Loss, renewal, and barbecue

Some pain doesn’t ever go away, not really, not completely, but you can learn to live with it. (That’s probably true of most pain; if it doesn’t go away and it doesn’t kill you, you can live with it.)

The pain of a miscarriage or stillbirth, or the death of a new baby, is like that. It’s the death of potential, of possibility, of what could have been and should have been. It doesn’t have memories attached to it. Just dreams for the future.

Reva Judas of Teaneck knows that. She’s been through it herself — her first child, a son, Pesach, died after a few days, of congenital heart failure. She and her husband, Danny, have four living children, and nine grandchildren; they’ve also suffered through six miscarriages.

Reva, as the daughter of a rebbetzin and a rabbi —Margie Vinick Green, z’l, and Rabbi Sidney Green — grew up watching her parents, as a rabbinic couple, share their lives with their community, which meant sharing both joy and sorrow. She learned how to do that almost by osmosis, and it comes to her so naturally, that genuine empathy, that when you’re with her, you feel it all the time.

As a result of her experience and that empathy, and the career path that led her in that direction, Reva founded an organization called NechamaComfort, devoted to helping women and their partners as they live through grief.

(Nechama means comfort; the organization originally fused the Hebrew and English words to avoid copyright issues, but it since has become clear that because NechamaComfort is aimed at all Jews, both those who know some Hebrew and those who do not, the combined name is an accurate mission statement.)

The need for NechamaComfort is more widespread than many people might realize.

As the organization’s website, nechamacomfort.org, details, one in four pregnancies end in loss; one in 160 births end with stillborn babies, and one in eight women or couples are affected by infertility. (And because Reva is not scared off by emotionally fraught situations, she has expanded NechamaComfort to work with people facing infertility too.)

NechamaComfort offers a wide range of help, both immediate — in letting families know how to deal with funerals, burials, and shivas — and longer term. It provides individual support and support groups as well as educational programs.

And also, because this is summertime, and there is community, pleasure, and fun even after pain, now it’s having a barbecue, in a big backyard in a house in Teaneck.

The date — Thursday, July 31 — is not accidental. It’ll be during the Nine Days that lead up the fast day of Tisha b’Av. Many observant Jews don’t eat meat during those days, except on Shabbat or when there’s a siyyum, a celebration marking the end of the study of a text.

The Nine Days begin on the first of Av. This year, that’s the evening of July 25. It culminates on the ninth of Av, beginning on Saturday night, August 2. And Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort, the next Shabbat, begins the evening of August 8.

So what better time for NechamaComfort to have a party?

Yes, it’s a complicated party.

It’s a fundraiser, and also “a time to help couples remember their babies,” Reva said. “We will recognize Dr. Yoni Ratzersdorfer, who has a practice in Hackensack and Lakewood.” That practice, called Maternal Resources, was founded by Dr. Yaakov Abdelhak, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies; the practice offers what it calls an integrative approach to pregnancy and childbirth. That includes care for women and families whose pregnancies do not end with joy. “And I’ve known Yoni since he was born,” she continued. “Whenever there’s a new procedure, anything in the realm of obstetrics or gynecology, he’s on it. We’ll recognize his service to the community.”

The evening also will include “a memorial ceremony, where we will take time to recognize the children who, as we say, live in our hopes and dreams. It’s for our clients, and for anyone who has lost a baby at any time in their lives.”

The trauma of losing a baby can be decades old and fairly well buried, but that doesn’t keep it from resurfacing, Reva said. In some ways that’s even more true for parents whose babies died long ago than for those who have faced the disaster more recently. That’s because the old approach — say nothing, do nothing, don’t name the baby, don’t tell the baby’s gender, don’t have a funeral, don’t mark the grave, and above all pretend that nothing happened — was devastating, because pretending that nothing happened doesn’t work when in reality something terrible has happened.

Reva told a story about what happened when our last story about NechamaComfort came out. “A woman who lives in New Jersey now and read the story called. She told me that she had lost a baby when she was living in Queens, about 40 years ago. She was told that she couldn’t know where the baby was buried, and she wasn’t able to name the baby. She asked me if I could try to find out where the burial was, and I said yes.

“She called the funeral home. She’d been divorced and her ex-husband had died. The records were in his name. It took her a while. But she found the baby’s burial site, and this past Mother’s Day they put up a stone. She named the baby Keshet. It means rainbow.”

There are now many more burials than there used to be, Reva said, both because the stigma may not be gone entirely, but certainly it is drastically reduced, and also because there are more terminations, because science has improved to the point where tests can find fetuses that would not survive, or at best would have short, painful lives. Those fetuses also receive burials. Until recently, all those remains would have been discarded unceremoniously.

Reva is deeply grateful to Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus for donating land for free burials, and to Gutterman and Musicant, the funeral directors, for donating their services. When families are trying to cope with the emotional fallout of miscarriage or stillbirth, the thought of arranging funerals and burials, and paying for them, is just too much of a burden, so these professionals help lift it.

The barbecue — which will make room for grief but also include good food, good conversation, hope, and love — is open to the entire Jewish community, Reva said. She hopes that people will come dressed for comfort and open to remembering but also, and importantly, to moving forward.

Learn more about the barbecue and NechamaComfort at nechamacomfort.org.