The Blogs: My first Yizkor was on Yom Kippur.

There was a heaviness built into it. I was fasting. It was Yom HaDin. I had spent days thinking about the fact that for the first time in my life, when everyone else walked out for Yizkor, I would stay.

I went to shul specifically for it.

I had Hindel with me — my “death guru,” as I lovingly call her — and I was very focused on the whole thing. Maybe too focused.

I noticed everything.

I was annoyed at the minyan. The rabbi spoke and what he said didn’t resonate with me. I had built this moment up in my head because it was enormous to me, and somehow the actual moment didn’t seem to understand how enormous it was supposed to be.

And I didn’t say the prayer.

I’m not there yet.

I stayed in the room.

That was enough.

Then came my second Yizkor.

Simchas Torah.

This time, I didn’t go to shul for Yizkor.

I went to work.

For almost six years, I have made the kiddush at Tzemach Tzedek on Simchas Torah. It’s something I take enormous pride in. It’s big. It’s a lot of people. It’s a million details. And all day I was doing what I do — making sure the food was right, making sure everything looked right, making sure everyone had what they needed.

In other words, I was doing what my father did.

My father was a caterer. I spent years working beside him in his store, and one of the things he drilled into me was that it didn’t matter what someone’s budget was. If you took the job, you did it properly.

At the end of the day, he would say, it’s your name.

So there I was on Simchas Torah, tired, my back hurting, making sure everything was right because my name was on it.

And underneath everything else, there was a clock running in my head.

When is Yizkor?

Don’t miss Yizkor.

It wasn’t just that I wanted to be there.

I was afraid of failing him.

My father davened. I don’t know that I would say he loved to daven. But he davened. It mattered. Showing up mattered.

And somehow, with him, I feel this enormous responsibility to do the things I am supposed to do.

Even when I don’t want to.

Especially when I don’t want to.

If I missed Yizkor, it would feel like I had failed him.

So I kept checking the time.

And meanwhile, people kept walking into the kiddush carrying pieces of my father with them.

Menachem. Shneur. People who knew him when he was young. People who knew him later. People visiting from America. People I barely knew who would stop me and say, “I’m so sorry. Your father was such a big part of my childhood.”

Again and again.

Your father was part of my childhood.

One person described him perfectly: he was tough, he was funny, and he always did the right thing.

And I would listen.

And then I would go back to work.

There was something strange about it — spending the day doing essentially the same work my father had done while people walked into the room and handed me little pieces of him.

A story.

A memory.

A version of my father that belonged to them.

And then I would straighten something, check something, make sure there was enough food, make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.

Because there was a kiddush to run.

Because my name was on it.

Because that’s what he taught me to do.

My father was a man of action.

He was also extraordinarily generous.

When I worked with him in the store, people would sometimes come in who were struggling financially. And in my very practical way, I might say something like, fine, we’ll give them chicken.

My father would get angry.

Just because someone doesn’t have the means, he would tell me, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a festive meal.

And he meant it.

He would give them meat. Roast. Expensive things.

Because parents struggling to make ends meet didn’t mean their children should have to feel it at the Yom Tov table.

That mattered to him.

Their dignity mattered to him.

Doing the right thing mattered to him.

Eventually, it was time for Yizkor.

My cousin Sheva — my mother’s first cousin, my grandfather’s niece, someone who has known me literally since the day I was born and knew my father from the time he was about eighteen — looked at me and told me what was going to happen.

“You’re just going to come sit next to me.”

I had been in a terrible mood.

I hadn’t felt well the day before, and all day there had been this pit in my stomach.

I was tired.

I was bitchy.

I was annoyed at everyone.

Probably Sheva too.

Maybe I hurt her feelings. I don’t know.

But she knew me well enough to know that whatever was coming out of me wasn’t really what was happening inside me.

And I am not a touchy-feely person.

I don’t particularly like being touched. I don’t like needing people. I certainly don’t like looking like I need people.

