Soul candles and sukkahs

The Hebrew date of my mother's yahrtzeit is on motzei Yom Kippur. It's traditional to begin building a sukkah that night, after Yom Kippur goes out. What kind of ritual could I create for that evening, remembering my mother and using those memories to build a shelter for a figurative harvest, a shelter to dwell in while I journey under the wings of Shekhinah towards a place of promise?

Floating Sukkah, photo by Shoshana Jedwab and sukkah by
the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. 

Tomorrow is the Gregorian date of the anniversary of my mother's death. At sunset this evening, I lit a ner neshama for her, on my bedroom altar, since, because it's not Shabbos, it can be moved before I go to bed and the flickering light won't haunt me all night. (I'm not shomeret-anything anymore, but a rule or two has stuck with me.)

At the center of my altar is an image of Leah. Before I lit the candle, I said spontaneously,

Leah, please embrace my mother and comfort her. Sarah, Rivkah, Bilhah, Rachel, Zilpah, v'Leah, my Mothers, welcome Dolores, daughter of Mary, daughter of Susan, Daughter of Brigit. Hold her; heal Dolores, mother of Jeannine. Help me understand her and teach us to embrace.

 Then I recited Kaddish and El Malei Rachamim.

Leah by Sara Novenson

The date of my mother's yahrtzeit should be easy to remember: motzei Yom Kippur. I always remembered it when my father was still alive (he'd nod his approval and say, "God damn Jews do something right"), but I've forgotten the date many times since he passed away. Some years, if I remember soon enough, it's possible to light a "makeup candle" on the Gregorian date (this evening).

Perhaps if I understood her better, I'd have a stronger connection to her and I would remember. Or perhaps, her passing was so difficult for me, that part of me needs to forget. There was the horror of her dying, the horror of how she died, and the added horror of sensing in myself some relief that she was gone and that I didn't need to be afraid any more. 

I believe that during some period of my life, perhaps when I was an infant, my mother must have shown me love. Otherwise, why would I have always longed for her love? Looking back on the years that I can remember, all I can say is "God, that woman really hated me."

This past Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur were amazing and gave me insights and hope for the future. Over the last few days, the hope has faded and most of the insights, too. Then I zoned out for nineteen hours last night, the night before I was to light a ner neshamah for my mother.

I always remember to light a candle for my father's yahrtzeit. I've come to understand him. I don't understand my mother. I recognize that she was in hiding most of my life. I didn't discover until after she died that she had no friends or even acquaintances (she always spoke as if she did), she seldom left the house, and, during the last few years of her life, she brilliantly concealed her senility.

Was her reclusiveness her choice or my father's? He did try to keep me isolated, so maybe he was the cause of her isolation, too. (Then again, she tried to keep him isolated-- a year or two before she died, she said we shouldn't let him go out and talk to people because "he says terrible things about us.")

I know little about my mother's life. The one time I dared asked how my parents met, my mother silenced my father; so it was only when she was dying that he told me they married after knowing each other for only two days. (Was the story he told me true?) I know three of her babies died and I imagine she had many miscarriages because of her A-Negative blood type. I know that when she was a little girl, she had a Russian friend named Valentine, and that she found a copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover hidden underneath her mother's mattress. She told me that her mother-in-law was mean and that I looked just like her. She once told me that she hated how her father treated her mother. She gave me very little advice (most of it insane) and told me family histories that I later learned were not true, but I don't know if she was untruthful or out of touch with reality.

I recall only a few motherly moments with her. And two thought provoking moments. Many occasions when she was viciously cruel. And a couple of occasions when she was mean without apparently intending to be.

Who was this woman that I am commanded to honor, this woman I want to love?