By Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence
I hadn’t even looked at the date but like some muscle memory of years past, I knew what would quickly follow once Purim was over. I think that no matter how much time passes, this period will always hold a heaviness I can’t and won’t shake.
It’s became embedded in me like celebrating a birthday or any other significant occasion. Except this time period is met with a dread that is reserved for only this.
What makes this year even more difficult than the others that have followed is that this year we have a bar mitzvah of our third son, Yosef. It’s the third bar mitzvah in 4 years, and my first one remarried.
As I was busy establishing this family, and knowing how often we’d be hosting these parties, I never in my wildest dreams imagined it would be the way it turned out to be.
It’s a time of true dialectical emotion—the joy of a simcha and the memory of loss that resurfaces stronger than ever during this time of the year.
This morning, I found myself on a photo app, wanting to develop some pictures of Yosef throughout the years—as a baby, in some of his trademark kooky poses, and as a young man, coming of age.
I clicked on his face on my smartphone and the pictures popped up with Yosef in them.
I was taken on a trip down memory lane, knowing full well that a large portion of my day would be sucked into a vortex of what was, what had happened, and also what could have been.
I studied his face as he snuggled with his father on the side of some ride at a park in Puerto Rico during winter break around two months before his father died. It’s so clear what’s registered on his face and I also know that no matter how steady and good things are now, that he could never recapture that feeling I see as I look at the way they held each other that day, five years ago.
So many words popped into my head as I looked at that picture. There was love, peace, safety, security, and certainty that no matter what happened, his father would make things ok. There was comfort and reassurance.
Just a couple of months later, all those adjectives flew out the window and were replaced with grief, confusion, fear, overwhelming sadness, and uncertainty.
I tried protecting them as best as I could, but I’m sure at times they saw all those expressions written on my face as I continued going about the business of raising them.
Yosef is the middle child and at the time it happened in a position where he was old enough to understand what was going on, but young enough to have a brand of hope I couldn’t see in his older brothers, who cried for their father for months after it happened.
There were so many people trying to help the kids, each one dealing with their father’s death differently.
One day, Yosef decided to draw a picture of our family. I’m not sure if it was for me or for him, but it’s still tacked up on what became Dovid’s room eventually. It was the form of a person with arms and legs, and a body each signifying a person in our family. It’s been five years, and the paper is fraying slightly from the amateur arts and crafts project that became something I’d run my hands over every time I passed that room. It was a reminder to anyone that passed that door that even though he was gone, he’d always be a part of us and our lives.
There are qualities of him in all the kids and I like pointing it out when they do or say something so that they know it, just in case they were too young to recognize these personality traits from him within themselves. Some of them are physical clones of him and some inhabit his habits, personality, and ways that are difficult for me to articulate. Yosef inherited Moshe’s constant desire to help. He’s my go-to guy when I need the house prepped for Shabbos and Friday night minyan. He even removes the tablecloth after we eat and shakes it out on the front stairs like his father did and I sometimes wonder if he remembered this or just does it because he’s a product of Moshe.
Yosef is my third son, but the first to really enjoy the rite of passage becoming a bar mitzvah. His older brothers recited their parashah as well, but more out of obligation and maybe the memory of their father talking to them about how he expected his boys to all study their parashah and read from the Torah.
This is the first simcha we have where Yosef will get to use the Sefer Torah we wrote for Moshe and I know it will enhance the occasion and make it even more meaningful than it already is.
During times like these, I suffer from survivor’s guilt, knowing how much Moshe would want to be here for this. I know he’ll be there in spirit, and I know he took part in ensuring I wouldn’t be alone in raising our family because he always knew what I needed and although he couldn’t stick around, he’d make sure we’d be taken care of.
I see it in many ways, from meeting Jeremy to getting a mysterious shalach manos from a company Moshe used to work for, addressed to him five years after his passing.
There are signs everywhere of the people in life that had to leave too soon. At times, the sadness that life brings can cloud the daily miracles that occur.
The life I’m living currently feels like a new existence to the one I used to have. We’ve been through a lot and learned a lot about the human condition and what resilience and determination look like.
When I look at my kids and the people they’ve become, I know for certain that others have had their hand in helping, from where they are.
This Shabbos, when you say Kiddush, please have Chaim Moshe ben Binyomin Tzvi in mind for an aliyah of his neshamah. May we continue doing our part in making him proud as he’s done for us, and I know will continue to do.
Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence is a native of the Five Towns community, a mom of 5, a writer, and a social media influencer.