Life can be such a mystery.
As I have spent many of my adult years living with grief (come to think of it… many of my formative years as well), I see that it is a living and breathing entity.
Sometimes it shows up as a loving and old companion. And sometimes, it knocks on your door as highly dreaded company that you simply cannot dismiss.
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I honor and celebrate those I love. And I have noticed something over the years: there is a thread of similarity around “birthdays.” How one came to be is something so magical and mysterious and I often feel that because I am sharing the karma to know that human soul in this lifetime, because I have shared a piece of time on this earth with them, because I have borne witness (short or long) to that person’s human birth, it is something to honor and celebrate in all of its humanity (flawed, beautiful, filled with grace, etc.).
For those who have passed on and through, a birthday has become a joyous reminder for me, sometimes bittersweet, but it has mostly transformed into an experience that lives inside of me as happy and filled with love. The love shared, the love fought for. The love given freely. Earned. Ofttimes negotiated. Taught. Imprinted. And certainly, the love that endures.
Such is the day of this precious human birth.
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The day of my beloved’s “home-going” is most often not an easy day for me. In the Jewish calendar, we call this day the Yahrzeit.
The thing I recognize, however, as I celebrate and honor life and birth, is something very striking and indeed, may not sit well with non-secular Jews. Here it is:
Those whom I have lost who still walk this beautiful Earth, come at my heart when their birthdays approach like a “living Yahrzeit ” This is not to say in any way, that these beloveds are dead to me. I am trying to describe the emotion I feel when their birthdays approach.
A Yarzheit for me, is experienced with trepidation. With sadness. Loss. With pain that is frozen in time. Frozen inside of me. Memories that have taken years to integrate. Yet, somehow come rushing forward no matter how many years pass by. However, now that I know this old companion well, she is welcome. We have grown together side by side.
But what is different about the living is that they are living. They are out there living and breathing and so I experience their precious human birth first with trepidation and loss never once forgetting the celebration of the preciousness of their lives.
I honor their life. The beauty of their life. The life offered. Life shared. The grace that leapt between my heart and theirs for the time it did. The remembrance of that intimacy which only my heart can feel.
Life is mysterious. None of us know how much time we will get to share with each other through living or through dying.
So each day when I remember the living and those who have passed through, I find a way to honor the many ways love lives in me.
3.20.19
Jill Bacharach
