The circle is nearly closed since my mother died. It’s been almost a year of firsts and lasts, and yesterday, the penultimate, Yom Kippur.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Yom Kippur is the Jewish holiday of atonement. People fast , many spend most of the time in synagogue, and it’s a day of quiet reflection.
My dad I dreaded it, both of us, fully.
We don’t take religion too seriously, and we’ve come to do things our own way. Neither of us can sustainably fast, we both get migraines, and in years past my mom would bake date loaf to tempt us when we’d stubbornly try. Other times it would be soup and bread, the smell of her soup filling the house, the aroma of baking bread the final siren note of the duet.
There’d be no resisiting.
This year I baked a lemon and cherry loaf the day before, knowing we wouldn’t even try to go the whole day, but even that food was not sufficient, my dad got a headache and I started to deflate like one of those used car lot balloons.
It was, perhaps, the toughest first yet, even in that full year of them, because it is so close to when she passed away. Gone is that window where it felt like we could yank her back through time and space.
Too much time.
Too much space.
We’ve gotten through the last of the firsts, but one. The anniversary of her death.
But Yom Kippur is about the past being in the past and the future a new start. Maybe that’s what we dreaded the most, that page firmly turning.
Maybe it was the air empty of boiling soup.
We did well, though, I thought, because getting through is doing well.
Getting through is doing well.
Remember that, whatever your firsts, lasts, or middles.
Have a great Tuesday.
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