Five days ago, on March 15th, marked the sixteenth yahrzeit of my mother. And today, March 20th, would have been her eighty-sixth birthday. She died just five days before turning seventy.
Today is also the first day of spring, the spring equinox.
There is something in that convergence that I cannot ignore.
Jewish time asks us to hold memory and renewal in the same breath. We do not wait until grief is finished to begin again. We do not wait until the heart is fully repaired to notice what is blooming. Instead, we stand in that in-between place, where loss and possibility meet.
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) teaches, “לַכֹּל זְמָן וְעֵת לְכָל חֵפֶץ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמָיִם” — “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
And yet, life rarely parcels itself so neatly. The seasons overlap. The calendar folds in on itself. A yahrzeit can sit beside a birthday. Winter can turn toward spring even as we are still carrying what has been.
The equinox itself is a moment of balance. Equal light and equal darkness. Not the absence of night, but its partnership with day.
That is what this day feels like to me.
Sixteen years of missing my mother. At the same time, the quiet, insistent return of light. The memory of who she was. The question of who I am still becoming because she lived.
The psalmist cries out, “מִן־הַמֵּצַר קָרָאתִי יָּהּ עָנָנִי בַמֶּרְחָב יָהּ” — “From the narrow place I called out to God; God answered me with expansiveness” (Psalm 118:5).
Grief can be a narrow place. It can constrict, press in, make the world feel smaller than it once was. And yet, somehow, over time, something widens. Not because the loss disappears, but because love insists on taking up space. Because memory becomes not only what we carry, but what carries us.
Spring does not erase winter. It emerges from within it.
Perhaps that is what we mean when we speak about renewal, about rebirth. Not a return to what was, but the courage to become something new while still carrying what has been.
This morning in my pre-Shabbat Rabbi’s Corner message, I wrote about courage as an act of holiness. This evening, I am realizing that this may be one of the holiest forms of courage we are asked to practice: the courage to begin again without letting go of what we have loved.
To allow grief and growth to coexist.
To let memory root us, even as we reach toward what is still unfolding.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav taught, “כָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ גֶּשֶׁר צַר מְאֹד, וְהָעִקָּר לֹא לְפַחֵד כְּלָל” — “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the essential thing is not to be afraid at all.”
Perhaps not being afraid does not mean that we are untouched by loss. Perhaps it means that even on the narrow bridge, we keep walking. That we trust there is something on the other side of winter. That we allow ourselves to step into the unknown with tenderness, with memory, with love.
Tonight, I am aware that my mother does not get any older. She will forever remain five days shy of 70. However, I become older each and every second of the day.
Tonight, I am also carrying her with me in a different way.
I will wear her dress that was made for her when she was in her early 20’s – a dress that is almost as old as I.
I will be wrapped in her tallit, made for her by my sister-in-law, Marilyn.
I will be adorned with her jewelry, bequeathed to her by my grandfather, Bill.
I also look like my mother. I see her face every time I look in the mirror.
But more than that, I carry in my heart the love she lavished upon me. I try to live the values she taught me, not only in what I believe, but in the choices I make, in the ways I show up, and in the love I extend to others. And I carry her through the quiet, enduring gift of memory.
Not as costume. Not as memory alone. But as something that still lives. Something that still moves. Something that still accompanies me into this moment.
Maybe this is what rebirth can look like.
Not becoming someone entirely new, untethered from what has been. But allowing what we have loved to continue to live through us. In what we wear. In how we bless. In the ways we show up for one another. In our hearts, our minds, our memories, and our actions and deeds of love.
The past does not disappear. It becomes part of the fabric of who we are becoming.
So on this night of equinox, of balance, of beginnings that come intertwined with endings, perhaps the invitation is this:
To honor what has been.
To bless what is.
And to find the courage, again and again, to step into what is still becoming.
Happy birthday, Mom!
cookbook my grandmother had spearheaded (many of the recipes inside belonged to her), tzchachtkes that my siblings and I gave him from our various trips around the world, laminated copies of his obituary, the pages of the memorial book from his funeral – with my mother’s signature (that was the last time we would see my mother alive, as she died 10 weeks following my father’s death).