Yahrzeit is a Jewish tradition to commemorate our departed loved ones. Sort of a semitic Day of the Dead without either colorful skeletons or morbid baked goods — the latter absence being very off brand for us. Usually, we're all in when it comes to pastries.
In fact, the only elements yahrzeit really requires is a candle in a glass cup, such as this one, which my wife lit for her father on the 20th anniversary of his death —"yahrzeit" is from the Yiddish word for "anniversary." Plus, I suppose, if you're feeling ambitious, a prayer for the dead, which we also said.
Twenty years is a long time, though I remember his passing very well. A bad beginning to a difficult year. We still miss him.
The candle burns for 24 hours, and cautious Jews, not wanting to push up their own deaths, tend to put yahrzeit candles in safe places, where they won't burn down the house at night. The kitchen sink is popular. Or the stove, as above. My parents put theirs on top of the refrigerator — I suppose the idea was to keep it out of our reach — and I can still recall seeing it high up there, flickering at night, like the soul of my dead grandfather awakened and sputtering atop the refrigerator. It was scary.
This was my father's father, who died when I was 3, introducing the concept of death into my world. I don't remember his funeral, but I remember playing among the headstones a year later, at the stone setting, another Jewish funerary rite — a year after a death, you unveil the headstone, your purchase on permanence. It's as if we're trying to gift wrap death with rituals, pretty it up a little, make the loss comforting instead of awful. It doesn't work very well, does it?
Rituals help though. Gentle reminders of those we love and miss. A few months ago my aunt died, she was 98. I miss her a lot and visit her headstone regularly.i think she would be pleased to see the footsteps in the ground and know she is not forgotten. Hoping too that there will be footsteps at my headstone.
ReplyDeleteLong time gone. My dad died in 1976. My mother in 1987. My only sibling six years ago. All gone; no more family. Only me, nearing 80, to remember.
ReplyDeletemay the neshama have an Aliyah
ReplyDeleteThe act itself is a reminder we find both a privilege and bearable, though very sad. These days I stock them so as not to miss what we, hardly religious, see as a holy obligation. Gloomy January, February…so many losses, pieces of our own selves gone. To paraphrase Neruda, Love is short in our brief lifetimes. Forgetting is long.
ReplyDeletePlease: “dear departed”, not “dearly”. The layer makes it sound like we’re glad they’re gone.
ReplyDeleteOddly, I had "dear departed" then thought "dearly" might echo ritual better. But you have a point, and I recast it. Thanks.
DeleteNeil's mention of the headstone setting a year later brought to mind several such gatherings I've attended at Woodlawn Cemetery there on Montrose (?) Avenue over the years. (Trivia: Both Jack Ruby and Shel Silverstein are at Woodlawn.) Always followed by a nice luncheon somewhere. Woodlawn is an interesting location. Maybe I've said this before? It shares a southern boundary with Acacia Park Cemetery, which you enter from Irving Park Road. (Acacia Park trivia: Mike Royko and Ral Donner are interred there.) I believe the two cemeteries are maintained by a common groundskeeping crew. The internal gate between Woodlawn and Acacia Park is kept open 90% of the time. You may come and go through either. My family owns several plots right up against the border of the two cemeteries, though I personally am going to Graceland in a few years when the time comes. I have a dear friend whose family is "on the Jewish side" of the fence. We used to joke about both going there eventually and waving to each other through the gate.
ReplyDeleteI had the honor of attending his funeral, and I remember each of the children saying in their eulogies that the greatest gift he had given to them was how much he loved their mother. What an incredible legacy.
ReplyDeleteDid you mean Reagan? Wow. As much as I disliked the man, I was deeply touched by the heartfelt and beautifully-written eulogies his children delivered.
DeleteThey were masterpieces of the genre of funereal acclaim. When my mother's time approached, some years later, I even studied copies of them...in order to compose a similar farewell.
Don't really know what the handful of people in attendance thought of what was delivered at graveside, but it certainly made me feel a lot better.
It has always amazed me how much the meaning and symbolism of yahrzeit candles have changed over the course of my life.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother used to light so many, i didn't understand. slowly I learned about the importance of remembrance. People don't die if you still light a yahrzeit candle for them. Their memories live on.
