Rossi Rant: the yahrtziet

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Thursday, September 14

the yahrtziet

In the Jewish Religion
There is something called a Yahrtziet Day. This is the anniversary of your loved ones death, according to the Hebrew calender, so it changes every year on our English calendar.
On the yahrtzeit you light a special candle. You’ve seen them, glass jars filled with white wax. They sell them in grocery stores and they are meant to burn all night. You say the prayer of remembrance, maybe you donate money to your synagogue so something special will happen there too.
I find it amazing that all the great sorrows and remembrances of my lifes seem to happen in September; my mothers yahrtziet, the anniversary of 911, the beginning of the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah which ushers in the opening and later closing of the book and a special time to mourn the dead.

Today is my mother’s yahrtziet and thank god for my brother matthew and his wife dahlia who diligently remind me every year.

But this year came with a special surprise. My sister-in-law Dahlia wrote to tell me of this surprise.

She had been searching the Hebrew birthdates vs the American ones and discovered that my mother’s birthday in America was and will always be the same day as her Yahrtziet on the Hebrew calendar. So her day of remembrance is the same day she was born.

My mother always, the phsychic, always the predictor, always the one who knew what was going to happen before anyone else, had predicted the anniversary of her death with the day of her birth.

I believe, as Dahlia does, that means we are supposed to celebrate her life like a birthday, not mourn her death like a dark fog.

Nothing is coincidence. More and more, I believe this to be true.

I shall quote from Dahlia directly below...

“ Your Mom never stopped amazing me with her view into the future and her insights. I don't think there is any coincidences in anything she ever did!"

No I don't think so either.

Not so long ago I found a letter she wrote to me about the first president Bush, when we were fighting Iraq..in the letter she said simply, "Has mankind learned nothing?"

I ask myself this question all the time.

Maybe my mom, up there, or flying over us, or reborn again, or scattered as energy across the universe, has the answers now.
Maybe she always had them.

I'm still learning.

But for today, I light the candle, I remember death and celebrate life at the same time and I hope tomorrow brings more of the latter, less of the former for us all.

04:57 PM Speak (3)