April 29, 2020 – 6 Iyar, 5780
Dear family and friends,
As the sun set this evening, the Jewish calendar, a lunar calendar, clicked over to the 6th day of the month of Iyar. For most Jews the start of Iyar is a mix of mourning and celebration; Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli Memorial Day on the 4th of Iyar, is a day of deep reflection, and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day on the 5th of Iyar, is a day of great exuberance. It is a bit of a rollercoaster, though it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Afterall, how does one celebrate winning the battle for independence without thinking about those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in obtaining that freedom?
For my family, there is one more hill recently added to that coaster ride. Saturday, May 11, 2019, the day Abba passed away, corresponded to the 6th of Iyar. This year the 6th of Iyar began tonight. It is a Jewish tradition for those who mourned to annually recall that date by lighting a special candle that burns for 25 hours, and by reciting the Kaddish (the mourner’s prayer) in the setting of ten Jews who gather for prayer. In Yiddish the memorial date is called a yahrzeit. This evening, as I lit my yahrzeit candle, I reflected on the last two years.
To summarize, it has been rough. In the last two years my father, my closest friend, who I spoke with nearly every day, became seriously ill and was forced to take extreme measures to attempt survival, my marriage came to an end, my father passed away, my former brother-in-law passed away, my paternal grandmother passed away moments before the nation descended into the chaos that has been this response to the outbreak, and now the world is stuck in quarantine and our nation is being run by murderous morons. I have seen the loss to COVID-19 of thousands in our nation including several I’ve known personally, and while those same ignoramuses holding highest office in this country tell us to inject disinfectant and find it acceptable to visit the Mayo clinic (where Abba was once a patient) without wearing a mask, their followers are in the streets protesting against the late measures our society has attempted to take to flatten the uptick of this outbreak and lower the ultimate total lives lost to it.
Shortly after Abba’s death I felt mostly numb, putting on a brave face when I left my private spaces. It is an odd experience being the son of someone so loved by so many. In public whenever I came in contact with others who knew him I discovered they were in a great deal of pain and often found myself comforting them for their loss. In private I cried alone—at first several times per day and eventually just in the shower in the morning and sometimes when I was falling asleep at night. Everything reminded me of him and whenever I closed my eyes I would see his face—often in his final moments.
I attended services every day to say Kaddish. When I attended services in places where only mourners say the Kaddish I felt a great deal of comfort. I was often alone saying the Kaddish and experienced comfort from the knowledge that others around me knew why I was there. Times when I was not the only mourner saying Kaddish gave me an opportunity to experience a strange comradery. There were even times when I was able to guide men and women far older than I am through their first times saying Kaddish after they lost someone. I also had the special experience of saying Kaddish while traveling, the most exciting of which was in Switzerland on New Years Day.
As time passed, life became a bit easier and seemed to be returning to (a new) normal. That is until I hit the six-month mark. I don’t know what it was about that timing, but for that sixth month I was a complete mess. I couldn’t hold onto thoughts, I couldn’t have conversations, I couldn’t remember things, and I’d easily lose track of time. Then that too began to ease and my mind and spirit returned. It was almost as if I went through some sort of emotional reset process.
A few weeks ago, this reset was tested with the celebration of the holiday of Pessach (Passover), the freedom holiday. Pessach was both Abba’s and my favorite holiday. There was only one other time in my life that he and I were apart for the holiday (when I was living in Israel from 2000-2001) and it was extraordinarily challenging for us both. This year I took a rather drastic measure. I decided to take a year off from Pessach. Last year Pessach began bedside in the ICU—Abba was able to listen to prayers but not participate and was able to take a sip of the kiddush wine but not eat any matzah (the unleavened bread of the holiday)—and I recognized I needed more time before I could return to celebrating freedom. Even without directly engaging in the holiday, however, it was still very difficult this year, though it was not nearly as difficult as things had been earlier in the year. Progress.
Now it is more of a day-to-day sort of things. On balance there are finally more days when I am not entirely sad and no days when I fail to find the will to leave my apartment (though with COVID I don’t leave ‘cause that would just be stupid). I even have returned to finding joy on occasion and I can see light at the end of this tunnel.
It’s ironic that I began writing to you in September of 2018 when my Eama and Abba moved to Boston and into quarantine and now the entire world (perhaps with exception to the buffoons that call themselves president and vice president) knows the pain of that isolation. I can’t help but think, what would Abba make of all of this?
Abba was the penultimate optimist. He would be giddy imagining the opportunities which could rise, phoenix-like, from these ashes. In the short-run this has allowed some to find creative ways to connect with friends and loved ones. There is a new respect for what teachers do in the classroom, what nurses and doctors do in the hospitals, and what sanitation workers do to keep a separation between us and our ick. There is a new light cast on the disparity in our society between the haves and have-nots as the poor and as racial minorities are disproportionately sick and dying in greater numbers. There is a reawakening among some as they rediscover that they are not alone in society and must act not just for their own good but for the good of those around them.
In the slightly less short run this has allowed the rational among us to recognize that electing Biden is a matter of life or death. But looking a bit further out, the stress on our nation’s health care system was extraordinary before the outbreak but now we are seeing it fail altogether absent governmental support which may finally pave the way to universal healthcare. With unemployment skyrocketing we are reconnecting with why we have government entitlements and why it is so important that we continue to have them going forward. We are even seeing a new found reliance on and respect for science so perhaps climate change, let alone the next pandemic, will finally be more universally cared for and about.
Abba would also be taking delight in deep dives into the science and math surrounding the virus and its possible treatments. He would be calculating the amount of carbon being removed from the air by fewer drivers on the roads. He would be elated by the rapid adoption of technological solutions to everyday problems (like the use of video conferencing for everything).
He would also be writing. With the world moving at a slower pace he would have far fewer disruptions to his writing. The only problem he would face on that front was keyboards which he went through more often than anyone I’ve ever known despite being reminded that the keyboards of today are not the typewriters of his youth. He would also be smoking a lot of cigars while missing his cigar-smoking-buddies, and he would be smoking a lot of cannabis (making up for the time in Boston when his doctors wouldn’t let him).
And then there is that strange joy he would have because he would finally be stuck at home with Eama, with no disruption, and, unlike the quarantine in Boston, this time without feeling weak and ill.
Most of all, however, he would be reassuring all of us that, though things may be difficult in this moment, the sun will continue to rise, the seasons will continue to change, and things will get better.
Abba—As I light my yahrzeit candle as the sun disappears behind the Rockies, I miss you and wish you were here with us, but know you will continue to inspire happiness and hope and love.
Love,
Ariel