Jonah’s Yorzeit, that time of year again
Today is the ninth anniversary of my kid’s death, so I went back and reread all my Tales of J posts. It’s interesting looking at them after all this time, especially the ones where I kept the threads.
At the time I thought I was writing just like I usually write, though people were telling me I was writing very differently. After all, I generally talk how I write, even the analytical stuff, though when I talk I don’t get to edit. So I was talking as usual and typing it. What’s the difference?
A lot, it turns out. Writing about feelings, which details I talked about, when I reread them I can see what people were talking about. What’s weird is how long it took me to see it.
The other thing I didn’t realize is how many of them there are. I think there’s some overlap in content but that may be my confusing posts with threads.
There are people here who were very supportive and I want to thank you. Oddly, that’s most of the people here. Not everyone here knew me then.
I just used it as a way to remember him. That and I see him and hear him a little just a couple of weeks before he died on video. He only talks at the beginning to count us off and the end to take us out. If you don’t understand the beginning, it’s because he was counting in Yiddish. This was a klezmer band. (Actually, it still kind of is.)
ArtWStone
01/08/2021 @ 7:30 pm
I remember this. It was sent to me by a blogger who called himself JMac.
Peace to you.
Jonna Connelly
01/08/2021 @ 9:23 pm
I remember. Your tales of Jonah were always moving.
(Anyone still in touch with JMac?)
Bitey
01/08/2021 @ 9:47 pm
I was barely aware of this when it happened. I didn’t know enough to trust myself to say anything about your son specifically. I do recall discussing loss. Loss is such an odd word because in time you find that your loved ones are every bit as much a part of you as they were when they were physically present. It tears at me to contemplate your pain, but I am reassured that you are finding peace. That is what I have always admired about you. You are all about peace.
koshersalaami
01/08/2021 @ 11:11 pm
Yes, JMac published this. He found it interesting to hear a klezmer version of something written by a Scottish poet. As to where he is, he disappeared to care for his brother in Texas a little after James Emmerling died. I don’t know what happened to him and I don’t know what happened to Margaret Feike, though in her case I think her association with us was just too sad.
Bitey, there are a couple of comments I remember in detail, even without a recent revisit. One was yours. The other, oddly enough, was Alan’s. He’s the one who told me my writing was different on my very first post about Jonah’s death. He told me how I was coming across and I just took his word for it. The first post wasn’t originally written as a post, it was written as a PM or email to Lezlie, just two weeks after the death. I then wrote an initial post about it but didn’t like it, except for the ending. I looked back at what I’d sent to Lezlie, realized it was better than the post, and was about to ask her if I could publish it when I found a note from her I’d already gotten suggesting exactly that, so I did and tacked the new ending on it.
It was a very strange time. I cried more after my grandfather died suddenly when I was in my mid twenties. I didn’t initially cry about Jonah, though his death is by far the biggest loss I’ve ever experienced. It was more stunning than anything.
I never wrote about burying him. There are two things I remember about that. I’m not talking metaphorically here, at all. The first is there’s a custom at Jewish burials where the mourners pick up a shovel, push some dirt into the hole with the back to show reluctance, then throw in a shovel full of dirt, then hand the shovel off to the next person. I was standing there and I got a hug from everyone after they’d handled the shovel. It just worked out that way. That’s where I learned how effective hugs are.
The second is what happened after everyone had finished. My great uncle had taught me many years before (I was already an adult) that it’s not a good thing to leave a gravesite without someone actually being buried. So when everyone had finished, I could still see part of the casket. I picked up a shovel and started digging. My stepfather grabbed another shovel and helped for a bit, but he got tired. I kept going. Everyone just waited around while I, dressed in a suit and tie of course, continued shoveling until I could no longer make out the shape of the casket, like burying him was my personal responsibility, which is exactly how it felt. It’s one of the few times that if my wife had asked me to stop I would have refused. If the rabbi had asked me to stop I think I would have refused. I had to do that. It was cathartic and it felt like I was fulfilling a responsibility to my son. When I say I buried my son, I literally buried my son.
A little over a year and a half later, my father died, about a week after my father in law died. Great couple of years. Neither death was expected immediately. My father is buried at the family plot in slightly upstate NY, near the Hudson River though not overlooking it. I was with my daughter, who was twelve, and my sister’s kids, twelve and I guess about fifteen. I introduced them to that burial custom/priority. I did some digging. They damned near filled it to ground level.
After our fathers died, our rabbi said to us that next year had to be better than this one. I replied that this one was better than the year before. Our fathers were in their eighties, not seventeen.
jpHart
01/09/2021 @ 10:46 am
!Koshersaalami!
(:sustainable shelter:)
yes your passionate
erudition resolves our
FLASH* BACK*TOWARD
paradigm/\quandary: HOPE
yes sir handsome Jonah
[…] love […] love […]
resolves mysterious questions
infinite PERSEVERANCE
💜 love{LO;}love 💖
koshersalaami
01/09/2021 @ 2:40 pm
Thank y’all
Myriad
01/09/2021 @ 8:48 pm
I remember your tales of J, I remember that clip, I remember the shock that reverberated through the usually jolly atmosphere of OS. Nine years ago…
Best to you, your wife & your daughter.
koshersalaami
01/10/2021 @ 11:04 am
Thank you.
