The Eighth Night
By Diane Joy Schmidt
In December, she flew again from Albuquerque to Chicago. It was the first night of Chanukah. Joy and her sisters lit the candles every night at the hospital bedside and sang the songs, tuneless and off-key, something they hadn’t done together since they were children. On Sunday, the eighth night of Chanukah, Joy’s sisters went to a play. Edith said: That’s okay, I’m getting a little sick of Chanukah.
Joy felt abashed; she laughed.
In late afternoon, as the winter sun began to set, Joy lit candles in the tin menorah while her mother slept, and quietly hummed the songs to herself. Edith woke up in the darkened room and saw the candles burning. Her eyes grew bright and her face lit up against the pillow. She said: I see the spirit of Chanukah. Do you see it?
Joy saw tall white wings on either side of Edith. She said: Yes, I see white wings.
Yes, it’s right here. Edith reached up with both hands in front of her and lovingly patted something in the air before her.
What do you see?
Edith fell silent. Then she said, Oh… I don’t really see anything…
What exactly do you see? Tell me.
Oh. It’s just my own little idea, that the spirit of Chanukah comes to those who celebrate all eight nights.
Joy said, That would make a lovely children’s’ story. May I share that with others?
Edith said yes. Joy thought she sounded pleased.
Joy added, What you see is probably the Shekinah, the Jewish spirit. Hold to that, what you are seeing, it is protecting you. Picture it when you need it.
Then Edith said, haltingly: You mean the white bird, and not the circling black ravens that come after? Stunned, Joy murmured affirmatively.
Edith turned to look again at the Chanukah candles, now melted down into little colored pools of blue and green and gold. One had not yet gone out and it was the very first one that had been lit. She shook her finger now at it and smiled wryly, and in a secretive way said, I wouldn’t have bet on that one. It was family tradition to bet on which candle would last the longest. Months later it would finally dawn on Joy what her mother meant, that Edith’s brother Milton, now 96 and the oldest of six, would outlive her.
That evening there was an enormous white rabbit sitting in the driveway at the house, the largest she had ever seen. She remembered that the rabbit was protective. That night she dreamed that her friend from Shiprock was showing her around a Navajo hogan, but it wasn’t just the traditional octagonal house, it was a whole town peopled with activities at each of its eight sides. In the morning, Joy called him and he said: That is the house from which you came. The home, the spiritual home of the Great Spirit, where you come from and go back to. Then she saw, framed by the small square window in the front door, a huge black crow sitting on the garage roof pecking at something inside the rain gutter. It frightened her. It was the last day of Chanukah, and the winter solstice.
Later that day Joy said to her mother, Do you know that I love you more than anyone in the whole world? Edith’s eyebrows flickered up in surprise.
She said: I love you …mpff..ph..wre…t.
Joy couldn’t make out if she had said it the same way, but she believed that she had.
That night Edith fell into a deep coma. The next day when Joy arrived at the hospital her sisters went to lunch and then the aide Alicja also left. She was all alone in the room with her mother. The daily phone call came from her mother’s brother Milton, who lived in a nursing home in Ohio. Joy held the receiver up to Edith’s ear so he could say goodbye. It seemed her eyebrow lifted. A few minutes after Joy hung up the phone Edith passed away.
That evening Joy’s cousin Yaffa, steeped in Jewish tradition, called from Brooklyn. Yaffa told her that the last day of a holiday is especially powerful; that it holds all the strengths and qualities of that holiday. Joy then spoke to the rabbi who said that in the Jewish tradition it is written that angels come to comfort you and to reduce your fears when you are dying. And he said the Shekinah is the feminine aspect of God, the part of God that comes closest to us.
Some months later if someone were to ask how she was doing Joy would say: I am at peace, but still I grieve. And the animals are all quiet now.
The Eighth Night is part of a larger story, The Animals that Came for Edith, by Diane Joy Schmidt, a true story, about eight animals that came during her mother's last year: a rat, a deer, an opossum, a groundhog, a raccoon, a rabbit, a crow, and the white bird.
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