This week is my mother’s mother’s Yahrzeit. Yahrzeits always remind me of the Days of Awe (10 days including and between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur).
I am not much into religion since my mom died and given all of the heretical things I say I am waiting for the lightning bolt to strike.
I am not sure why this happened, but about three years after Mom died, I started getting reminders from my parents’ synagogue about the anniversaries of my grandparents’ deaths — their Yahrzeits. Maybe the synagogue staff finally got it together to start sending them to me but the staff wouldn’t have known where to send them unless my mother had put me down as the next recipient of these notices. None of my father, brother and sister receives these notices. I was overwhelmed that my mother trusted me with the responsibility of remembrance. After all of the issues, sturm und drang, etc. about my being gay (which all were resolved 15 years ago, thank G-d), my mother trusted me with this, in the end.
Remembering is very important in Jewish tradition. It is said that people live again when remembered. That does not generally resonate with me. But when I lit the Yahrzeit candles (Jews light them on the anniversary of the death and on Yom Kippur) this last year for Mom and her parents, I understood why. In this world of a 3 billion or so people, a person dies every second. I lit candles to say I remember you and you are not anonymous in this world and your life is not forgotten. I realized that I don’t know my great-grandparents’ names and no one remembers them. And so, maybe my son’s grandchildren (should he be so lucky) will not light a candle for me. Maybe, remembering two generations is more than anyone should have to do, because it dilutes meaning of remembrance if these dead people are strangers. But this Friday I will remember especially my grandmother on her Yahrzeit. She was a life force for my mother, a woman who suffered greatly in Europe and was often a prisoner of those memories. And on Friday, my grandmother will not be an anonymous dead person. Because I will remember. And, now, I get it. Remembrance. A commandment under Jewish law to remember and, by remembering, to honor. And by honoring, to make sure that your loved one isn’t relegated to a statistics of unknown and unnamed lives and deaths year in and year out.
