I love the High Holidays. It is a long period filled with for three of my favorite things: family, tradition, and great traditional food with family. This year I have gotten a ton of messages from people expressing their concern regarding the recent passing of my mother. Each note was a variation on the the fact that the these High Holidays are filled with so many memories and it will be hard to deal with this after the passing of both of my parents. One poignant note read:

I noted with sadness that I didn’t receive an annual Rosh Hashana call from your mother last week. Perhaps she was on a long-planned vacation or located in a place where cell reception is unreliable. I did, however, think of her, and all of you, who must be missing her during this season of memory.

I cognitively understood that time stirs the sense of loss, but I was still waiting for things the proverbial show to drop. Last week I found myself listening to Basya Schechter‘s version of Lev Tahor.

Create me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Cast me not away from Your presence;​ and take not You holy spirit from me.

Psalm 51: 12-13

Listen to her song. I find that her take on it matches the emotion to the sentiment of the Tehilah.

I have been meditating on both lines of this Psalm. Firstly, what does it mean to express gratitude for having a “clean heart”?

In the process of cleaning my mother’s apartment I found a picture from my childhood I had never seen before:

I just love this picture. I have no memories of my mother being this young. I was so chubby. Maybe it is the novelty of the photo, it being in black and white, or because of our expressions, but this picture captures a profound expression of purity for me. What were we both looking at? I am filled with gratitude of this sense of ease in which she could hold me and we could share an experience. Maybe there is a purity of heart in looking back at a picture of two people looking forward.

Meditating on this second line of Lev Tahor sent me back to L’David-Psalm 27 that we have been saying since the advent of Elul. There we say :

One thing I ask of the Lord,
only that do I seek:
to live in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord,
to frequent God’s Temple.

Psalm 27: 4

From the start of Elul until the end of Simchat Torah we keep asking to stay in God’s house. We just want to be close with God and maintain this sense of intimacy. In Lev Tahor we are asking not to be sent away. Looking at this photo I long for that closeness I had with my mother. It is a bittersweet.

Five years ago when my father passed away, I read many books on grief and loss. One quote that has stuck with me comes from Martin Prechtel’s The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise. He writes:

Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.

The memories of my parents have pulsated throughout these Holiday season. This is not the hard part. In this I have found meaning and comfort. In reconnecting to these rituals I have honored their memories. I am worried about the time after the holidays. After Sunday we are about to stop saying L’David. Will I stop yearning to be home? The Holidays will be over and we will need to go back to our workaday lives.

Before the summer started we brought our children down to see mother before going to camp. I had been down there with her a few weeks earlier and I realized that her mind had already gone. We assumed it would be the last time that they would get to see my mother before she passed away. After spending the day with her they said their goodbyes and we go the kids in the car. I lingered for a moment to say goodbye. I held her hand and kissed my mother on the cheek. In that moment I understood I was having a moment. Worse than being “cast away” is having to pull myself away knowing that it was the last time being her presence. In this memory I feel grief. I try to return to the gratitude that she helped foster in me a pure soul and I just miss her. Even though it is painful I know that we need to move forward. I take comfort that these memories will be waiting for me this coming Elul.