Yahrzeit

Here's me, barreling down 16th Street a half-hour late for my own daughter's birthday party, 44 kosher cupcakes on the passenger seat beside me. In the right world, the repaired world of my imagination, you'd be here, probably you'd be driving, and I'd be the one with the cupcakes in my lap. I'd be fatter, I bet, and certainly happier, not feeling hollowed out and unwilling to go on, not dreading the sight of a simple preschool room decked out in streamers, full of 15 kids and their parents. And your parents. And Mona. And me. And no you.

Because there's been no you for two years now, already I forget how deep the hurt goes. Day to day I live with it, shift it around, grow to love my life again, the hassles and worries too in a way. Because I manage them. I manage. And I have new friends, plus I have kept our old friends, bless them. They call me anytime, not just now when Mona turns a year older and so does our grief.

There's room for my life now, see. Room in my mind for all sorts of details-bring empty tissue box and rubber bands to Mona's school next week, need to get her lead test renewed, drier is broken again, grad school application due on Friday, big meeting at work same day-and room for writing, for getting sleep sometimes, and for new love. So I forget, because I don't stumble through every day helplessly blank and wishing I could turn off the world, that there will be days (and sometimes days and days) of such stumbling and wishing.

Yahrzeit, we call it. "Yeartime," in Yiddish. It is the ritual time of year for a Jew to return to the origin of mourning, to recall the first day of the beloved's loss and reenter a period of sorrow. We mark this sorrow, characteristically, paradoxically, by singing life's praise through the Kaddish prayer, attending synagogue to receive the blessing of our fellow Jews when we speak of God's greatness. Yahrzeit creates a frame for what will happen anyway: the slant of light, the change in weather, the simple trigger of a birthday or other nearby anniversary throws us back in time anyway. Yahrzeit is the permission to stay and feel the hurt of love's death, but also a time to act on the gift that love was in the first place, to restore our joy in life if we can, to celebrate and commemorate, to give, to light a candle's flame.

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