Hannah Engle Memorial Lecture

On Tuesday, NYU Wagner hosted the Second Annual Hannah Engle Memorial Lecture. I gave the following remarks about Hannah.

Hannah Beth Engle was born on November 6, 1980. She weighed nine pounds, fourteen ounces. This is pretty heavy for a baby, and I had been almost as heavy, and as children, we were so embarrassed about being fat babies, but the older we got, the more we relished those birth weights for the reliable shocks they produced in anyone we told. As an adult, Hannah loved that the chubby baby she had been had grown into a beautiful woman. She loved to surprise people with her unique blend of seeming contradictions.

Hannah stood out in a crowd – tall, blonde and poised. And that was part of her charm. But good looks will only get you so far, and Hannah didn’t rely on them. She was smart, hard-working, committed and innovative. After taking a meaningful trip to Eastern Europe, she defied expectations by raising $50,000 to take ten other UCLA on a similar trip the next year. These trailblazers led seders in Russia and the Ukraine and brought fresh blood to a Jewishly anemic corner of the diaspora. Hannah lived her philosophy of Jewish communal service in her personal life.

A lot of people who lose siblings find that they become more like their sibling after their death. In the past two years, I have definitely followed Hannah’s lead – both deliberately and unconsciously. One thing that’s happened is that I have made an effort to become the organized person she was.

Hannah didn’t wallow in perfectionism. She analyzed a project, determined what could be simplified and then set to work on her tasks. She was famous for finding time to make Shabbat dinner for 12 people despite being in grad school and working almost full time. (And working out.) I remember once coming over on a Friday afternoon before services to help her put the finishing touches on her apartment before dinner – I came across a to-do list for that week that planned out what and when she had to do things. One of the things on her grocery list was a package of pre-grated cheese. A food snob and obsessive homemade warrior, I turned up my nose at the idea of pre-grated cheese. (In fact, I didn’t even know they made it until I saw it on her list!) That list has stuck in my mind, because Hannah’s efficiency wasn’t borne out of a desire to be the best at anything, or to impress people. She had goals, and she wanted to accomplish them.

One of Hannah’s most important goals outside of her professional life was to weave a community for herself. When I was 15 and Hannah was 13, our father, our Papa, died of AIDS. I had already left for prep school two years earlier, and I think that was probably about the time that Hannah started taking community-building seriously for herself. I will never forget hearing her say “your friends are your family, Rebecca.” She used pre-grated cheese so that she could spend those 30 minutes with the people she loved at dinner instead of obsessing over the perfect quiche.

Even people who did not know Hannah well were touched by her – some even after her death. I mourn Hannah’s loss every day, but I do know that the person I lost was a treasure to so many people and a true inspiration. I still meet people all the time who knew her in some tangential way and miss her presence on this earth. There is no doubt that the 500 people at her funeral ached to know she was gone too young.

When Hannah was little, I used to tease her that she looked like a boy. Our parents liked to dress us in matching clothes like twins, which drove me crazy because I just wanted to be an individual. But of course as we got to be adults, looking alike became fun. We reveled in the attention, and truly cherished our unique relationship. Long before Hannah died, she became one of the first things I thanked God for in my daily prayers. I knew what I had, and having lost Papa, I knew to be thankful for it.

During the course of the past two years, I have gone through many different philosophies in an attempt to understand Hannah’s death. There were times when I thought that her death represented a veering off-course of this world, signaling that we are doing something wrong. There have been times when I wondered whether life is totally random. Perhaps Hannah’s death was fated or ordained by God for some purpose. None of these explanations has held up under scrutiny. What I do believe is that each of us is here on this earth to do something. Sometimes our grief blocks us. When we are sad, we must sit with that sadness and express it to the people we trust. Hannah’s death created an enormous amount of sadness. But it also spurred an urgency in many people including myself, to make a meaningful life that is unique to our gifts and strengths. To honor Hannah’s life, we must become more fully ourselves.

Papercut in Memory of Hannah

I made this papercut in memory of Hannah. It's her Hebrew name in the center with a pomegranate below, representing the vast kernels of her diverse soul. And of course vines of life everywhere.

Hannah's Second Yartzheit

It's still so hard to believe that Hannah has a yartzheit.

I have so many questions, many of which will never be answered. Why did this happen? Will I be able to survive life without her? Is there any meaning to life, does everything turn out for the best?

The pain of missing Hannah definitely ebbs and flows now that it has been a while. When she first died, I remember feeling so much pain, everything set me off. Every time the train pulled into the 96th Street station where we would always meet up to go downtown, I would burst into tears. I go there every day, so that pain has diminished. Or at least I had thought so. The other day, I was huddled into my puffy coat (really Hannah's) and the train pulled into the station, and I realized, I'm in as much pain now as I ever was. I miss her from a place in my chest that contracts in agony thinking about her. It's just that the novelty has worn off. There's nothing new or interesting about my pain now. It's repetitive. I miss her. Why did this happen? 25 years old. No meaning, no purpose, no sense. The obvious swirls around me, and others don't know what to say in response, so I've pretty much stopped saying it. But it doesn't change the pain. In fact, as anyone knows who keeps something inside, it probably hurts more now.

After that initial month, I had the briefest sense of relief. I had survived Shloshim. I began putting on makeup again, shaved my legs. I would be ok. Then my mind finally recognized reality: Hannah would not be coming back. My month of agony wasn't a penance that would allow her to return. In fact, her death wasn't personal. She didn't die as a punishment for me - if so, how to explain the pain everyone else felt? I couldn't find any reason to explain her death. And I began to live in a new world. An irrational world with no explanations, no answers and no peace. When Hannah had been alive, even if we were in a fight, we would still say we loved each other before we went to bed or got off the phone or said goodbye. We knew from losing Papa suddenly that you don't always get a second chance to say something, and that pride was no reason to spend a lifetime regretting something. And now the precious treasure I thanked God for in every Amidah was gone.

I wish I had some brilliant understanding of Hannah's life and death. Unfortunately what I feel more than anything is a vast desert around me, with mirages of happiness that don't seem meant for me. And the bubbly, no-nonsense girl who wowed everyone with her varied spectrum of talents, interests, wisdom and beauty? She's a story, a word that makes normal people hush in discomfort. In an instant, the Hannah who cultivated joy and decisiveness became a reason for sadness and questioning.

Missing Hannah

It's inevitable, I'm going to miss Hannah more when special occasions come up. I'm turning 29, and Hannah is still 25.

Different revelations have come to me at different times. When I first sat with her body at the hospital, it seemed so clear to me: there is nothing after this life. Hannah's lifeless body communicated one thing to me: there is no afterlife, nowhere we are going after this. I felt I had deluded myself after Papa's death into believing that he was watching over me from somewhere else, and suddenly, I knew that wasn't true.

But I still have a strong belief in the existence of the soul. What separated Hannah from being alive one moment and dead forever the next? It seemed to me that her soul was there, and then it left, and that was what made all the difference. As I explained to a friend, if her body had seemed destroyed, that would have explained it. But it didn't - she seemed as beautiful as ever, just tragically frozen.

I'm starting to think that life is supremely random. It's not that Hannah was "meant" to die, or that there was a cosmic mistake that allowed her to die despite other plans for her. She just died through the confluence of tiny events and decisions. For some reason, this makes me believe that we must not cling too steadfastly to anything external. Not that we shouldn't have goals and reams - I don't believe we can survive the heartbreaks of life without our aspirations. But we must thrive in the moment and not rely upon something we think we deserve coming to us in the future.