Anniversaries
An anniversary is a time to celebrate the joys of today, the memories of yesterday, and the hopes of tomorrow – Author Unknown
To me, anniversaries serve as little markers in time – something I often find myself using as benchmarks.
Sometimes the benchmark is an approximate association:
“I remember we’d gone to see the fireworks the night before, so it must have been around the Fourth of July.”
Other times it’s more precise.
Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, the day you meet that special someone . . . a single calendar date anchors the precise timeframe that stands out from the other 364.
The more emotionally charged anniversaries are both.
Precise dates that loom over a lifetime of milestones; the shadow they cast a demarcation between periods now in your heart as “before” and “after”.
I have a love-hate relationship with anniversaries.
I love ritual and ceremony, it’s important to me to honor and acknowledge the accumulated milestones of my life and the lives of those close to me.
photo credit: Amy Loves Yah, via Flickr
But I’m terrible with dates.
It’s not so much remembering which date something occurred. I tend to lose myself in time , so often just don’t realize what date it is now.
And I’m awful with cards.
I buy cards. I buy stamps. Yet somehow the intention never manifests into action. Each time I move, as I pack and unpack, I discover the cards from anniversaries past – small stabbing reminders of missed opportunities to show how much I care.
Having two calendars doesn’t help.
Jewish observances are tied to their Hebrew date – from a lunar calendar separate from the 12 pages we use to mark other annual passage of time. Instead of leap days, there’s an occasional leap month – the years in between mean holidays can occur any day of the span of a couple of months. That’s why Hanukkah is sometimes close to Thanksgiving, other times closer to Christmas.
What’s most important is honoring what feels right.
My father passed away on March 7, 2004; the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar. His birthday is March 10th. When my dad passed away, we chose to celebrate his life by baking the cake he’d asked for before he died (a lemon cake, with vanilla frosting), eating his favorite candies (JuJu Fruits and York Peppermint Patties), and sharing memories with each other. We all have continued to bake a lemon cake to remember Mike each year on his birthday since.
This year the 14th of Adar falls on March 10th. It’s poetic – bordering on cliche – that the anniversaries of both the day my father entered this world and the day he left it are one and the same.
Still March 7th juts out in my timeline as the equator to the “before” and “after” hemispheres by which I’ve come to divide my life.
So these next few days belong to Dad.
I’m not sure how to end this post. Which I guess makes sense – since what feels right, right now, is that I honor this fifth anniversary by sharing bit and pieces of who he was – celebrate his memory here, with you, over these next few days.
So with that, I guess for now I’ll close by saying:
to be continued.
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Hi Faryl, This is a lovely tribute to a great guy. I love the poem your dad wrote. I forgot for a while that he shared a birthday with my daughter Beth, who turns 38 on March 10. I’ll think of your dad, as I do often. He was a great source of information for me, whether I was buying a new car or needing info abt. wading through teachers’ union stuff. He called me “Ellen from the palace” (a play on my last name of Ptalis) and I’ll always remember him.
Stay well,
Ellen
@Ellen Thanks so much for visiting the site and taking time to comment. I have many memories of Dad talking about “Ellen from the Palace” and “Peggy Sue” (among the other nicknames he created over the years)!. Much love, Faryl
Faryl,127 back in the early days was a truly great place to work at because it had a wonderful mix of personalities. I remember the bounce in your father’s step as he walked down the hall to the gym office. He always had a stong opinion about affairs at the school. I was more cavalier. He loved to talk over sensitive issues right outside the main office in the hallway, or in the attendance room with Tony G and especially, early in the mornings,before things got started .To think of Mike is to think about the good times at 127.