Seventy Five

It would have been a big, beautiful party. The kind you always loved, the one that would add to all of our April festivities and chaos. Friends and family would fill the room, music playing, laughter that lingers, and flowers everywhere. So many flowers. There would be calls and cards from all over the world.  You would have taken it all in with that smile, quietly making sure everyone else felt special, never talking about your pain, but asking about everyone’s kids and grandkids, their health results and the latest in books, movies and theater. You would even bake something, just for us, just because. 

But you didn’t get to grow old. You didn’t get the small, ordinary moments that come with it - the little complaints, the misplaced glasses, the calls asking for me for help with your iPhone for the 10th time that would surely drive me crazy. You didn’t get to watch me grow into this life, with all its ups and downs. For you and in some way for me, I’m still 25.

You never met your grandkids. They are kind of awesome, on most days. I see glimpses of you in them sometimes, and it stops me for a second. Sometimes they ask about you and sometimes they say things that could only come from you. I wish they knew you. I wish they felt your arms around them (especially Leor that hates to hug), your warmth, your steady love. I wish they got to experience books with you, and theater and your borscht. It’s the kind of love and taste that stays with you long after. 

The last big party we had was your 50th. The night Danik and I met. Twenty five years have passed since then, somehow both fast and impossibly slow. This is the sixteenth birthday we’re marking without you, and instead of getting easier, the space you left just feels bigger.

I don’t want to stop time. I just wish you were here in it with us, still loving, still guiding, still making borscht, still on the other end of the line when I call. I wish you were part of every moment and every celebration that matters, especially your own and every inconsequential one in between, that we take so easily for granted.

HBD Mamochka, wherever your soul may roam.