In Jewish tradition, a child who loses a parent is required to say Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, every day for 11 months, and the community recognizes you as an avel, a mourner, all that year. You are advised to eschew hilarity and concerts, wedding banquets and bar mitzvah parties. You aren’t to seek out live music (unless your livelihood depends on it). You do not go out in search of unnecessary joy or frivolity. You inhabit a place of enhanced contemplation, by tradition as well as by religious law.
By Sarah Wildman | The New York TimesIn Jewish tradition, a child who loses a parent is required to say Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, every day for 11 months, and the community recognizes you as an, a mourner, all that year. You are advised to eschew hilarity and concerts, wedding banquets and bar mitzvah parties. You aren’t to seek out live music . You do not go out in search of unnecessary joy or frivolity.
This has been a season of trying to find what Orli saw there. I have spent these weeks insisting our remaining family go out into the world with me, to find it beautiful as well as horrible, amazing as well as painful. We are learning how to live now. We often stumble. In part I know that our travels were a means of running away. Indeed, I would have kept on running if Hana and Ian were amenable, if finances would have allowed. If I could have fully uprooted us, I probably would have. Our home can feel heavy and haunted. I have spent hours cleaning Orli’s room, first collecting medical equipment for donation and then swapping out the bedding that she died on.
I still have a tendency to wake in the night and go over and over all of the things that went wrong and where I imagine I might have protected Orli. I berate myself for having failed her. It is completely irrational; it is also true. I could not save her; she could not be saved. I am her mother; ergo, I failed. In the light of day, I see the faulty logic of 4 a.m.
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