THIRTY YEARS BEYOND THE VEIL

The Momma d’Elisson, in her Brooklyn College yearbook photo.

Today is Mom’s Yahrzeit - the anniversary of her death as reckoned by the Hebrew calendar.

It has been thirty years since she slipped beyond the veil that hides the World to Come from we who live. Thirty years! And still my heart aches for her.

I mourn for all the days she missed with us... and especially with her granddaughters. I mourn for the family occasions at which she was no longer here in physical form.

And like many adults, there is that part of me that mourns for my lost childhood, the days when my cares were the simple cares of children and when my mother and father were there to love, care for, and nurture me. We grow out of those childhood days in the natural course of things. If we are fortunate enough, we survive middle age, we grow old, we eventually become elderly. Yet no matter how long our years, no matter how raddled with forgetfulness our minds, we never lose that little bit of longing to recapture those sweet times when we were loved, cared for, and nurtured.

I cannot bring her back. But I can light a candle for her and remember how wonderful life was when she was with us in the World That Is.


Mom at age fifty-eight. Looka dat smile!