The Light We Carry
This past weekend my husband, son and I attended my son’s best friend’s Bar Mitzvah.
We felt honored to be part of such a profound milestone.
It was also poignant because my deceased father was Jewish,
and it gave my son and me both a chance to be part of a ceremony that is intertwined with our own origin story.
My husband and son both wore yarmulkes, and I wore a doily.
At the end of the Bar Mitzvah, during the Mourner’s Kaddish, my eyes filled with tears.
Throughout the ceremony, I thought of my father,
of my Jewish ancestors,
and of the legacy my son and I carry.
But even more so, I thought of all that we lost without my father’s physical presence in the world.
My son’s best friend had all four grandparents at his Bar Mitzvah.
My heart twisted upon seeing him, at 13, surrounded by all of his grandparents,
participating in a ritual that tethers him to his history.
My son had all four grandparents at birth,
but by his 1st birthday, he had only three.
His Abo, my father, dying just two days beforehand.
The loss of my father was very traumatic for me,
and one of the ways I continue to feel the void left in the wake of his death is through my parenting.
I so often wish I could consult with my father as I raise my son — the toughest job I will ever love, as he told me it would be.
But even more so, I wish my father and son could have known each other.
I am grateful every day that my father lived to become a grandfather.
But it isn’t the same.
And therein lies the profundity, and the permanence, of grief.
As I teared up on Saturday, I thought it might surprise some how deeply heartbroken I felt, thinking of all that we lost when my father died.
But to those who know loss, it is no surprise at all.
During the Mourner’s Kaddish, however, I did feel my father’s essence.
As I listened to the prayer that would have been recited for all of my paternal ancestors,
I realized that in hearing it, those ancestors were made present.
My tears, then, were not only tears of sadness.
They were tears of awe and of gratitude as well.
In my family having been a part of our dear friend’s Bar Mitzvah,
my son and I were able to connect with our Jewish heritage.
But more specifically, and more importantly,
we were able to connect with my father’s light.
The light we carry.
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
