Wow, this week has really flown by. Or maybe it is just that time is still being weird.
Tonight Rabbi Magat was part of a clergy team at a very interesting ceremony: a mourning for the Israeli and Palestinian children who have died in the conflict. It was organized by two students at Santa Clara University and included prayers, stories, chanting from the Quran, a modern ritual of tearing a black strip of cloth (tying a piece on your neighbor's wrist and putting the other half in a common jar). Very nicely done. Interesting side note: The revived San Jose Earthquakes were playing a game on campus, so the traffic situation was a bit nuts.
From blog to comment to blog: "Tears contain the actual genetic material of our memories."
I quite like that turn of phrase.
I forget which grief book it was in, but I encountered a snippet from Kahlil Gibran that I remember from more than 40 years ago. It struck me then as interesting, but I don't think I understood it. I only hope that is true . :~)
"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."
There are actually three copies of "The Prophet" on the shelf. I had to do some climbing. It took a while to find it/them because they were right next to a vertical divider, and a small black edition of the book was blocking the spines of the other two. One was mine, one was Linda's (with the receipt from Books Etc. in Stow OH from 09/92 still inside). The small black book is dated 1945, about 4" by 6", leather cover and a small ribbon inside to mark one's place. What is the place, you might ask. "Joy and Sorrow," page 32. Exactly the piece I was looking for.
When Linda moved to California, bringing a large portion of her library with, there were of course many duplicates. Us both being women of approximately the same age, interested in somewhat the same things. Many of the extra copies were given away, but some we kept. "The Prophet" was one of the latter.
Other interesting things I inherited from Linda: a small item that has a magnetic back and lives on the fridge: an egg piercer so that eggs are less likely to split open when boiling. Several shoe-horns of various sizes and materials. The ancestral Q-tip containers that Adam and David remember from when they were growing up in Akron (one in each bathroom) -- reminder to self: time to refill the Q-tips.
So every day seems to have its weepy moment or moments. One thing or another will start the tears flowing. Someone will ask how I'm doing, and I answer "mostly fine" and start to cry. Telling someone the story of Linda and Cousin Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia to the rest of the world. Looking at the pictures on the bookshelves and having a hard time grappling with the reality that Linda is physically gone...really not here, really not coming back. But just as often, the pictures make me smile.
Someone said that it's good I'm choosing to let it out. I say I don't feel as though I have much of a choice. It just happens.
Weird. That's the most accurate thing I can say. It (the large, generic, all-encompassing "it") is just weird.
