Every year since 2005, I have marked my son’s birthday and passing in written form. For the majority of that time, I worked in a religious setting where such reflections were sustained and enabled. They were nuanced by being in an interfaith marriage, raising a daughter, and working in a bilingual, multicultural setting.
One inescapable aspect of all this is that time passes. 18 years is proof of that. For my wife, who bore nine months of healthy gestation to its unimagined and unplanned end, her body, mind, and spirit encapsulate her own testimony and saga. But earlier this year, she made good on a promise made long ago to design and get a tattoo honoring Joshua. She spent a good deal of 2022 finding and working with an artist.
I am glad that she took me along for that important day. I got to hear her explain to the tattoo artist the significance of the tattoo and tell her story of Joshua Emet. It was then that I realized the milestone. She said, “I had always talked about getting a tattoo and felt like I had to finally do it now, before he would have been 18 and still have been a child.”
Shared tears are a special gift. Shared tears with a stranger, even more so. And in the hands of an artist, they are like spun gold.
Time is inescapable as well for Joshua’s sister, who was born at the end of Dubya’s term and grew up in the Obama years. She also remembers the 2016 election, how it changed our lives in Northern Virginia forever and brought protests at Trump’s golf course, Black Lives Matter marches, COVID-19 lockdowns, school board meetings that thrust Loudoun County into the national spotlight, and continuing racial and gender animosity.
Winter Break
My daughter and I went on a short road trip over the winter holidays back to where I grew up as a child in Philadelphia and New Jersey. We also spent part of the time looking at a few college campuses as part of my daughter’s own growing up. I thought this would be a good time to casually ask her for some insight and help in composing this year’s memorial for her brother.
I had always wondered what it was like not just to be an only child, but to grow up knowing that she always had a brother who had already gone ahead. In my church work, I would tell the new groups of parents I met that I, too, had a family—a son with God and a daughter here with us.
We wondered who would have gotten which bedrooms. We imagined whether they would have fought over driving the car, or if their friends would have overlapped. She would have wanted him to have paved the road of experience ahead of her for college. It was an amusing conversation and very different from our usual musings that if he had lived, we might never have had another child. And so we have but one, here and there.
Of late, my daughter has taken an interest in psychology. It is yet something else around which she and her mother can more intimately bond. But she’s also incredibly practical. So her great insights on that road trip were that mom might still carry the death of Joshua in a way that is different from me and my faith upbringing because she carried him for nine months and was literally attached to him in a truly intimate way. As I shared with her images and thoughts (some faith-based) that give me comfort or have helped me at times in my life, she said simply by way of advice and conclusion, “You should choose what is most helpful to remember.”
I am glad that, of all things from 2022 into 2023, I had this chance not to go inward into my own headspace, but to look outward at my family as a measure of these years.
Returning Home
Out of the blue, as we neared home on our return trip, she said, “I wish our family had something traditional that we do every year together as a family for Christmastime.”
I thought this was an odd thing to say, as I could think of many things that we do every year around this time. We decorate for and celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, and observe the Advent season in advance of Christmas. We shop and give presents. We often travel to visit grandparents and friends. We celebrate New Year’s at a friend’s house nearby. We go to church.
But as I gave this more thought, I realized she was distinguishing between things we do out of obligation, which I thought of as “our traditions,” and things that were uniquely us that made this holiday season special and more enjoyable. For example, I have a cousin who always has a daddy/daughter lunch with his eldest daughter every Christmas Eve day. Other families may see a holiday show or concert, perform in a choir, or see a light show.
It was then that I realized we used to have a tradition that had become a casualty of the Trump Era. We used to throw a holiday party every year at our house. This began in our old house where she was born and continued into our current house when we moved.
The origin of the gathering actually goes back to Joshua’s funeral in mid-January 2005. Instead of the baby shower that would have been his, we spent the week after his death rushing to prepare a funeral service for both our Jewish and Catholic families. It helped that I had just recently graduated from seminary and knew liturgical and music ministers. We also were just coming out of the 2004 presidential election, where we had been active with Dean For America and the Democrats of Northern VA.
We probably had more people come to his funeral than to our wedding. But like our wedding, the diversity of people there said something remarkable. We had a lot of longtime friends and family from far away come. But we also had local graduate students, teachers, ministers, professionals from my wife’s work, and a host of grassroots and elected officials present. It was a true community gathering. (It takes a village). And we had all those people in our very small town home afterward. And they continued to stop by for a month or so after.
That had always made a lasting impression on me. We could open our doors in the January cold and people would come. And together we’d face the rest of the year and whatever else was to come.
We stopped hosting those parties in recent years because of COVID. We stopped it because it was difficult for me to talk about how I no longer worked at that once great church, or how so many things that were supposed to be there for me, or my wife, or my child, were no longer there. And it was hard because everyone had their own burdens to haul as well.
My wife initially was very eager to host a party for this year’s holiday season. But she had lots of last-minute work and we were barely able to even get the house decorated for Advent, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Finances made present shopping less celebratory. And we were all too rushed to have more than a few random moments altogether. We did have some great times and good cheer over the holidays, but we both confessed that the Holiday Spirit had eluded us.
The New Year often points to new futures and possibilities. But the effects of time are inescapable. Whether it’s confronting our impact on the planet or going round after round to start a new legislative cycle, we are weathered by it.
As 2022 drew to a close, a number of close friends and relatives lost loved ones, some very young. This added to the list of those for whom these months connecting one year to the next are a mixed bag of bittersweet treasures.
Over the past weekend, my wife and I put the holiday decorations away. We replaced the Advent wreath and candles with our weekly Sabbath lights. The Christmas decorations are touched once more and placed into storage. The outdoor lights came down and our gift to ourselves, a mezuzah, goes up on our outer door.
The Hebrew Prayer inside reminds us to love God with all of our heart, soul, and strength. It’s not hard to imagine this, for we love Joshua the same way.
People passing by probably don’t see the mezuzah, instead, they see our Hate Has No Home Here sign or our Peace Dove. And hopefully they and we in our own ways also “Love our neighbors.”
It’s 2023. There are things that are not here, but can be. There are things we put away but still carry. There are holidays and holy days ahead. And there are these days in between that count.
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Joshua Emet, may 18 be another year to remember.
And for all those who hold cherished memories or are fresh from recent funerals, we pray that all these memories be a blessing.