Two weeks ago we lost a truly great man – Dr. Robert Milch. As a surgeon for Buffalo Medical Group in the 1970s, he saw firsthand the challenges many of his patients faced with their end-of-life care. Not one to rest on his laurels, he knew there had to be another way. Embracing the ideals of the emerging field of hospice care, he fought hard to bring its model to Western New York, co-founding Hospice Buffalo with Charlotte Shedd in 1978. His persistence and forsight eventually led to the amazing campus in Cheektowaga that we have today. One that has made a meaningful difference for the thousands and thousands individuals who spent their final days there. Sadly, Dr. Milch is among them, having breathed his last breath in the same campus that he helped to found and that now will bear his name.
In this week’s Torah portion, we bid goodbye to not one, but two, of our Biblical heroes, Miriam and Aaron. Normally, this would be an occasion for great sadness, but both siblings died and were remembered in the way they would have wanted to be, bound up in the bond of everlasting life. Listen to the careful way his relatives say goodbye to Aaron in Numbers, chapter 20: “Moses stripped Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar, and Aaron died there on the summit of the mountain. When Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain, the whole community knew that Aaron had breathed his last. All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days.”
At a goodbye ritual for Marilyn Kregal at Elmlawn cemetery last week, her daughters Rachel and Heidi read a note their mother had left them in her instructions to them for what to do after her death. It read: “Look up to streams of light and song, where no one says farewell.” Marilyn, a great violinist for the Buffalo Symphony, may be gone, but she, like Dr. Milch, is certainly not forgotten. We will remember both of them in light and song, for the strength that they showed us in their lifetimes. I am appreciative of both of them for teaching me about the great art of saying goodbye.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex