Questions- My Father's 8th yahrtzeit

Eight long and short years have passed since I was awoken to the news that my father had died. Since I went from having two parents to just one. Since I lost the chance to ask all the questions I wanted to ask, and didn't want to ask and needed to ask, and should have asked. Questions that still sit with me now. Questions that remain forever unanswered.

I sit here thinking about questions of all kinds.

Questions of faith that lead some to label me. To wonder who I am, if I believe, and to suggest I keep them to myself. To think I have answers, or worse, that I have the answers, or still worse, the answer. To see in me their biggest fears, and last hope. Where will they lead me? Should I be scared?

Questions about my dad and what he thought and believed and wanted out of life. Wondering why I save everything and he saved nothing. Whether he had regrets and what they were. Wondering why I keep on trying to please him and asking unanswerable questions.

Questions about me. Who am I? Where am I going? Why are reading and writing and talking and thinking like oxygen to me? Why do I breathe them in with the fear that I might not get to do so ever again? Why can't I listen? Leave room for another? Why has running lost its grip on me? Why do I want to teach so badly and help others? What am I trying to prove? What happens if I let go? If I follow my heart? If I keep losing my fears? If I let myself feel? If I finally try, really try, to be the husband and father and friend and Jew that I want to be?

Questions about home and whether you ever can go home again. Where is home and is it a place, my family, inside of me? What would have happened if we had stayed in Israel and will we make it back? Why does it pull at me now more than ever? What if I went back to my childhood home and accepted the visit to go inside? How would I feel at its unfamiliar familiarity? Upon seeing someone else in my room? At the realization that my cards and my matchbox cars and all the cool stuff in the closet is gone?

Questions about questions, and answers, and truth, and humor, and music, and sports and philosophy and God and truth...

Yahrtzeit- A Different Kind of Mother's Day

I don't need help knowing what to feel on my mom's yahrtzeit. I've got feelings a plenty. I'm more unsure what I'm supposed to do, or what the day means, besides a chance to reflect. So I fast for half the day, light a candle and think.

I think back to a Saturday night in Tel Aviv with a friend (which is a code-word for a girl), during my post-high school year in Israel. I don't remember what we were talking about, but all of a sudden it hit me. All those times that my parents did something that I didn't like, they were trying their best. Even their mistakes came from a place of love. Being that this was the olden days, I sent my parents an aerogram where I shared this with them, and apologized for having been a jerk. After they got the letter, my father told me “Your mother cried”. Of course, I swallowed my response, “What about you?”.

I swore up and down that I'd avoid all of their mistakes, and I did, except for when I didn't. I also made new ones, which they never would have made. I find myself wondering whether all my mistakes come from a place of love, or maybe from a murkier, more confused place.

Late in the afternoon, Chavi walks into the room. She has just finished a report on the Chassidim and Misnagdim. She did it on her own, without having to be asked by her parents, which I'd put off on her being female, except I have two other daughters. Somehow, the conversation moves from place to place, including sociology, Spinoza and the Haskala. Then it gets serious. She asks me what we are. I go into a soliloquy, which comes from a place of love. I talk about being confused, and looking for truth and being a parent, and choosing a high school for her, and why I still where a hat on Shabbos, and how it breaks my heart when she cries, but her tears get a vote, and not a veto. I don't know what she thought, although she seemed to take it in, and suddenly the yahrtzeit has meaning. For this year at least.