Somber

It's hard to go about one's business (the dish-doing, the laundry and shopping, the dropping off and picking up at school and lessons) during the High Holy Days and not feel the weight of them--which is, I suppose, appropriate. It's the holiest time of year in the Jewish calendar, and the time when God is closest to us. If these days are a time for t'shuvah (repentance, or literally, turning), and self-awareness, and self-examination, they're also a time for remembering those who have gone before us, those who are no longer with us, the ancestors who are present only in odd and sometimes only half-remembered anecdotes and photos from the earliest days of photography, and the more recent losses which still hurt very much--this unbroken line that connects me to my family and my family's family and back as far as memory can go--

The Holy Days culminate in the Yiskor service on Yom Kippur, when we gather in synagogue to say prayers together especially for the lost ones, to formally and collectively remember--and it's a hard service to sit through--the children are sent outside to play, where they are almost but not quite oblivious to the tears and pain inside--I remember being shepherded back inside when Yiskor was done, seeing the tears on my grandparents' cheeks, and knowing in an inchoate way what those tears meant. And knowing that I would join them on the benches inside one day, and in the far future that I would sit there without them too.

So I think today is my day to remember names: Paisach, Manya, Moses, Benjamin, Katie, Libby, Tillie, Honey, Harold, Eva and Mac, Sidney, Oscar and Marion, Sam, Abby, Alexander, Michel, Ray...














The Lock Gate by Paul Celan

Above all this mourning
of yours: no
second heaven.

To a mouth
for which it was one of a thousand
I lost--
I lost a word
that had remained with me:
sister.

To the worship of many gods
I lost a word that was looking for me:
Kaddish.

Through
the lock gate I had to go
to save the word back
to the salt waters and
out and across:
Yiskor.