[Lyric] Sit Shiva (Gabriel Kahane)

My mother, describing her mother
Fought back tears, it’s weird, I thought
The intimacy of seeing someone try
Not to cry in close-up on a screen

Cousin Lincoln told a story about the Pietà
He saw at the Metropolitan Museum;
And after a silence of some time
Grandma turned to him and said:
“You know, I think of myself as a Jew
But I really love Jesus.”

And we sit cross-legged on the edge of the bed
Leaning into the laptop to hear what’s just been said
In the manner of a modern family honoring the dеad

Aunt Susan, in her one-room schoolhouse
Sang grandma’s favoritе songs, simple hymns
Of love and loss. And though her connection
Was unstable, she was able to get
Her message, more or less, across
And we sit cross-legged on the edge of the bed
Leaning into the laptop to hear what’s just been said
In the manner of a modern family honoring the dead

At the end of the afternoon
Grandma’s grief-shattered husband
Whom she’d met in the fall of 1939
Milkshake at the Automat in Morningside Heights
Before he was shipped off to Europe to fight—
Fifty years, not a word, not a sight
’Til the touchtone phone rang in 1995:

“Raymond, it’s Judith; my husband has died.”
Back to New York, and they gave it a try
And the photographs of great-grandchildren multiplied
These two ancient lovers walking side by side—
His body ravaged, and hers turned to light—
He raised his hand to speak at last
And everyone held their breath or gasped
As he said, “Goodbye, my darling, goodbye."