This October 3 was the first year, ever since I began ritualistically counting eleven years ago, that I forgot my mother’s death anniversary.
I only “remembered” because one of my sisters remembered. And even then, after she texted to say that she’d gone by our mom’s tree—the one that shimmered with surreal autumnal yellows through the windows in the room my mother lay dying in—my brain still wouldn’t click into recalling that October 3. I couldn’t conjure up images of her death, always as vivid as that tree—a death I’d been honored to be present for.
I couldn’t feel it either.
And as today wore on, it kept slipping out of my mind—not only her yahrzeit, but my mom, herself, and all the love that she and I finally solidified as unforgettable bond over the intimacy of thirteen months of (what I know understand as reciprocal) caretaking through her cancer. The enormous loss had, inexplicably, somehow gotten lost too.
As twilight began, without also remembering that it was Rosh Hashanah, I felt the urge to walk. I forgot all about lighting candles, or eating apples and honey, or gathering with anyone. My hands instinctively picked tiny little flowers, until I had a tiny little bouquet. My feet instinctively found a secluded grassy area by water, until I came upon a small tree. My tear ducts instinctively recollected how to cry, until my mom appeared in blessed memory again.
It hit me then that I’ve not cried in a long time. I’ve felt like a sponge, wrung out til its bone dry.
There are too many dead to know how to adequately mourn, adequately remember, as another yahrzeit draws near: October 7—a yahrzeit that isn’t merely about who died on one day, but all the tens of thousands murdered in a short-long 365 days, and all the countless other losses of land and homes, of hopes and dreams.
And soon after October 7, there’s October 27, the yahrzeit for the Tree of Life murders, which recalls yahrzeits for likewise-fascist murders at mosques and Black churches.
One body cannot hold it all. This fucked-up world that we’re tasked with unfucking up, so that never again will we need to absorb so many yahrzeits.
(Photos: two stickers seen in Brooklyn a couple weeks ago—one reading “unfuck the world” and the other “Never again, never again, never again, never again, never again, never again to anyone”; my tiny bouquet cobbled together while walking tonight)
