because my mother made sure her children were filled with compassion and kindness and humility.
Kneeling should never be confused with bowing. Kneeling is not done to express subservience, or as a way to beg for something or to show someone else how important they are (e.g. a Queen, or a King). Kneeling is an expression of respect and love. And respect and love should be the Universal Guiding Posts for how we treat others as we move through this world. I did not know that old woman, but I felt so much respect for her and her grief and I could feel how much she must have loved the son she lost. Both her pain and her love permeated the room filled with mourners and strangers. Kneeling before her was the only way I knew how to express my respect for that common bond we all have as humans who love and must often grieve when they lose one they love.
My sister-in-law knew kneeling near my mother was the only way to show her how much her love for all of us is appreciated in ways words cannot. Over the last several months my brother and sister (in-law) and I have wrapped my mother in the love and attention she richly deserves.
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