In German, jahrzeit means season. In Yiddish or Hebrew, transliterated with a y instead of a j, it’s the anniversary of a death. My mom died very close to the spring equinox one year ago. Also, about this time two years ago, I signed divorce papers. As if that were not quite enough, three years ago our governor issued the Covid lockdown order. That’s three years in a row of the spring equinox delivering an existential punch in the face.
That’s fucked up.
The winters in Seattle are not particularly harsh but can be very gray. Living in the Pacific Northwest has taught me the value of the sun break vacation. And this last winter I discovered the thrill of snowbirding, that thing where a woman of a certain age puts her strange little dog in the car and decamps for the desert.
For several years in a row, I have planted crocuses in my back lawn. I was delighted to return to Seattle from my trip to the sun and find the flowers reappearing. Every day there are more. There are four different colors: a dark purple, an orange that’s almost the color of turmeric, a sunshiney yellow, and white. They delight me, but I haven’t forgotten they were a source of conflict at my house because they interfered with mowing. I am not divorced because of spring flowers but I can not help fixating on this small domestic dispute as a metaphor. Your flowers are disorganized and inconvenient and I want to mow them down.
The Jews are pretty good at not requiring you believe. There are so many entry points, you don’t need faith as a key. How about some history? You don’t need to believe God parted the Red Sea to benefit from the liberation story behind Passover. Plus, the Jews have a long history of seeking a place to argue in peace about the best way to make a matzoh ball and would a grandchild be so much to ask? You don’t need God if you want to take a hot minute and consider the wrongs you might have done over the course of a year on Yom Kippur. You want to acknowledge the scars left by the years and lives lost to Covid, the heartbreak of a long relationship crumbling, the day your mom decided to shed the body that had not been serving her for so many years, there’s a ritual for that. You can light a yizkor (memorial) candle and name your past.
The timing in my life is such that these three major events, personal and global, hit right as the flowers are reappearing in my garden. I’m a woman of little faith. I put plants in the ground and sure, sure, science and nature say there’s a pretty good chance I’ll see flowers, but even that tests my resolve. The upside is that the bright pops of color appear to me as little miracles, a seasonal shift to the light.
I often forget that I have ordered bulbs, I order in late summer and they appear on my porch sometime in the fall. I always order too many. You have to tuck them in before the first freeze hits. I had been unsuccessful meeting this deadline until last year. Not only did I plant more crocuses but I put in tulips, grape hyacinths, and more daffodils. I think the disassociation of so much turmoil passed and I was finally able to focus long enough to complete this simple task. They were all in by the end of November. That’s a first for me.
Each spring, each season, each jahrzeit, hands out more flowers than each year prior. The crocuses come first, like little yizkor candles dotting the backyard. They remind me of what I’ve lost, and then, of the inevitability of spring.
Beautiful.