It'll be a New Year

I had one of those innocuous conversations today. With someone I really like, someone I was happy to be talking to, someone I had not seen in awhile.

She asked how I am, how the family is, in a way that indicated she cared and wanted to hear. So I said it's been a hard time, the past 6 months since Lucas died, that we saw his family, that it was hard.

And she said, "it'll be a New Year". Meaning well, it's a nice thing to say.

I didn't say a lot of what's on my mind - how I don't want to go to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services, how in the New Year Lucas will still be dead, how the world will still be a place where a 4 year old boy can suddenly leave, where a family can be left with grief.

Yesterday, September 11, I did not think much about Lucas. I thought about all the people who died that day 10 years ago.

But today, September 12, I'm back to where I was. Not looking forward to a New Year, not knowing what it means to make a fresh start when a piece is, and will always be, missing.

And knowing that this is what people my age, which is not that old, and some younger, do all the time. That figuring out how to live with loss is basically figuring out how to live. I don't have it figured out yet.

Many years ago someone told me a year is important because after a year, you've gone through all the seasons. I have no doubt next high holidays will be easier. For now I'm dreading the thought of trying to be present as we read, "who shall live and who shall die". Alen's been listening to a Leonard Cohen version of it in the car - I don't know how. I changed the disc when it came on.

Painful Driving Questions

Tomorrow is six months since Lucas died. Last night, I looked at 192 photos of him that his aunt Lisa has on her facebook. The whole time feeling how I still can't comprehend this.

On the way home from work today, Sasha was with me thanks to strep throat. A coworker and friend was in the car with us. Sasha started talking about places he wants to go for his birthday and mentioned that Alen said we could go to Trinidad. I wonder if she did.

So I asked him why he wants to go to Trinidad and he said he wants to see Lucas's toys, and that he wants to see Lucas. So I said you know if we go there, we won't see Lucas, he's dead. Then Sasha started asking about if he was buried. Then he asked if he was in one of those things Dracula goes in (because we have a book with a picture of a vampire in a coffin, and it's the only picture of a coffin Sasha has ever seen). So I tried to explain what cremation is, in Hebrew, and that when someone is cremated there are ashes, but Sasha didn't really know what ashes are. Then Sasha said it was too bad because he wanted to see Lucas, and I explained that we can't see people who are dead and that Lucas's body isn't here anymore and we can't see his spirit.

My friend didn't say anything.

Later in the ride I told Sasha I wanted to tell him something about my friend's father (that he produces musicals) and Sasha said, "what, is he dead?"

Then we talked about being grandparents, and people dying when they are grandparents or great grandparents.

The way it is supposed to be.

And I have a whole new pile of students, wonderful students, who don't know, who didn't hear, and still friends who for one reason or another we have not told, and time goes on. And I still feel that I have no idea what I believe anymore, that the G-d I believed in before this happened was more like Santa Claus, that I have no idea who the G-d is that I believe in anymore, and that the abyss remains very close. That am dreading the long prayers of the high holidays and the unetaneh tokef. And that my heart is with our family in Trinidad.