Forty days and forty nights ago, my sui generis wife died, and since today is Yom Kippur, I will be in synagogue this morning, this afternoon and this evening, reflecting, supposedly on my sins, but truthfully on Diane.
Observant Jews, of which I try to be one, spend about 14 hours in synagogue on Yom Kippur so that we should emerge thoroughly scrubbed and inspired morally.
Maybe next year I will. My concentration this year belongs to Diane. Flashes of our years together have periodically bubbled hourly for forty days.
My eyes become clouded. I want to explode in a morass, a confusing casserole of overtaxed emotions, regrets bordering on irrational anger that she is There and I am Here, baked with overheated sentiments that would be embarrassing to confess to anyone.
How can she be gone? She was just here.
We were on an upper floor at Kaiser-Sunset for an examination. She spoke. Freely. I heard her voice. I remember what it sounded like. I remember what she wore. I could touch her. I could hear her.
Now I can’t.
Like steam creeping up a window on a frosty morning, this increasingly familiar cerebral fantasy periodically explodes.
The 26-hour Yom Kippur fast, longest of the year, always has been a pleasure.
I have meltdowns.
Early in last Saturday morning’s Shabbat services, I nearly was overcome by poignant recollections of our years together, rushing through my preoccupied mind before tumbling over a steep waterfalls.
I took a step toward the door of the synagogue before pulling back.
After morning services, I went out for an 80-minute stroll, to commune with God. About Diane. And hopefully his abbreviated plans for me.
Eight hours later, just before our rabbi was to deliver an hour-long learning session, I was overcome again.
On Sunday morning, on the way to pick up my son Matt for breakfast, I loudly screamed “God, please take me.”
Monday morning, a mile from home, the attendant at the service station where I stop each day, remarked that this was the first time he had seen my hair.
I reached for my scalp. Bare. For the first time since I began covering my head 31 years ago, for religious reasons, I had forgotten my cap.
Living is not nearly as rewarding as it was forty days ago.
