yahrtzeit for the tzaddik

Do I still get to cry?

The first year ends, and I've been living the dying over and over. Actually, it all started two years ago with her. And I just couldn't get over it, and then, wham — the tzaddik is ill, the tzaddik is terminal, the tzaddik is gone.

I think it's time to pack up the tears, and see what I can do about the black circles under my eyes.

Narayan Singh Khalsa (aka Michael Lincoln) says that everything important about us is written on our faces. That someone astute can just look at us and know what we've done and what we've been through. And then he would tell us. Okay, it was always in his cryptic symbology, but once you got used to his languaging, he really did make sense.

But I never believed him. Until now.

I hit the wrong key on my keyboard last week and punched up the PhotoBooth thingy which I didn't know was there. So that led to a couple hours of wasted time playing with the function, only to discover that Narayan had been right all along.

Look at those eyes!

Grief!

Grief so embedded that I don't know how to undo it at all. A graven image of grief. The rest of the body speaks the same language, of course. But I can't stand going any further than the eyes. That's scary enough for the present.

So, I'm wondering. If I focus on changing this picture of the self, will the grief go away?

If I can find a 'happy-thought' —

If I can make the body not hurt —

If this, if that ... go to the gym, hike more miles each day... maybe become a vegetarian... then the face will change again, right? The body too?

But the grief doesn't go away, does it? The pit in my stomach? The emptiness carved deep inside me?

I've heard that expression, "you look like you've aged 10 years..." and now I know what it looks like.

Okay, so this is my self-indulgent thought on this yahrtzeit of my father's. Interesting that I'm not spending the time praising him, talking about how much I miss him, about his brilliance, his protection, his wisdom, his goodness. Pining. Moaning.

The tzaddik. The tzaddik is gone. He's not even in my dreams, anymore.

No, this is me talking about me, instead.

No, this is the old, chin up, shoulders back, stiff-upper-lip, suck it in, suck it up, get a hold of yourself, stop the crap, stop the whining, stop, STOP, STOP!!

Yahrtzeit. One year. The first year. The first visit to the cemetery. Deal with a stone, a plaque. Move my sister to rest with my dad. Get organized. Take care of business.

Say goodbye.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I keep wondering if it's time to remember the living. To remember that I'm living. And not just in a nightmare of dealing with the aftermath.

No more self-indulgence.

This is what ritual was invented for. This is why we have something called Yahrtzeit. Why we light candles at prescribed times. Why we say Kaddish. Why saying Kaddish helps. Why hard-liner atheists have a rougher time of it than people who are calmed by ritual. Not that ritual has anything necessarily to do with belief. But they do seem to go hand in hand often enough.

What might be a good atheist ritual to ease the pain of loss? Surely there's some rational way of letting go the grief. And I'm not talking meds, here. Nor shrinks of any denomination. No. This is not pathology. It's just the life cycle.

Maybe what helps most is to turn my head eastward. To Brooklyn, of all places. To watching my kids thrive. So, okay kids, I'm facing your direction, more than I've done all year. I'm not placing this at your feet exactly, I just want you to help me laugh. I don't need grandchildren (god forbid). Just a little laughter.

Oh. And it's not all on you.

I've got work to do. Time to get back at it. My work. Not just everybody else's.

Okay bootstraps, this is me pulling, pulling hard...

Answer to question at top of page: Enough is enough. And I'll check in with a mirror a year from now and see what I've written upon my own face.

missing her as I do — new orleans revisited

Maybe I don't have any right to miss her as I do. Maybe the missing is reserved for what people conventionally call 'family.' For kin related by blood or marriage. And I am neither. She is 'family' in that other sense. The sense of what we call family.

My home was her home. Her home wasn't home to her.

She escaped as often as she could. She'd be in Moscow. In Tuva. In Brussels, when she had to be. She was here. She was there. She just wasn't home at home. Although, to be sure, I'm glad I got to be with her in Stockholm and see what her life was like there. People loved her there as well. And she had — and has — family. And love. Lots and lots of love.

