My First Yizkor

Tablet
June 11, 2024

Belief: Personal Essay

It’s Yom Kippur 1982, a sunny September morning in Montreal. I’m at synagogue with my grandparents, wearing a blush-colored dress with a bib of cream frills, sucking hard Life Savers I’ve fished out of my bubbie’s linty pockets. Around me, they chant lullingly, peacefully, until suddenly: The children must leave the room. It’s time for Yizkor. In my Holocaust-survivor community, this memorial service is attended by those whose parents are dead, many murdered during the war. This is a horribly, terribly, sad service, and we children are absolutely not allowed to be in the room. My grandmother frantically pushes my cousins and me out of the sanctuary to search for my mother. Mom rarely comes to synagogue but after a few minutes, characteristically late, she saunters into the lobby. She carries a large, beige purse and her brown hair is long and thin (to her dislike) and it dances through the air, like her laughter does, little operettas surfing on the edge of the wind. She’s come to take my cousins and me to the park.