in each and every lovely thing...

My father's Yahrzeit/Jahrzeit

19 years*

***

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the softly falling snow.

I am the gentle showers of rain.

I am the fields of ripening grain.

I am the morning hush.

I am the graceful rush

of beautiful birds in circling flight.

I am the star shine of the night.

I am the flowers that bloom.

I am in a quiet room.

I am the birds that sing.

I am in each lovely thing.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

~ Native American prayer and attributed to Mary Frye

 
 

also:

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Jahrzeit

I happen to not be Jewish,

but I find this to be the most endearing,

the most lovely, of all Judaic traditions of which I am aware.

***

"Don't grieve.

Anything you lose comes round in another form."

 ~ Rumi                  

Boy on left is one of my strapping nephews,

and looks exactly like my Dad....

**

*correction: 20 years - more on this later--

I was essentially so traumatized that such things are/were unclear...

I decided to let my original mistake stand as a testament to how confounding the entire event was, how disruptive in my life, how cataclysmic, and how I was plunged into a decades long denial....