Yahrtzeit

I have had the pleasure of sitting in small group at WWfaC with an amazing woman named Eve (her nom de plume). Like most people good for me, we just clicked right from the start. Each of us requesting the other every semester. Each of us smiling when we got that wish semester after semeseter. I have learned alot about music, about Judaism and about writing just by being her friend. One of the things I learned is the practice of yahrtzeit - a ritual remembrance of a departed loved one performed on the anniversary of their death. Lots of rules around how and when that is done and yunno how I hate rules. But there is a compactness to the word that suits what I want to say today. It is a remembrance of the first man to hold my heart and the first one to break it.

Today is my dad's birthday. If he were alive he would be 89. A chain-smoking alcoholic, he would never have made it this long. He died when this daddy's girl was just 23. I have now lived more of my life without him than I did with him. He was a very imperfect man whose flaws were visible even as the demons that rode him were not. I never really cared about those imperfections as long as I could look up and see myself in eyes that looked like mine, rather than be forced to look at my reflection in my mom's eyes which are hard and uninviting pools of her pain. His were loamy peat to warm my heart hearth by comparison.

I know him so much better now than I did then. He is everything now that he could not be while he was here. He visits me often and I him. We spend companionable evenings in quiet conversation. His presence is a clear bell in my life that rings just for me - leading me to be who he has always seen me to be.


I light a candle in remembrance of your life with me and in celebration of our reunion.