From the depths of grief

Grief

My Facebook feed looks like my life. It is full of sorrow. It is bleak and sad and agonizing. There are pictures of our six murdered children, black ribbons. At the same time, people are posting first day of school pictures and photos of beach vacations. Life has stopped and life continues.

This is the reality of our grief. It is communal and it is isolating. I know that my personal pain is nothing compared to the hostage families’ pain, and yet my pain is all-encompassing. I feel it in my bones. It hurts.

The contrast between this personal and communal pain and the ongoing nature of life feels jarring. I meet a friend for coffee and we talk about her work and our kids and, in the background, Hersh is still dead. We have wine with dinner and Eden is buried. The birds come to my birdfeeder and bombs fall.

Our brains can only absorb so much. Our bodies need food and fluids and sleep and all of these remind us that we are still alive, even in moments of disorientation and grief.

They are not my children and they are all my children. They were young and full of promise. And I mourn them.

I have been talking to clergy about the October 7 anniversary, about our need to come together and mark the date. We need community, even as the tragedy continues to unfold. Just as our mourning for the 6 million isn’t isolated to Yom HaShoah, our pain about October 7 expands beyond the date – and is accentuated by the date. How can we grieve? How do we pray?

I know we need to create spaces for Jews in pain to come together, and I know we need to express our pain. Do we march? Do we listen to speeches? Do we sit in shul? Will we dance in their memory? We may need very different things. I know I want to be in synagogue on the anniversary of the moment the attacks started – or at least that’s what I anticipate I will want. Others will want to shout or to sing or to march or recite Lamentations. Our communal leaders need to create multiple spaces and ways for us to grieve. Grief is idiosyncratic and personal. Do we really know what we might need? In Israel? In the Diaspora?

And life will go on. Will you schedule meetings that day? Will you fast? Will you light yahrzeit candles that day or on Simchat Torah?

Facebook will look the same then as it does today. It will be aching with grief. And people will post about new jobs and things we can buy and political ads. And Rachel will have 365 on her shirt and we will all hurt in our bones. And we will get up and try to bring light into the world, through our grief.