by Ellen Braitman, delivered at Minyan M'at

It's not often that the parsha makes me think of Fleetwood Mac. Yet as I read about Abraham coping with both Sarah's death and what seems to be the eternal worry of a Jewish parent – finding the proper spouse for a beloved child – the lyrics of "Landslide" play through my mind: "Can I handle the seasons of my life?" Stevie Nicks sings so beautifully.

"I've been afraid of changing' 'cause I've built my life around you," she sings. "But time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I'm getting older too."

There is tenderness in these lyrics, the reflections of someone looking at life in all its melancholy beauty. I'm struck by the words as I read the parsha because of the central questions that leap out at me about Sarah's death – What are our models for change? How should we mark a life? How do we honor the dead?

I remember when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. My husband David noted that everyone was talking about what his death meant for the peace process, the loss of leadership in Israeli politics and the death of a hero. "I keep thinking of his wife and his family," David said.

So too for Abraham, who has built his life around Sarah and is coping with the bittersweet reality of aging.

"Sarah's lifetime, the span of Sarah's life, came to one hundred years and twenty years and seven years. Sarah died in Kiriath-arba, now Hebron, in the land of Canaan and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her," the text tells us.

I love the double imagery of mourning and bewailing, for Abraham's sadness is so powerful that the text uses two expressions for his emotions. Mourn and Bewail. To be sure, with Sarah's death coming so closely on the heels of the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham must – or at least should -- feel that he bears at least some responsibility for Sarah's death. Rashi says "And the death of Sarah was placed next to the binding of Isaac, for through the announcement of the Binding that her son had been prepared for slaughter and had almost been slaughtered, her soul fled from her and she died."

The language of the narrative – the use of Mourn and Bewail -- is a reflection of this tension.

So let's dig deeper to see what the death of Sarah teaches us about marking a life.

Commentators have been interested by the expression of Sarah's age -- one hundred years and twenty years and seven years, rather than saying 127 years. The word shana – year – is repeated three times. At first blush, I'm struck by her longevity. This is a theme driven home earlier in her life when she becomes a mother in her old age. Sarah lived a long time, that we know. But what does that really mean?

One hundred years represents old age. Twenty years represents possibility and the stage at which a person's whole life can seem to lay before them. Seven years represents childhood, the innocence and possibilities of life.

Samson Raphael Hirsch says "These three figures demonstrate to us the entire course of a human life: childhood, young adulthood and finally the completed phase of old age." He goes on to say the expression is meant to show that a person "retains all the spiritual and moral attainments of his past and takes them with him into the future."

The expression of Sarah's age also gives us insight into why the Parsha is named Chayei Sarah – the life of Sarah – even though it begins with her death.

Sarah lived for 100 years, and 20 years and seven years. During that time, she changed her name from Sarai to Sarah. She traveled through enemy land. She struggled with infertility. She offered Hagar to her husband as handmaid. She became a mother. She sent out Hagar and Ishmael to what could have been their death. She coped with the offering of Isaac as a sacrifice to God.

She lived a full life. Perhaps the expression of her age is meant to tell us that she also lived a complete life – a life of shalom. The root of the Hebrew word shalom – Shin, Lamed, Mem – means completeness or wholeness. Even Sarah, who had difficult turns in her life, was blessed with shalom.

And so as the Sarah narrative ends, we are reminded that in death we mark not only the loss of life, but the years of life that have been lived.

There is a poignant scene in Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World. A mother has lost her daughter at a very young age. She was two years old. She is meeting with an old friend, who is a former priest. His name is Albert, and he asks the mother to tell him everything she remembers about her daughter.

"He made me write down the words she knew – there are fifty six. That's pretty good for a two-year-old, isn't it? It took me hours to tell her story. Albert took the longest coffee break in the history of the Industrial Society and he'll probably be fired for it. But it struck me, it hit me that Lizzy had a full life, compressed to be sure, but, but in its own way it was full of everything that we all experience, if we live to be one hundred."

This theme of handling change is on my mind because for four years I had built my life around David and Lilith. While I was pregnant with Basha, it seemed incomprehensible to me that I could love another child in the same way that I love my first. And yet I fell in love again. And the emotion is just as profound the second time around. And so for almost four months I have been creating my life around David and Lilith and Basha.

Let's bring it back to the parsha. Isaac's love for Sarah is raw. The fire of his love for Rebekah burns. When the two emotions meet, Isaac can begin the next phase of his life. "And Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted for his mother," the text says.

In this context, it makes sense that having buried Sarah, having seen his beloved Isaac married and having set up his other children with gifts, Abraham's years come to a close. "And Abraham expired and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him," the text says.

Abraham shows that to love a person and to have loved a person who has died, you give them a proper burial and you honor their life – all the years of their life. So Isaac and Ishmael honor their father upon his death.

To me, Chayai Sarah is about Abraham, Isaac and Am Yisrael being asked to face the seasons of life. Abraham loses a spouse. Isaac loses a mother. Am Yisrael loses the first matriarch. As Pete Seeger and Ecclesiastes remind us, To everything, there is a season.

So I come back to Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide." The title evokes destruction – in this case, the crush of life. But when we are ready to let the landslide rain down on us, envelope us, our life becomes complete.

Having just returned last week from visiting my 82-year-old father in law as he recovers from a heart attack, I see that the landslide can be scary. It can be overwhelming. It can be sad. But it has to be embraced.

As we read about the lives and deaths of Sarah and Abraham I reflect on how with love and full lives it becomes possible to handle the turns – the passages -- of our lives.

As the song says to me, don't run away from the landslide. Turn and face it. And like Sarah, may we each be blessed with a life of 100 years. And 20 years. And seven years.

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