The First Yahrzeit: Mourning Ends, Now What?

It’s been one year since my father, Rafael ben Moshe, left this world, and somehow, my brain still hasn’t fully registered it. I still think of things I want to tell him. I still instinctively go to share something before I remember he’s not here. And when I remember… it hurts. All over again.

If I said this year was easy, or that processing this was easy, it would be the biggest lie. I felt guilty laughing. I felt terrible crying. No one tells you what this actually feels like. My emotions have been everywhere; grief is not linear. It doesn’t follow a plan. Some days I felt like I could manage. Other days, I felt like I was drowning. 

The people who surrounded me during this time, whether they realized it or not, their presence, their care, their support it made all the difference. When someone is grieving, the easiest thing to do is to look away, avoid the discomfort, and pretend everything is okay. But so many of them leaned in. They did the hard things. They showed up, they asked questions, they offered themselves. They became my family. They wrapped around me like a community should, and I will never forget that.

I’ve learned so much this year, and I’ve had to relearn so much. Even now, writing about my father still brings me to tears. But I’ve also started to see moments of clarity. During Shiva, someone said something that stayed with me. She told me that little things, like animals in nature, would bring him back to me. She even said, “You’ll think of him when you see a bunny.” At the time, it felt very weird. I was not in a frame of mind to be able to even process it, but strangely, she was right.

I do see him in nature, in animals, in sunlight, and in the quiet moments. These things connect me to him just like those things connected him to the world. He wasn’t a man of many words, but every day he would go outside with his coffee and just look, breathe, smell the air. He’d notice the trees, the sky, and the leaves. He really saw the world, and I really, intentionally, try now too.

That’s part of why I started a cleats gemach this year. Not because my father loved sports – he liked basketball a little but wasn’t a sports fan per se – but he loved the outdoors. He believed in freedom and movement and soaking in the world around you. I wanted kids to have the chance to run, to play, to be free, to breathe fresh air, and feel grounded in their bodies and the world. And I wanted to honor his memory in a living, breathing way. Every time a child borrows cleats from the gemach and runs outside, I feel him there; it brings me so much joy to make that connection.

Someone else during shiva said to me, “You can never have your parents long enough.” No matter how old or sick they are, your parents are your parents. That’s your baseline. That’s your whole world. That’s why we mourn a parent for an entire year; we need to experience every single day of a year to even begin to process life without them. And even then, it’s not simple. It’s actually against our nature, against the way the brain works, to truly grasp that your parents are no longer here. That’s why you still instinctively try to pick up the phone, or think you’ll see them walk through the door, or dream of them. Because your brain doesn’t understand any other reality.

Someone else told me during shiva that, eventually, the painful images of his last days would fade and the better memories would take their place. And that, too, has proven true. When I think about him now, I don’t see him in a hospital bed. I see him tall and strong, 6 feet 4 inches, holding my tiny kids’ hands in the ocean when we lived in Florida. Their whole hands could barely wrap around one of his fingers. That’s how I remember him. That’s what stays with me. And I’m so grateful that’s what remains.

During Yizkor this past Shavuot (to be honest, Yizkor is something I’ve really struggled with), I kept thinking of the words history and memory, and that in Hebrew, there’s no real word for “history.” We borrow the word היסטוריה (historia), but memory, זיכרון, That we hold sacred.

Maybe it’s because history is so often about his story, something distant, recorded, preserved in textbooks or timelines. But memory is my story. The way I keep him with me. Not as a name or a date, but as a voice in my head. Judaism doesn’t treat memory as optional. Zachor. Remember. It’s a commandment. It’s an action. It’s the core of how we live and how we lead. We remember actively, with purpose. Yizkor isn’t just recollection; it’s a tefillah. Zachor et asher asah lecha Amalek remember what was done to you, not to sit and think in the past, but to shape the future.

We don’t remember just to look back; we remember so we can look forward.

Even as time moves on and the grass grows over his grave, which is really hard to see, and birthdays and anniversaries pass, and now a yahrzeit, my memory of him doesn’t fade- it is different.

This evening is my father’s official 1st yahrzeit, and with it, my year of aveilut comes to an end. And suddenly… It’s over. Just like that. The restrictions lift, the formal mourning is complete, and everything is supposed to return to “normal.” But nothing feels normal. It feels strange to say goodbye to aveilut, as if grief has an expiration date. Shiva is one week, and then some restrictions will lift. Thirty days, and more lift. And now, after a year, everything lifts. It’s like we just start counting in years now? But I don’t feel better or done. I don’t feel like I’ve crossed a finish line. I’m still trying to understand how to live without him, how to carry his memory without the container of mourning. I think part of me is afraid that letting go of the structure means letting go of him, but I know that’s not true. I’m just learning what remembrance looks like without the rituals. How to be in this new phase. How to grieve forward.

People asked, “Oh, when is aveilut over?” But how can it be over? It doesn’t just go away. Everything else was a process, shiva, shloshim, the year, and then suddenly… it ends? Does Hashem think I don’t need it anymore?

The answer is: no, Hashem doesn’t think my grief is over, and Judaism doesn’t either. The halachic structure of mourning, the stages of aveilut, isn’t meant to contain the grief or dictate how you feel. They’re meant to support you through it.

The end of the formal mourning period doesn’t mean I’m “done.” It means I’ve been given time, space, and scaffolding, and now I’m ready to step into a different kind of holding. One that’s more internal. Less visible. More enduring.

Grief doesn’t vanish at twelve months. It changes shape. It softens at the edges. It weaves itself into my identity. The year of aveilut isn’t about limiting my pain; it’s about giving me a framework to slowly begin learning how to live with it.

So when the aveilut ends, I’m not left with nothing; I’m left with memory, legacy, and love.

The world may move on. People may stop asking. But I will continue to carry him.

Hashem is still with me in that. Not saying, “Lisa, you’re done,” but rather, “I’m still walking with you from here.”

This next chapter isn’t the end of grief; it’s the beginning of integrating memory into life. And there’s nothing wrong with my feeling this transition deeply. It means I loved deeply, and that love doesn’t have an expiration date.

At his funeral, I spoke about five things my father taught me. I’ve carried them with me every day:

• He was a rodef shalom, a pursuer of peace. 
• He modeled kibbud av v’eim, a quiet, consistent respect for his parents. 
• He found joy in the little things- meals, coffee, sunlight, trees. 
• He believed in chinuch al pi darcho that every child learns and grows in their own way. 
• And he loved- deeply, simply, without condition.

I still don’t understand why my father lived only 73 years. But, we are not meant to ask Hashem, “Why?” We are meant to accept what is given and try to turn our pain into purpose. That’s what I’ve tried to do this year. And that’s what I’ll continue to do.

Hashem, please give an aliyah to the neshama of my father, Rafael ben Moshe.
May his soul be surrounded by the light of Hashem.
May he continue to watch over us and daven to Hashem with a much closer connection for everything that we daven to Hashem for, since I often whisper to him, asking for his help to whisper into Hashem’s ear.
And may his memory be a blessing and a source of strength for all of us.
Help us live in a way that honors him through kindness, through love, and through the way we show up for one another.