January 2002

Morris dropped me off at the Fort Lauderdale Airport after a short trip from the Century Village where my parents lived. He had established quite a business for himself, shopping, driving, and picking up take-out for his neighbors, who, over the years, had aged and weakened and lost the spouses they had come south with. Morris was a great resource for them my mother used to say. He had been lucky with his health, and this free-lance work was a cinch. He had been a seltzer delivery man in Brooklyn before he retired. Now that had been hard work, climbing countless flights of steps every day, carrying cases of glass bottles to walk-ups on high floors. His daily exercise for all those years had enhanced his excellent constitution.

My father had stopped driving to the airport the year before. At first, it was just pick-up. The cops who enforced the "no stopping" rules had always made him nervous, and he no longer could expect my mother to wait for me by baggage claim, collect me, and meet him a block away from "Arrivals" where the cops didn't bother shooing cars away from the curb.  But soon enough he found Morris' services to be such a convenience that he reserved him for both ways.

It was a relief for me to get out of the car and into the airport with little fanfare. I had said my goodbyes back home at the Century Village. Funny that I referred to it as home, since I had never lived there. But even though I had moved out of my parents' house many years before, and even though they had sold that house and lived in several apartments since my leaving, I habitually referred to any place where they lived as home.

The airport was its usual madhouse, even worse, since it was early January, winter break. The energy was bouncy and chaotic. College students were continuing their New Year's carousals. They shouted to one another, as if they still needed to make themselves heard above the boisterous bands. There was loud, raucous laughter. A few even tooted on noisemakers.

The din dissipated when I got to the end of the long, winding line for airport security. I was at the waiting portion of the hurry-up-and-wait that is airport embarkation. The people ahead of me were subdued and obedient. Even the college kids had quieted down, preparing to follow the new rules. At this point no one wanted any trouble.

Nearby, a girl was discussing with her friend whether or not she had to take off her oversized novelty sunglasses because they hid her face. No one was sure what was permitted or required. It was 2002. Increased airport security was new and in transition. It had not yet become a way of life.

The line barely moved while the guards seemed to be working out the details of security on the spot. After all of the activity of the past week, this sudden slow-down gave me too much time to think. I wasn't ready for that. Those silly sunglasses. They were on display at every kiosk and cheap souvenir store at the airport. Several people in front of me were wearing them. The center 00 made a perfect frame for the lenses, and 2002 was a numeric palindrome, which duplicated the symmetry of the double-0. A two on each end. Zeroes at the center.

Suddenly a ridiculous thought popped into my mind. What if I had brought a pair of those sunglasses to my mother's examination last week? I could have slipped them on when the nurse asked my mother what year it was.  I pictured myself pointing emphatically to my glasses so only Mom could see and not the nurse. Magic glasses. Invisible. Would Mom have been able to answer, "2002" instead of shrugging and murmuring that she didn't know? Would she have been able to make the connection between those glasses and the information they offered? Would she have gotten at least one answer right? No, of course not. She was that far gone.

Anniversary

Look up the word anniversary in the dictionary, and you'll find that it is the commemoration of an event, any event, that took place a year or years earlier. But that's not how we think of it in our culture. The word has come to mean a happy event, an event to be celebrated. Most often it means a wedding anniversary.

It is remembered by date, marked on our calendars and in our minds. If it is our anniversary, we remember it in its entirety--the year and the month and the day. There are some forgetful spouses who forget one or two or all three of those numbers, but that's another story. If it is the anniversary of a friend or relative, the month and day are all we need to note. The greeting card companies have made such commemorations simple to fulfill, so everyone is happy.

I wonder if we would feel a general sense of well-being during our wedding anniversary times if we didn't have specific dates so well documented. In earlier times, we didn't. Anniversaries (and birthdays) were associated with religious holidays or seasons. (Those were times less devoted to individual fulfillment and more towards community devotion.) But I wonder if happily-married people back then, without quite knowing why, just felt good and optimistic around that general time. If they had cellular memories of their transitions from daughter or son to wife or husband. Bypassing consciousness--a lightness of being, a spring in the step, an eagerness to please, and a willingness to be pleased.

I know that I feel the other kind of anniversary in my bones and spirit--the anniversaries of the passing of my loved ones. It isn't conscious. I don't always recognize just why it is that I'm feeling down, defensive, or particularly attentive to potential danger and loss. If I didn't get a card from my synagogue reminding me that the yahrtrzeit, or anniversary, of a loved one's death is coming on a specific date, I'd simply think I had fallen into a general depression.

But that's not it. I am reminded that this is different, my feelings arising from particular earlier events when I had no control over the well-being of the ones I dearly loved and still love. What I am feeling seeps up from tamped-down memories of those times--feelings of eternal helplessness, that no matter how smart I am, how resourceful, how hard I try I can't/couldn't make them well. They are memories of ultimate failure, the kick-at-the-knees reminder of  mortal limitations--mine and theirs.

February and March are cluster months for me. They are the months when my mother and father died. When my husband Al was first diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, which began his 18-month-long battle. A reminder of how I cared for them all, watched their suffering, witnessed their courage, and stood by helplessly when they left..

I'd like to say that I'm over it all, and mostly that would be true. I've made a good life for myself with abundant joys and challenges. I even find myself fretting over nonsense that I know is petty in the grand life- and-death scheme of things. I'd like to leave it all at that, but my memories haven't left me. Not entirely. I'm not stricken by grief anymore, but I'm changed by it. I guess I'm the keeper of a grief circle, as Sobonfu Some taught me nearly a decade ago. This blog is a grief circle into which people can visit and be supported in whatever ways work for them.

As for me, I acknowledge these times and my sadness, which begins to leave me even now. The rituals of grief are a receptacle for feelings. The dates put a frame around them. On the particular dates of my loved ones' deaths, I'll light a candle at sundown that will burn and flicker all night and into the next day. I'll recite a special prayer that praises life and acknowledges all I can't know or do by myself. It may not instantly lift my spirits, but it puts my mood in perspective and reminds me that I still have my life to live in gratitude.

In memory of Al Silverstein, Frances and Benjamin Letofsky, and my dear Star.


To learn about the way other cultures honor death anniversaries, go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_anniversary