Feeling Welcomed

Going to a Jewish synagogue for a movie screening, feeling like family, talking openly about death.

My neighbor and I went to a movie screening the other day. It was held at a Jewish synagogue. Neither of us is Jewish.

From the moment that we entered their parking lot, people were there to greet us and usher us into the room where there were refreshments to be enjoyed. We sat down and folks started to say hello, ask our names, and include us in conversations.

I was touched.

In a day-to-day world where we hear of so much divisiveness, hatred, and conflict, what a joy it was to experience this sense of being welcomed before we were even known. Being asked to come in. Being included. Feeling comfortable in a room of people we had never met.

We sat down with our coffee and talked with some of the people there. They asked where we lived, how we heard about this movie screening. We chatted. We drank our coffee (with the added milk of human kindness.) What a lovely thing this kindness was, and is, in our world. We so desperately need this today.

I think that there are cultural influences that hit home for my neighbor and me. I am Italian-American, and I have always felt that my culture feels like the Jewish culture in many ways. Both cultures often express feelings quite openly. Both use food to nourish, feed, love, and share. My neighbor comes from Hawaii, where ohana is the word for family and being ohana transcends many barriers. Family is defined more broadly in all of these cultures than simply the ties of blood. I love that.

There is another culture that I believe was also apparent here. The culture of aging and elderhood. We are together in this poignant time of life, aware of an end, aware that we are getting closer to it each day. This, I think, can open us up more. Make us more sensitive, make us hide less. Allow us to share who we are more easily with those who may be interested.

It was time to watch the movie. A 75-minute feature documentary called “Jack Has A Plan”, directed by Bradley Berman.

This was not a light movie. It featured Jack, a man with terminal brain cancer who had made a choice as to when he would die. So many scenes were filled with love, tears, yet also contained laughter, compassion, and bittersweetness. Jack made his choice, did not want to wait until he was helpless and dependent on others and was no longer who he felt himself to be. He set about trying to resolve issues that he felt were unfinished and did what he could with those. He arranged a gathering, a celebration of his life on the day that he had chosen to die. And that day everyone there talked about their memories with Jack, expressed love, hugged, and said goodbye in their own way. After a while, it was time for the guests to leave so that he and his wife could be alone together for Jack’s final moments.

We were all deeply moved.

After the movie ended, the audience was invited to participate in a discussion. There were such touching stories shared by some of the guests there.

A woman shared about her son who has intractable depression that has not responded to any treatments and who no longer wants to live but is upset that he cannot do anything legally about this. His mother’s very torn feelings about this were expressed in her tears as she told his story.

A woman told the story of her mother who was suffering greatly as her disease progressed. She was not eligible for assistance with dying, as she did not have a prognosis of 6 months or less to death, which is required in the U.S. to get legal medical assistance to die. She finally made the decision to take matters into her own hands, did some research and chose her own method of dying. Her daughter’s description of how excruciating of a process this was for her, this woman’s loving daughter. How she struggled to accept that this was her mother’s choice. How she wished that she could have had some medical assistance with the whole process. I could feel the audience hold their breath as they heard her painful story. 

Another woman spoke whose husband had been suffering from dementia that was getting increasingly worse. She talked about that same issue referred to above about the current law in the U.S. and the conditions required to get medical assistance to die. So, she, her husband and some other family members made the decision to travel to Switzerland, where they could legally get that assistance. She described it as a beautiful, albeit painful, experience.

There is much to write and talk about with this topic of the right to die as we wish, the right to choose how and when we die.

But for now, I want to address this particular experience with this family of choice in this synagogue, as we all sat quietly connecting in ways that don’t always have words.

We could feel the very raw and shared humanity of each of us in that room. Hearing and feeling the depth of peoples’ painful experiences. All of us facing our own mortality, talking about choices and the freedom to handle things in our own way.

This is the first time that this synagogue had opened one of their programs to the public. They had predicted that they might get 20–30 people at best. It surprised them when 135 guests showed up. Most of us were “north of a certain age” as one of the speakers said. Given the topic of the movie, it makes sense as this is a topic that we think about more as we age. There is more reality to mortality and the many feelings about the right to die that we face now, in a much more visceral way, having reached this land of elderhood.

Here was a group of people openly talking about these very real end of life issues, sharing their feelings about this. Symbolically holding hands. Making eye contact with each other and acknowledging our fears and feelings. Talking about how we die alone even when surrounded by loved ones, yet also are part of all humanity in facing this final challenge.

I left feeling so very grateful and feel it still. Here was a gathering where we could be open with each other, where we could talk about scary things, where we could share our experiences and stories and listen to each other. Where we could lay our vulnerability down in front of us and have it received, held, and loved.

In that room, we were all family. We felt the presence of each other. And we felt the welcome that helped my neighbor and me to feel a sense of love and inclusion. A welcome that felt like medicine for our souls. A welcome that only grew as we shared in depth, human to human, elder to elder. 

It is in facing the dark, in naming it, in looking at the realities of life, I believe, that we can come together and offer each other some comfort along the way. Where we can hold each other’s hands and understand. Where we can help each other feel a bit less alone for a few moments. Where we can open our hearts with true welcome.