Hello Dutch,
Here I am again. Despite visiting your grave throughout the year, the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur always feels the most potent, and this year, because I made the trip alone and not in the service of others, it feels even more sacred. Heaven’s gates are unlocked during this time, and I wonder how close you are standing to them. I feel you all around me, and my mind goes back to your last High Holy Days in 2008 when you got sick. You blew the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, but by Yom Kippur, you didn’t have enough breath. It was only a matter of weeks until that dreaded diagnosis followed. Yet still, you had hope and kept going, reaching out to life. By the time of the election that year, you insisted on voting in person, even though it meant leaning on a walker and pausing to rest on its seat at the polling station. I have heard your voice in my head commenting on the election process this year, as well as the situation in Israel, where we met – can it be that it was fifty years ago?! Indeed, it was, and I am so grateful that we were married for 31 of those years. You would be so proud now of the family we built together. All our kids are in their thirties and forties, and our eldest grandson is about to graduate Stanford University next year with a major dear to your heart and a mystery to mine – Mathematics! Oh, stop laughing, honey! Despite the odds, I have managed to keep myself afloat! I drove here to visit you in a car you would never have purchased, because it is not made in the USA. As the GPS guided me where to go, and which turns to make through the car’s computer, I thought about your working on the GPS system in its early years and how you would try to explain it at the dinner table, but I had no clue what you were talking about. It seemed futuristic to me then. Now I know you would have been up-to-date and fascinated with all the new technology of the last fifteen-plus years since you’ve been gone.
Most of all, you would have loved to see our eldest son and daughter-in-law with their four kids, each uniquely connecting to their community and world at large and making a difference.
You would have rejoiced with our middle son and his wife, our daughter-in-law whom you never met, and noted how they are changing the world with their creativity and thoughtfulness and having adventures along the way.
And our little one, our daughter – you would melt over her the way you did when she was born, and I can imagine you having conversations with her husband, our son-in-law whom you never met, and reveling in her choice if you could tear yourself away from their son, our youngest grandson, also a smart and loving child. I’m sorry that you don’t get to experience us on this earthly plain.
We keep you in our hearts, and when I curl up at night around your pillow, while I tell myself it releases endorphins to make me feel comforted, really, it is the memory of you and all you gave us, including hope, that keeps me afloat. Yes, I’m still floating, and I am different than who I was when you died. I had to learn how to be me on my own and grow my resilience muscles.
This morning, I prepared with my rabbi on Zoom (that’s like a video meeting, honey) for Yom Kippur, and I sang a song for her that I’d like to sing during the Yizkor memorial prayers. As I did so, I felt my voice catch as tears sprang to my eyes. The song comes from the movie “Mary Poppins Returns” which came out almost ten years after you died, and the lyrics that I had altered the pronouns for that made me emotional were: “Maybe all you’re missing lives inside of you” and “Trust they’re always there, watching as you grow/Find them in the place where the lost things go”.
I find you here, I find you there, I find you everywhere. I’m remembering you answering when asked how you were when you were so sick, “I’m above ground, so it’s a good day!” So here I am, visiting your grave, and I’m above ground, so it’s a good day! May it also be a good year. I love you forever and always.