Just a few days from now, Thursday, August 20, we should have been celebrating my son Ronen (z”l) on his first birthday. His Hebrew birthday, the 20th of Av, was last Monday. We’re in the final down-slide toward Rosh Ha-Shanah, and his yahrzeit, which will in perpetuity be observed on the Hebrew day preceding Rosh Ha-Shanah, occurs this year on September 18. Ronen died on September 29 of last year on the Gregorian calendar.
I expected to have wanted to write something here in honor of Ronen’s Hebrew birthday last Monday, but finished the day silent. I expect to want to write something on his birthday on Thursday, but all I can say at this moment is I expect my mood and my willingness to write to be volatile. I’ve watched as others have posted celebratory messages for their babies’ first birthdays over the last few weeks; I confess, these are hard for me to see and read, knowing that our celebration will be empty.
Because this year Ronen’s birthday coincides with Rosh Chodesh, I’m living within the loving comment from David to Jonathan in I Samuel 20:18 -
וְנִפְקַ֕דְתָּ כִּ֥י יִפָּקֵ֖ד מוֹשָׁבֶֽךָ - you will be missed, because your seat will be empty.
We’ll be celebrating and commemorating Ronen’s birthday with dedicating a tree in his memory at Ohr Kodesh Congregation. I’ll post more about that after it happens.
When we discussed Ronen’s birthday with my older children, they decided that we should make cupcakes to celebrate his birthday. This led to the following dialogue with my 4-year-old daughter as we were doing some yard work this past weekend:
D asks, “But who will blow out his candle?” I respond, “Well, because of the virus, maybe we shouldn’t blow out candles. But maybe if we make cupcakes, you can have one candle and J can have one candle and you can each blow them out.” Then she asks, “But Ima, who will make a wish instead of Ronen?” I respond, “I don’t know. What do you think Ronen would wish for if he were here?” D thinks for a moment and then replies, “I think the first thing he would wish for is to be alive.” Realizing I’m holding my breath, I smile at D and say, “You know that’s not possible, right? I’m not sure we should make wishes that can’t come true.” D, wiser than her 4 years and sometimes wiser than her 33-year-old mother, shrugs. “Not all wishes are supposed to come true you know,” she says, and goes back to inspecting our front yard for weeds, or maybe just enjoying running her hand through the tall grass.
Sigh. The two children that remain with me are more special than I can say. If anyone has kept me getting out of bed every morning for the past 323 days, it’s these two.
Call it coincidence or call it prayer, but I feel Ronen in beautiful sunsets. The very last Friday I spent with him a beautiful and fiery sunset out his window overlooking the Capitol escorted Shabbat in. I held him and watched the sunset, limited to standing as far as his respiratory and nasogastric tubing would let me take him, settled into the rocker and sang him every word of Kabbalat Shabbat that I could remember at that moment (which was less than the full text I usually have memorized, evidence of my sleep-deprived and stress/shock-clouded brain). The beginning of that sunset is pictured above, light compared to what would come after Shabbat began. I remember the nurse commenting that it looked like the sky was on fire. Since his death, it’s the blazing sunsets that make me feel like he’s still with me, somehow. I’ve seen quite a few this year. I just discovered a photo of a sunset on my phone from the time I was in labor with Ronen, the day before he was born, that neither Bob nor I remember taking. I feel connected to Ronen in rainbows, too, like the full double rainbow that was just briefly stretched over my house as I’ve been writing this post. Maybe all of this because each of those — sunsets and rainbows — are phenomena that exist only to be beautiful, only for a fleeting moment, and then they vanish. Like Ronen.
Infant death in the generations that preceded me was a silent burden. It happened, and then it was not discussed. Because of my captive audience and my want to educate, I’ve made a commitment to be honest about my journey in grief and to use my position to bring others in. And it’s not all altruistic — I want to equip the people around me with the best tools to comfort and support me in the right ways, and ideas of what are the right (and wrong) things to say to me and to others in my situation.
I’m not sure what the next few weeks will bring for me in my writing, but I’ll put this here: It may be that I write a fair amount on this page about my dead son. If this is triggering for you, or you don’t want to read it, scroll by. Or, click the three dots in the top-right of where you saw this post in your feed, and click the option, “Snooze Cantor Hinda Labovitz for 30 days.” I won’t be offended. Believe me — I know all about needing to snooze triggering posts on Facebook.
As for how you can support me, feel free to text me or email that you’re thinking about me, or perhaps more that you’re thinking about Ronen. Please don’t expect me to call back by phone. Please understand if I don’t reply to your text immediately, or if I don’t reply at all. Know that I’ve seen it, and that for the moment, it made me feel good to know that my son had an impact on humans other than myself even though he didn’t live for more than 39 days. Please have some additional rachmonus for me as I’m wading through the most tumultuous time of my emotional experience and the craziest time of my year. I am doing the best I can.
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