Location, location, location ...
~ when grief met gratitude, that moment remained and repeats
Musings … my thoughts, daily since March 20, 2003 …
- other publications of mine, also on Substack for you to consider: Monday Morning Minute, FACILITYCalgary
April 3rd.
On a calendar, it looks harmless enough.
No parade, no sales event, no broad cultural insistence that we all feel the same thing at once. Just another square on the calendar, minding its own business - this year it’s a place-holder day for figuring out how to entertain out-of-town visitors between Friday and Sunday.
But dates are never neutral for long.
Life and events burned into memory see to that.
For everyone, any given day is ordinary.
For most of us, specific dates catch in our throats when we speak them - and the sound of earth landing on earth makes a powerful sound when words can’t.
April 3rd, like any date, doesn’t come with instructions. It doesn’t announce itself as sacred. It just shows up, modest and plain, another 1/365th of a year already crowded with noise, errands, obligations, and the usual arguments with time.
For most people, it means nothing much. But that’s never the whole story.
Dates become important because love and loss attach themselves to them and refuse to be evicted. It’s a different date and a unique memory for all of us.
A birthday. A death day. A funeral. A wedding. A phone call that changed everything. The calendar stays neutral, but we don’t. We mark these squares with memory, and after that, they are never blank or forgotten again.
April 3rd has long meant something to me because of its importance in my dad’s life.
But seven years ago, it took on another life because it was the day of Barry’s funeral.
The memories are vivid - a last-minute check revealed one small but decisive difference: a check that morning of the published obituary showed that the name of the synagogue and cemetery were the same … and was in my hotel, only a few blocks from the synagogue, with plenty of time, only to realize then I had a 45-minute drive to the cemetery…
… suddenly I was shaving, showering, dressing and checking out at record speed - then cursing traffic, rain, trucks, and my own confidence.
I made it in just as things had begun; what stayed with me most was not the frantic comedy of getting there.
It was the burial.
During a moving service, I heard stories of Barry’s younger life and community life that were new to me, and that carried their own ache. But the deeper moment came later, at the graveside, when each of us took a turn with the shovel. I was near the end of the queue.
Then the rabbi asked for volunteers to continue filling the grave.
That felt right.
Each shovel-full felt like work, yes, but also like a witness.
Duty, labour, but with love in it.
And when the last shovel-full was mine, it felt, in a quiet and grounded way, like what grace and spiritual moments are supposed to feel like (so I’ve been told).
In life, Barry and I gave each other time and attention.
In death, he gave me one final act of friendship I have never forgotten - not the opportunity to participate in his burial, but to truly finish the job. Imagining him looking up at me, grinning approvingly.
The end is not an easy thing to imagine or deal with, but we can see it from here. It’s not the light at the end of some tunnel - it’s everywhere, not identified by a date on a calendar.