Yeah, I announced my son’s death on a PM broadcast to most of the people I knew.
And I dealt with it a lot through the online community. Writing is a good way for me to deal with this, to – to use the cliched but accurate word – process this. After my father died, I posted within 24 hours, while I was in the middle of it all. I did it for myself as well as for everyone else. I wanted to remember how I felt. I wanted to remember what it was like. I suppose if I’d seen a lot of people do this I might have been inclined not to because I might have found it typical but I didn’t. There was nothing I saw like that, so I felt free to do it.
01/10/2021 @ 12:04 pm
This is so tender, your words and the video. Auld Lang Syne is one of those tunes that renders sadness, even when folks are having fun.
I don’t recall you at Open Salon, but this may have been when I had stopped checking in there frequently. Also, maybe since I’m not really a politics person. My mother was dying and I wrote about that a lot, which may be another reason you never encountered me.
Nine years this June for my mom, so I know how it can seem like both a long time and a blink, how you never stop missing them, and how not a day goes by that you don’t think of them. Jonah looks like he knew he was loved, surrounded in the warm circle of musical friends.
Alan Milner
01/10/2021 @ 1:52 pm
Memory is a strange thing. I can remember just about everything that has ever happened in my life, almost total recall, but only if I choose to, so I am not one of those miserable people who afflicted by their inescapable total recall. Usually, I choose not to remember. One of my teachers once told me that living in the present moment was the best revenge of all.
So, here I was struggling to remember exactly what it was that I said to you on that occasion, or if I had even written anything at all and feeling embarrassed with myself because I could not remember.
I remember pieces of the stories you wrote about him (my recall goes as far as events but I have to work really hard to remember exact words) but I just couldn’t remember saying anything to support you….and then I read your reply to Bitey and that just blew me away because I couldn’t remember what I wrote. And still can’t.
As much as I decry this medium – while remaining addicted to it – I cannot deny how “social media” has changed the very nature of human relationships because now, for the first time in history, we have objective records of what we have said to each other on various occasions. Once that was only something that the great and powerful had. Now, we all have it to one extent or another.
Looking at the picture I was suddenly struck by another thought. After all these years, I still don’t know what you look like. I can’t pick you out of the photograph. We could be standing next to each other in an elevator and I wouldn’t be able to recognize you after knowing you for all these years.
May your son’s memory continue to be a blessing unto you. \
One of my teachers once told me that there is no such thing as death. As long as we remember those who have passed away they remain alive in our memories. I know that’s true because I still converse with my father, who passed away in 2008. Whenever I have a problem with a car or a woodworking project of a dish that I am cooking, I can ask him what to do and he always comes through.
Rose Guastella
01/10/2021 @ 4:34 pm
I remember this. You have written well about your son Jonah and your feelings and experiences. The thing about loss is that it changes with time, but it’s always there. And that’s as it should be, I think. I really don’t want to forget those I’ve lost. They are still important to me and always will be. My stepfather died 27 years ago, and I still miss him and always will. But when I think about him, I can hear his voice as clearly as though he were speaking in the temporal world. And that’s lovely.
I think it’s pretty wonderful that you have this beautiful video to watch.
koshersalaami
01/10/2021 @ 4:51 pm
Greenheron,
You definitely knew me at Open, though not well. I’m pretty sure you commented on at least one of the early posts, perhaps the first. What I remember you telling me was on another post. I once wrote a post called I Am OS which was sort of an OS version of American Pie, filled with references to various people. I don’t remember how many people I could figure out how to include, but I think you were concerned about who I left out.
Jonah’s death preceded your mother’s by five or six months. It was also nine years ago.
It’s not that my memory is that good, it’s just that certain things stuck.
Alan,
You’d have no reason to remember your comment. I’d have to show you both the post and your comment. I would have remembered the gist of it if I did not review it. Same with Bitey’s comment. In your case it was something I needed to hear. I was speaking as an observer, of Jonah, myself, and the process, and I wasn’t falling apart. I was reporting. You told me, among other things, that it was obvious from my writing that I loved him. I did, but I didn’t think that was coming across. I was relieved that it did.
Because I didn’t fall apart, I went to see Jonah’s therapist about it. I was afraid it was suddenly going to hit me like a ton of bricks and I’d be utterly incapacitated. I didn’t understand why I was functioning. I used Jonah’s therapist because he knew Jonah well and knew me well because I’d been in a lot of Jonah’s sessions, sometimes just for part of the time. The conclusion he came to was that I somehow did months of processing in a couple of days. Circumstances just led there.
koshersalaami
01/10/2021 @ 10:46 pm
Alan,
Though I have shoulder length COVID hair now, which I haven’t had since I was 21, you can see me in the video. I’m the one interacting directly with Jonah, the one playing melodica, which is that breath-driven keyboard. I’ll email you a recent selfie.
koshersalaami
01/10/2021 @ 10:53 pm
Rose,
Yes, it’s good I have this. There’s somewhere where I have more of his voice but it’s from earlier and this is from two weeks before he died. Some voices remain with you.