My grandmother light for her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, it seemed like 40 candles would glow on the counter during yom kippur. sometimes we would go months with a yahrzeit candle burning during shabbat dinner. Peopel i never met, but people i know.
Who will i light yahrzeit candles for? who will light them for me?
Funerals after all are for the living not the dear departed.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was very young, I was upset when my parents got to light the "special" candle and I couldn't. I was too young to understand it's meaning. Now, I light them on the anniversaries of the death of so many of my beloveds. It's an honor to do this.
ReplyDelete"Yahrzeit" literally means "year time" in German...the anniversary of a death. In Yiddish, and among many Jews, it's pronounced like "yort-site"...at least in Chicago, anyway, and that was how my mother said it. She was the religious one, who lost her father to cancer at 15, and she said the Mourner's Kaddish and lit the yahrzeit candles faithfully, as far back as I can remember, in our small and somewhat shabby East Garfield Park apartment.
ReplyDeleteFast forward a few years. Saw my father cry for the first time, when he lost his own father at 37, and now there were two candles to be lit. And, as always, a third one...at Yom Kippur--the Day of Atonement--the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. That's a lot of flickering candles for a kid to see in the darkness of a new suburban ranch house..
My mother always put those yahrzeit candles on the kitchen countertop, a safe location that only increased the shadows made by the facets in the glass. They bounced off the wall in the hallway. I could see them from my own bed. Very spooky and scary, even ghostly, and they made me more afraid of death. Then, as a teen, I read James T. Farrell's description of dying as being like a light bulb that dims and flickers out. Which made me feel better about the candles...and about death.
Not until middle age did I begin lighting my own yahrzeits. Usually on the stove-top, to keep them out of the reach of the kitties. But after one of the dumber ones stuck his paw into the Hanukkah menorah, the ritual had to stop. That same cat also liked to leap onto the stove and lick the iron skillets, so he couldn't be trusted. No more yahrzeits. Sorry, grandma...
The unveiling of the headstone for my paternal grandfather, on a hot Sunday in June, is impossible to forget. My grandmother put on an Oscar-worthy performance. The old Bolshevik (the Bernardine Dohrn of 1905) shrieked, wept, wailed, tore at her clothing, and threw herself onto her husband's grave...in front of an audience that was stunned and frozen into immobility. Turned ten that summer, and will always remember that day.
My parents always got them, free from Weinstein's on Devon. You walked in & asked for one or two. Then placed it on the middle of the gas range top.
DeleteMe, I can't be bothered, it's a silly old tradition! Some things just remind me of them or even my vague memories of my grandparents, three of whom died over 60 years ago. One lasted until the mid 70s.
I’ve never found any death ritual personally comforting. As a matter of fact I participate purely out of a sense of duty to family or friends. Some rituals, such as the ones around my father’s death, actually introduced additional stress. My dad’s oldest sister tried to commandeer the entire proceeding from my mother making things a bit ugly.
ReplyDeleteI recognize that the rituals comfort some people and provide a form of closure, but not for me.
Funerals are often stressful. When my father died, one of my mother's nieces, my own first cousin, actually called the funeral home in Florida and tried to arrange for a delay of the services, because her flight from Chicago was going to be late. A hijacking like that takes some real chutzpah.
DeleteFortunately, the funeral home called my mother for verification. My mother was a calm, easy-going, peaceable person. But that high-handed move pissed her off, big-time.
From the last episode of an old (2016) TV series, Person of Interest:
ReplyDelete”Everyone dies alone. But if you meant something to someone; if you helped someone; or loved someone; if even a single person remembers you, then maybe you never really die. And maybe this isn’t the end at all.”
I'm all in favor of death rituals and want more of them. Mainline Protestants, like the ones I grew up among, don't have many. When my father died, my Presbyterian mother decided to have her own shiva. She opened the house over several days and invited everyone to come in, have something to eat. leave a 3X5 card with a memory on it (my father always carried a stack of 3X5 cards in his shirt pocket), and take one of my father's many books from his study. We made a memorial bookmark to go home with the books. It was more than 20 years ago, but I still run into people who tell me they treasure one of my father's books.
ReplyDeleteThe ritual I really want to have come back is mourning clothing. People who are grieving get to wear a black armband for a few months or maybe a year. It might prevent us from saying something stupid to them.