Brought Low on Yahrzeit

It was the fourth Yahrzeit of my dear friend, Riva Reich, about whom I wrote my first work: ‘God Never Sleeps,’ a narrative poem about her survival of the Holocaust. I planned to visit her grave and had arranged for a taxi to take me to the cemetery. The fare would be about ninety shekels and I would have to pay the driver for waiting.

At 5 a.m, on my walk to the swimming pool, I planned the day ahead, but my mind, like a faulty disc, became stuck on the matter of the fare to the cemetery. I realized my husband would consider such a visit eccentric, it would worry him and he would deem the expenditure unnecessary. Although I was planning a pilgrimage of love and respect to my friend, a survivor of the Holocaust, on her Yahrzeit, I returned again and again to the matter of the money involved.

All at once I found myself flung down on the paved road. These incidents are always in response to thoughts and I understood immediately that my obsessive thinking about the money involved in a mitzvah were not appropriate. However, I was treated gently, despite the violence of the fall. My hands were unscathed and my knees not even bruised or scraped as they usually are. Only one elbow was injured, badly grazed and bleeding.

I returned home and, after David dressed my wound, I went back to bed for a while to recover from my fall. I was ready for the taxi at nine, with a perfect yellow tulip from my Shabbat arrangement and a page in a plastic sheet with the last verse of ‘God Never Sleeps.’

The taxi dropped me at the gate to the cemetery. Riva’s grave was at a great distance from the gate, at the far wall of the graveyard. I should have asked my driver to take me in. I took directions at the computerized information booth but I am hopeless at following instructions. As I began to march briskly through the enormous graveyard with its thousands of graves, I became panicky. I realized it was unlikely I would find Riva’s grave and all my effort and good intentions would be for naught.

Then I saw a sign ‘Het,’ which was written on my computer print-out. From there, I let myself be led and was much moved to find myself in front of the double grave with her husband.

On the stone is written: Rivka. My mother’s Hebrew name is also Rivka, although she was always known as Vera. Somehow I felt I was visiting my mother, (who is buried at Bushy Jewish Cemetery outside London) as well as my friend.

I communed with her for a while, then placed the sheet with the poem on the grave, laid the tulip on top and took my leave.