We have gotten out of the habit of attending Friday night services.  Our presence has not been needed for several years now. Our participation was needed when there had been an “adult” choir. I enjoyed this participation and confess I learned more about the liturgy and the prayers because I sang in that choir.  It was a chore.  We practiced each week on Tuesday evenings and I found that even though there were professionals who planned and carried out the practice sessions, there was much about those sessions that smacked of the school classes where there was much hurrying up and waiting.  You do this if the sopranos need more attention than the bases.  But, I miss those practice sessions and more importantly, I miss the performance of our Choir during services when it was manifestly apparent that our presence was once important and appreciated.

So, this is as much a memorial to that choir as it was on the anniversary of the death of Lady Lil who passed away five years ago.  She attained the age of one hundred years, eight months and five days and was lucid and “with us” up to at least one hundred years.  We are of the opinion that she, herself, wanted very much to last those last pain filled years until that marker was achieved.  She was much appreciated for being the loving, giving and non-complaining person she was even after she had fallen and her shattered hip was sort of fixed and nailed into place.  She had to have a shoe with a built up sole to match the other leg but never after wards was able to walk without a walker although she badly wanted to only rely on a cane.  One of her favorite sayings as the powerful person she thought she still was and actually was, was “I‘ll run down to the store and get that for you.” Her running days were over and she was house bound and in a wheel chair for the last couple of years of her life.

I have spent most of this essay writing about Lady Lil.  She was vastly more important than our participation in the Temple Sinai Choir.  We mourned her but we also mourned that we no longer had those practice sessions or learned new music for the High Holy Days.  Lady Lil never believed she was too old or irrelevant. But, our exclusion from our participation as choir members made us prefer not to attend the Friday Night Services and particularly after “Friday Night Live” was instituted with its small electronic band and very loud music and encouragement to get up and dance and clap hands.  I find, and Carol agrees with me, that there is a lack of sermonizing that responds to the needs of us older folks and our concerns for country and world.

We attended services last night and memorialized Lady Lil as her name was read along with the others who came before us.