Day 49: Budding Among the Ruins
“And here am I, budding
among the ruins
with only sorrow to bite on,
as if weeping were a seed and I
the earth’s only furrow.”
April 30, 2020
Day 49
Records for Mt. Zion Cemetery in the Bronx show that Anna Renner was buried on February 3, 1916. My maternal grandmother Celia’s identical twin sister died from polio, though in the memoir I helped her write when I was in college, she called it infantile paralysis.
We think their mother, Sarah (Margulies) Renner died of the flu, but don’t know her cause of death for sure, only that she was also buried in the Mt. Zion Cemetery, on May 23, 1923 when Celia – Grammy – was 12.
The memory she shared with me was of sitting on the steps of the synagogue while her father and a minyan said Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, inside. She was not given space to grieve. I have written about this before, how I have often wondered what toll these early losses took on her psyche and how those wounds shaped some of the life choices that would, two generations later, contribute to shaping my own.
Yesterday would have been Grammy’s 109th birthday. Born on April 29, 1911 in Brooklyn, the daughter of recent immigrants from L’vov, she died on October 31, 2002 when my own first child was exactly three weeks old. They met briefly, and though Aviva has since chosen her own Hebrew name, we rescued Grammy’s Hebrew name from becoming lost forever by learning it during her last weeks of life. It was Simma, which means treasure in Aramaic. She hadn’t thought of it since childhood, when her Papa spoke Yiddish to her and her surviving sisters.
After their mother died, the girls banded together against, quite literally, a wicked step-mother. Celia and her sisters moved out and got their own apartment; Frances, Jean, Ethel, and Betty worked; Celia kept the house clean and got to attend school. Eventually, she earned a degree from Teacher’s College, married my grandfather Ben, converted to Christian Science, and had four girls of her own.
Just as in Hebrew mysticism, each letter of the alphabet contains a whole world, so too does each of the things I just mentioned enfold a thousand moments.
Yesterday morning, not yet thinking about the fact that it was Grammy’s birthday, though it may have been knocking around in my subconscious well before evening when I called my mom to check in about some of the above details, I found myself reading obituaries in the Boston Globe.
So many individuals who have died from COVID-19, each leaving an indelible imprint on the lives of those who knew and loved them, each taking with them ten-thousand, one-hundred thousand, a million-thousand-billion thousand, as a child might say, moments, quirks, and memories.
Reading a handful of stories each day feels like a necessary form of witnessing. Acknowledging death and making room to grieve gives life to the reality of this virus that has moved so stealthily and virulently through our communities yet to many of us who are cocooning in relative health and safety, also remains strangely distant and invisible.
At this point, many of us know someone who knows someone who has died; I’d say just about all of us know multiple people who have had or have (or probably have had but we’ll never know) the virus. If you work in healthcare or love someone who does, this will all be impossibly close to home. If you are staying home and reading the news but death has not touched your immediate circle, it is still close to home. Because it is, quite literally, everywhere.
I have often imagined that part of why my grandmother chose to leave Judaism stemmed from losing her sister and mother at such an early age, and not being given any room to grieve. We know that this was not uncommon a century ago; we know that in many families, it may still not be uncommon. The thinking goes: People die. You move on. The reality doesn’t go that way at all.
But Grammy was a deeply spiritual person, I believe even as a young girl. And we also know that grief, like any painful emotion not given an outlet, does not just vanish. It goes inward. It takes up room in ways that remain invisible yet are everywhere, not unlike a deadly virus.
One Jewish tradition I deeply appreciate is that we say Kaddish at every single service. If you are not yourself in mourning, you are there to hold up the ones who are. If it is your custom to stand, as it is mine, perhaps you are praying for the ones who die nameless. These days, I’ve been saying Kaddish more than ever, in part because I’ve begun “attending” evening services once or twice a week via Zoom, in addition to Shabbat morning services.
Earlier this week, our rabbi was giving his six-month-old daughter a bottle while we prayed. After we finished saying the prayer and those of us who were standing sat back down, he told us that it a term of endearment to call your child your “kaddish,” meaning they are the one who will someday say Kaddish for you, G-d willing your children outlive you. He said there was something very touching about saying Kaddish while holding his “kaddish.” I found that to be so poignant.
I find just everything to be so poignant these days. The other day, I was setting out for a run. The thought came to me: “Death is all around us.” Then came the very next thought, as I took in the blossoming trees and greening grass: “So is life.” And right away, I knew in some deep place that these two facts are never not true. Death and life, always right here, all around us. It's like Neruda wrote: Budding among the ruins.
Now, not all of us have or will have children of our own, nor is that really the point. My point is that holding space for grief and praising life are not separate.
In writing this dispatch, I came across a poem called Mourners' Kaddish for Everyday By Debra Cash. It seems like a fitting way to end:
Build me up of memory
loving and angry, tender and honest.
Let my loss build me a heart of wisdom,
compassion for the world’s many losses.
Each hour is mortal
and each hour is eternal
and each hour is our testament.
May I create worthy memories
all the days of my life.
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