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