Life
The ways we remember those we loved
My shul has emailed to notify me that my mother’s yahrzeit is coming up, but it doesn’t feel like the most fitting way to commemorate her
August 28, 2024 15:06
My shul has emailed to notify me that my mother’s yahrzeit is coming up, but it doesn’t feel like the most fitting way to commemorate her
August 28, 2024 15:06An email arrives from our shul, notifying me that my mother’s yahrzeit is coming up soon. Of course, it’s not something that’s likely to slip my mind as, even though our relationship was not always an easy one, now – eight years after her death – I still miss her enormously. Certain things – discovering a heavenly scented rose I hadn’t come across before, noticing the goldfinches waiting their turn for the bird-feeders, rewatching an old episode of quirky TV detective series Monk – make me long to call her to share these small pleasures that I know she would relish too. I still feel a pang when I go to my sister’s house and there, on the wall, is a sweet drawing mum did of my sister and me as little girls in our matching swimsuits, paddling in a stream.
Of course, our synagogue does not write to congregants assuming we would forget those we have lost but to check if we want our loved one’s name read out on shabbat or if we would like to perform a mitzvah. I write back, saying there is no need to read out her name, not because I want her to be forgotten, of course, but because it doesn’t feel like the most fitting way to commemorate her. There is no single template on how to grieve; for us – my sister and I – we have found our own ways to mourn, to mark, to remember each of our parents.
Our father died 30 years ago and, for the first 15 of those years, we held an anniversary supper for us and his closest friends. We shared stories and jokes and food and more jokes, including old favourites retold so many times we refer to them in shorthand: “the salt joke”, “the bale of cloth” and “the watermelon joke”. We only drew it to a close at that point because his friends had started to die off too so it began to feel like a dramatisation of And Then There Were None…
Often, to mark the day, my sister and I would go to an exhibition (although our mother was also an artist, it was almost always dad who took us to art exhibitions), then for tea and cake. Dad’s view was that art and culture were a necessary part of his existence – but that tea and cake were equally vital (for me, cake and culture are vying for top spot…) and it was even better if you could combine both things in one outing.
So even now, 30 years on, I always think of my dad when I go to an exhibition – especially if we can argue about it afterwards over apple tart.
My memories of my mother are also near the surface – I don’t draw often myself but when I do pick up a pencil to sketch, I think of her. Neither of my parents ever went anywhere without a pencil (dad) or a pen (mum) and some sort of sketchbook or notebook, though my dad was also given to drawing on any plain surface easily to hand – the back of an envelope, a restaurant tablecloth and – if at home – the wall.
My mum was passionate about plants and gardening and even now, certain plants make me think of her – rosemary, her favourite herb; bronze fennel, which she grew in a spot where it was backlit by the sun at a particular time of day; hostas because she continued to wage war on the slugs who left their ribbed leaves looking like doilies (her wording not mine). I think of her when I make my stem ginger cake as it was her favourite, and when I bake shortbread as it was the only thing she liked to bake herself. I think of her when the hellebores open and when my rambling rose Albéric Barbier comes into bud: it was the rose that grew all over our cottage when I was growing up and this one I have now was a gift from her. Now, the small strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) she bought for us when we moved in towers above us all. The Daphne odora she gave us still scents the air as I walk up the front path. I am not remotely fey about death or dying – but it seems to me that I feel much more connected to my mother when I breathe in the fragrance of lemon balm or a scented-leaf pelargonium than if I go and stand by her grave.
And so, even though it is traditional to visit parents’ graves on the yahrzeit or around Yom Kippur, my sister and I will continue to adhere to our own traditions: to go to an exhibition, to share a pot of tea with cake, and when working in our gardens, to pause for a moment as we settle in a new plant or tie in a wandering stem or rub a sprig of lemon thyme between our fingers, and think of those we loved.