But this time I did.

So I sat next to her.

And then everyone started saying Yizkor.

And I didn’t.

Again.

I looked around the room and had the same almost absurd thought I have every time I see the yahrzeit candle burning in my own house.

How is this my life?

I’m 45 years old.

And yet in that room, I wasn’t 45.

I was a little girl.

How am I possibly someone who stays for Yizkor?

How do I have a yahrzeit candle in my house for my father?

I’m just a little girl who wants her father.

I want my dad.

I want to know that he’s alive.

And there is something almost cruelly anticlimactic about Yizkor when grief is still new.

Because for you, the world should stop.

This is only my second Yizkor.

My father died.

I’m an orphan now.

Doesn’t anybody understand how enormous that is?

But the world doesn’t stop.

Especially not on Simchas Torah.

People are laughing. People are drinking. People are celebrating. Life is happening loudly on the other side of your grief.

And even inside the room, everyone has their own person.

Their own loss.

Their own Yizkor.

Nobody announces that this is only your second one.

Nobody knows that your body is shaking.

Nobody knows that you are trying desperately not to cry.

Nobody knows that some part of you is screaming, How is this happening?

But Sheva knew.

She sat next to me and held me.

At first, I resisted it.

Because that’s what I do.

And then I couldn’t anymore.

I needed someone.

I needed to let somebody in.

I was breaking.

So this woman who has known me for my entire life, who knew my father for essentially his entire adult life, held me while my body shook and I tried to hold back tears.

She didn’t make it better.

She couldn’t.

She just knew.

And we got through it.

I still couldn’t say the prayer.

Instead, I read it in English.

I needed to do something.

And then I came to the part about tzedakah.

Because, without making a vow, I will give tzedakah on his behalf.

And there he was.

Not in some dramatic memory.

Not even in one particular image.

Just my father.

The man who would get angry at me for suggesting chicken when there could be roast.

The man who couldn’t bear the idea that children should have a lesser Yom Tov because their parents were struggling.

The man who taught me that if I put my name on something, I had better do it properly.

The man all these people had spent the day telling me had been part of their childhood.

Tough.

Funny.

Generous.

Always doing the right thing.

And suddenly I understood something about Yizkor that I hadn’t understood the first time.

There are words, yes.

But there is also an action.

Give tzedakah.

Do something.

My father was a man of action.

And maybe that is what I have now.

I can’t do anything about the fact that he’s dead.

I can’t make myself ready to say words I’m not ready to say.

I can’t make the yahrzeit candle in my house belong to somebody else’s life.

I can’t make myself stop being the little girl who wants her father.

But I can do something.

I can give tzedakah.

I can do a mitzvah.

I can feed someone.

I can make sure that someone who doesn’t have the means still sits down to a beautiful Yom Tov meal.

I can take a job and do it properly because my name is on it.

I can show up.

I can go to shul for Yizkor even when I don’t want to.

I can stay in the room even though every part of me wants this not to be my room yet.

I can even let someone hold me when I am shaking and would much rather insist that I’m fine.

I don’t know if my father would be proud of me.

I hope he would be.

More than that, I hope somehow he knows how hard this is for me.

I hope he knows that when I walk into shul for Yizkor, I am doing it for him.

That when I stay in that room, I’m doing it for him.

That when I try to do the mitzvah, give the tzedakah, show up, do the thing I don’t want to do but know is the right thing to do, I’m doing it for him.

My first Yizkor was about staying in the room.

Maybe my second was about understanding what I’m supposed to do when I walk back out.

Because eventually Yizkor ended.

Sheva let go of me.

I got up.

And outside, it was still Simchas Torah.

People were still laughing and drinking and celebrating.

The world had not stopped because my father died.

As much as sometimes I still cannot understand how that’s possible.

So I walked back out into it.

And I did the next right thing.

Because that’s what my father did.