Don’t tell the Rabbi I have a huge meeting on Tisha B’Av or tell him that I’ll be thinking about sitting in the Judean desert outside of Jerusalem listening to someone chant Eicha.
Tell him even though camp is not in session I know it will be exceptionally hot tomorrow, if not the hottest day of the year.
You can tell him I’ll have to try not to talk in that little singsong we use when we chant and that Friday night will be my father’s second yahrtzeit.
I heard dad calling out to me earlier today. I turned in the direction of his voice knowing he wasn’t going to be there but expecting him nonetheless.
Turned around the other day because I could hear the noise he used to make when he was sleeping.
Not the snoring nor the sound of the mask from his Cpap but the one he made when he was asleep.
The one I know from early childhood that I would tape and play in the background when I sleep because it is familiar and comforting.
Don’t tell the Rabbi because he knows and if he doesn’t, well one day he’ll join this club none of us wish to be part of and then he’ll understand.
The meeting is my responsibility if not my choice but sometimes life forces us to make decisions.
As dad would say I’ll do my best because it is all I can do and I’ll do it myself because no one else can do it for me.
But the people on the other side don’t know that he’ll come in with me regardless. They won’t know how sometimes when I look at my hands I see his.
Nor will they know how funny it is to me when my kids or others tell me my hands are big because his always seemed bigger until they weren’t.
If I take a deep breath and then exhale for extended amount of time or kind of chuckle and grit my teeth I’ll know I am not happy with how it is going.
And if I do a few other things I’ll know the opposite.
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don’t.”
― The Stand
