Thoughts after one year - in memory of Lucas

Today is Ash Wednesday. Yesterday was Mardi Gras - Carnival Tuesday - the day that Lucas died.

I can't believe it has been one year. My heart is with Sophie, Eddie & Kayleigh and all the family.

Thank you to everyone who has helped Alen & me and our kids during this year.

Two books I read this summer and fall helped a lot. One was "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" - a book of interviews by Studs Terkel. It's lots of different perspectives on death, loss and faith. The other is "Does the Soul Survive" by Rabbi Elie Spitz.

I spent almost two weeks in California at the end of January and beginning of February. I had not been there in 30 years. Everywhere I went I was welcomed by people I know from all parts of my life - from grade school, from my college days, from my first year in Israel in '83-'84, from rabbinical school and from these past 11 years in Israel. I also met new people - including my 3rd cousin and 3rd cousin once removed and his wife.

My cousin Andrew the genealogist gave me a gift - the marriage certificate of my great uncle Jack. It turns out my uncle Jack married his wife Edith exactly two weeks after my grandparents got married, on Sunday, April 28, 1929. (Or maybe it's the 23rd - the date is hard to read - the 23rd would make more sense if it was a civil wedding at an office not open on Sundays.)

My grandparents were married April 14, 1929 in Sharon, MA. In California I saw several people who are connected to Sharon and decided that all roads lead to Sharon - the place where my grandparents married and are buried.

I also saw and felt many other things connected to the past - to the Holocaust especially.

I came back feeling that if I can go 9000 miles away to a place where I have not been for 30 years and experience so many amazing connections from so many times, then there really is no time and no space and no distance.

When Lucas died the song that kept coming to me was the Sweet Honey In the Rock song, Listen More Often. You can find it on this blog if you search the Lucas tag - it's the first song I posted when he died. I'll probably make a new tag for loss as well. The song says "The dead are not under the earth" and it's something I believe more every day.

Sending lots of love to everyone who reads this.

Gail