So why am I thinking about her now? After all, it's not her Yahrtzeit until May. Until Memorial Day. She died on Memorial Day (on a US calendar, anyway), which makes the mourning process feel large, really large — as if the country itself takes up the mourning cry... I never thought much about Memorial Day until I got that phone call that she was gone.

The American Anthropological Association Meetings will be held in New Orleans this year. Our panel will focus on Trance. We've got two papers on North Africa — Hager's on the Zar cults in Egypt, and mine on accusations of faking it in Tunisia. We've got Jeff on Christianized Laotian refugees. Tina on contradance trance. And Jennifer on Sulawesi trance now for television audiences. It's gonna be a wonderful panel. With one exception.

She won't be there. The queen of trance and structural categories. Researcher extraordinaire. Indefatigable writer, editor. Not a thrilling teacher, if truth be told. But most of all, beloved.

The thing about conferences is that it forms some strange sort of bonds. Where you only see the people you love at the height of their form, and in a spectacular setting not your own. Altered time, altered space. And presenting the apex of your research at that moment. A high, of sorts, which is more than an academic high. It's a high of ideas, and the confluence of ideas. Of resonance to discover your own research dovetails with another's. Comparing notes. Deciding to present together the next year, to further the research to the next stage. To see what happens. To build momentum. To go from high to high: the meeting of more than minds.

Last time, in New Orleans, we were together. The theme of the meetings was '100 Years of Anthropology.' It was 2002. I presented on Mouloud Mammeri, Algerian anthropologist, and founder of the modern Amazigh Movement in North Africa. Did anybody care besides me? Does anyone ever really care? I'm not sure.

But she cared.

And we played. This was pre-Katrina New Orleans. Pre-Deepwater Horizon oil spill. New Orleans both playful and serious. We spent a lot of time in churches, as I recall. We were cleansed. We were healed. We were cleansed and healed. She was in her element, that's for sure. I, for sure, was not. I don't do church.

But then we visited John T. Martin. Four of us, I think, together. The Anthropology of Consciousness meets the Druidic Voodoo Priest. And the rapport was magnetic.

He stared into our eyes as he spoke. It wasn't about the transmission of charisma. It was about thirst. He was thirsty for this meeting of the minds. His readings were spontaneous and on target. But so were hers. Ours. The snakes were all upstairs, I remember, except for Jolie, the albino. It wasn't how I had remembered it from my last trip to New Orleans — right after the Voodoo Queen had died. When the snakes (who refused to be photographed, but appeared only as shining light) were still downstairs.

Now John kept them upstairs. Eugene, especially. Although Jolie still came downstairs. A barometer for who may and may not enter a more sacred and less public space. I keep a remembrance of them — pieces of the skins they've shed — inside a special wooden jar, set upon a special place. I don't call it an altar to Dhamballa. I don't have to.

I wanted him to speak at our next conference. He wanted travel funds for all the snakes as well. It wasn't like he was going to leave them for anyone else to attend. It wasn't like they'd leave him on his own.

There was a rapport, a resonance, an electricity among us all. Those trite words "I-can't-explain-it" are apt, but also inappropriate. It's my job, is it not, to be able to explain it?

No, it was my job to investigate further. I promised to call, when he asked me to call. I looked him straight in the eye and made the promise.

And every day from then till now, I have thought of calling. Every single day. I've thought of him.

But I don't make phone calls.

He probably knew it. I hope he knew it. I'm a flake. Just terrible at keeping contact. Bad, bad, bad. What else can I say?

But now. We're going back to New Orleans. I wonder what he's suffered. I wonder whether he's alive. I wonder what happened in all those intervening years in which each and every day I thought about calling.

Because I miss her as I do, I will go back and find him, if I can. I won't do it for him, or for me. I will do it for her. On her behalf. Because she is the one who follows through.

I know I have a message for him. I'm not sure what that will be. Just to say she's gone? Just to say I'm sorry? Just to cry out how much I miss her? Not sure.

All I'm sure of, is I won't call.

I want to look him in the eye, face to face and mind to mind, and have him tell me why I'm there.

And what I can do to make amends.