My Passover plagues

I don't think I appreciated how difficult Passover was going to be. Karen and I never celebrated the holiday together and she never joined me at the Seder table. Last year she traveled to Turkey on a trip we booked just as we started to date, so while I missed her being there in 2008 I understood. After all, we both had lives before we re-met one another and there was no reason for her to change her plans just as there was no reason for me to change my Thanksgiving plans of 2007 that had me flying from The Hague to Los Angeles to spend the holiday with friends there.

Anyway, so as this year's Passover began to creep closer I really didn't think much of it. I thought it would be sad not to have her at the table, just as it has been sad all these Shabbats since she died. How wrong could I have been.

These past days have been some of the hardest for me. I am constantly feeling like I am on the edge of breaking down. The reality that I was forgetting was not that my sadness would come from the memory of Karen not being there, but from the prospective loss of her and James from this Passover and all those future ones.

Passover is a family holiday. It is not celebrated in the temple but rather in some one's home surround by loved ones. Many of fondest and most vibrant memories of childhood come from the Seders I attended. The past few week or two I've been feeling anxious and a little different, but I kept attributing it to my having to get re-acclimated to work and as well as preparing for my trip to Israel. It wasn't until the day of the first Seder that the weight of what was happening began to hit me.

I came home from work intending to change out of my work clothes quickly before heading over to my brother's. As soon as I closed the door to my apartment everything changed. I literally felt the walls close in on me. I stood in the kitchen, staring at the pictures of Karen and me that cover the refrigerator, and began to shake. I realized that this Seder was supposed to be the first on with MY family. It was supposed not only to be the first one where Karen would sit next to me, but also the first one where James would be. It shook me. Devastated me. Where had everything gone? What had happened to the life I thought I had. The life I was supposed to be enjoying.

My knees gave way and I'm not too proud to say that I spent several minutes on the cold tile floor of my kitchen. It couldn't be like this, I thought. The world bears no resemblance to what it did before. I've heard people say this is so unfair, if not the most unfair thing that could happen. Fair. That is a word no longer in my vocabulary. Just and unjust each have also faded from my sense of reality. Replaced by nothing. A void yet, if ever, to be filled.

I slowly regained my legs and stood. It seems I am constantly dipping into the well of strength that supported me when I came back to our apartment for the first time, when I stood up at her funeral, when I added my two shovel fulls of earth to the grave (one for her and one for James), when I said Kaddish the first time, the second time, the third time, the sixty-seven some odd time and counting, when I went back to work, when I.....but how much more is there in that well? I felt I might have reached the bottom. Slowly I dressed. I knew I needed to do it, that for Karen, for James, and for me, I had to go to the Seder.

With me I carried a Kiddish cup my father and step-mother gave to Karen and me the week before she died when we were in the Adirondacks. It is a beautiful glass blown piece of art they brought back from a recent trip to Venice. Along with Elijah's cup and Miriam's cup, on the Seder table was that cup to remember Karen and James. Two seats empty this year, and for years immemorial, at my Seder table.

As the Seder started, led by my brother, the emotions hit me like a tidal wave. When we prepared to drink the first cup the tears began to roll down my face. My brother, who has and remains a rock for me despite what I know is his own overwhelming pain and suffering from the loss of Karen and James, said a few, short beautiful words to remind us all that even in the midst of the joy of Passover the sadness of live and death are never far. It is, indeed, one of the things Jews consistently remind themselves, but this wasn't the sadness of a long ago tragedy like the destruction of the Temple or the Shoah, but something that touched everyone around the table, and beyond, profoundly and intimately.

Somehow I made it through that moment, although it might have been the first time I could have dipped my karpas in the salt water of actual tears. There are so many more dates approaching that I have no idea how I will be able to handle them. Mother's day. Father's day. Holiday's. Birthday's. Anniversaries. Etc. I now look at the calendar like a checker board, each day marked with its own impending grief. But I will face them. One at a time. I am without my family, the family I was to be building with Karen, and that is a hole in my heart and life that can never be filled and can only be watered with more tears.

As always, my loved ones and friends are with me. So while I don't know how much more I have in that well of strength that I keep dipping into, what I do know is that if there is anything that will help replenish what I draw out it is the strength and support from all of you.

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BTW - If not evident by the tone and flow, I wrote this post a bit more by stream of consciousness and let myself get caught up in the emotion of the moment.