One Day

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

I started wearing a heart monitor for 14-30 days for heart palpitations and dizziness but symptoms dramatically decreased during the two weeks it took to receive the monitor in the mail. Of course, though, life is funny, and this morning, not even 24 hours into wearing it, I had several palpitations over a course of over an hour. I recorded each one on my “phone looking” recorder. 

What happened today? Why today? Anxiety and caffeine are two of my theories of causes of the palpitations. Today, when I told my therapist I’ve been afraid to go to sleep the past few nights, she immediately said it was because of my dad. She asked if I thought I would die as a reason for my fear and I immediately said I didn’t. My dad died of a heart attack (stroke), suddenly, not even 9 months ago. Of course, I connected that to me wearing a heart monitor but, consciously, paid no real thought to it.

I then realized it was October and I opened PJ Library’s site (PJ Library sends free high-quality Jewish children’s books to families every month. The program was created by the nonprofit Harold Grinspoon Foundation (HGF) in keeping with its mission to help people connect to Jewish values, traditions, and culture while building vibrant Jewish communities). I clicked on this month’s books to see my dad’s as the first book on the page. I knew it would be sent out to 35,000 PJ Library children of the appropriate age this month, but to see it, it felt bittersweet. I felt incredibly proud and sad.

Getting ready to go to friends’ for dinner tonight to welcome the new year (Rosh Hashanah), I was hit, emotionally, smacked down. We were about to leave and I began to cry (I had already cried in the shower), saying I needed a minute. Kit said they were going to sit outside and Ken took me in his arms and I said how I missed my dad so much and I sobbed…loudly, expelling my intense emotional pain that I have never allowed to be truly felt or released in the past 9 months. I sobbed, hearing myself make sounds of complete pain from the inner depths of my being. I held onto Ken, sobbing into his chest, holding onto him as he held me. It was as if I had begun to mourn, just 9 months later, even though I know that’s not accurate.

We got to our friends and I knew I looked terrible and I forgot that someone would be there who attended the K-8 school in Brookline, MA where my dad was the school librarian for over 30 years. He told me how he liked my dad and had good memories of him. I forgot he’d be there and felt as if I couldn’t take one more connection, one more thought, while the sticky part of the heart monitor irritated my skin.

I didn’t get the call that I would each year, with both my mother and father wishing us a happy new year, or a “gut yor,” (Yiddish). I didn’t get to hear everything my dad ate and enjoyed. I didn’t get to remind him how he used to come look for us outside of the sanctuary when we were teens and preferred to be with our friends, while he preferred for us to be in the sanctuary!

I’m exhausted. I’m sad. I’m still in shock. I have Ken and Kit who were there for me on a very difficult day. I thank my dad, too, though, for being there with me, in some unexplainable form, as I know he helped give me some strength to move, step by step, as slow as it was. 

Shanah Tova, Dad. I miss you, love you, and you are with me, even as time passes into a new year.