Someone Was In This Place and I, I Did Not Know

Photo credit: Chad Grey Jet Pazaol

During a Zoom Shiva minyan today, we were asked if we had anything to share before saying Kaddish - a reading, a poem, something. We heard two wonderful poems, and then I decided to stick my oar in. 

I don't have anything so beautifully crafted to offer, I said, I just wanted to tell you something that happened this afternoon when we went to do a big shop at the supermarket. The way the car licence plates are in this city, each one begins with 2 letters. As we were driving around, we kept seeing plates that began with the beginning of my mother's name, Evelyn. (in fact, I did say to L that if anyone had ever tried to address my mother as "Ev", they would have been fixed with a steely glare. Nevertheless it was clear to me that all the EV's we were seeing were referring to her)

We were on a mission to find the ingredients and baking tools to make our first ever cheesecake, in honour of the festival of Shavuot this week. My mother's cranberry cheesecake (a recipe from the New York Times in the early 1960's) is legendary. We decided that these signs were friendly messages of encouragement from her for our cheesecake ambitions.

I didn't want to sound flaky in front of my colleagues, but since my parents have died, I have seen their initials on car licence plates as them waving hello to me. I never noticed these letter combinations when they were still living, but now they jump out at me all over the place. I find it quite comforting to receive these greetings.

That's what I told the minyan. And then, one of our colleagues noted that the messages have always been there, but it took the mourning for us to look at the world around us in a different way. She offered Biblical examples, such as Jacob's dream (Genesis 28:  10-16), to illustrate the idea that after an intense and life-changing experience we see the world in a different way. She said it with more elegance.

So maybe, for those of us mourning, it may be of comfort to consider that all the signs we see in the world around us that remind us of the pain of our loss in these early weeks and months may one day become the catalysts for happy memories.