#yizkor #sumofourparts #weareasumofourparts #remember #zachor #weremember #placesinourlives #piecesofourlives #memories #howweareremembered #weareremembered #inheritance #apieceofthewhole
What are we
If not a sum of our parts?
A pile of experiences
Diaries from our childhood, books we've read
Arguments we've had
When sitting at the kitchen table
Meatloaf and sticky jello
What are we
If not just a multiplication of our days?
From here to there and back again
Home
Nights upon the same mattress
Work, play, sleep, raise a family, walk the dog
One day runs into another
Words pile on top of each other
In conversations long forgotten
Slowly things attach themselves to us
Items gotten here, no there, no maybe there
You remember?
Each thing has a tiny match that ignites
A tinny memory
A glimmer of copper when we close our eyes
Is copper the color of the passion to live and to love?
What are we
If not our stuff?
Gathered over time
Each piece a reminder of a car ride
A store, a beloved child, a dog, a job well done,
A friend, a boss, jealousy
Cherished items bring back memories
A cloudy Tuesday when we were ten
Or that time on the mountain when we were eighteen
Things we collected to remind us of our youth
Our children, that we were here.
As real as the words on this page.
That we lived.
We can still smell our childhoods
When we smell the lilacs
What are we without our memories?
Can we give our memories away?
Share them with others so when we are gone
Bits of us that remain on earth?
Fragments of our life, indications of love not lost
Snippets of us we give so we are not forgotten
The sum of our parts provoking thoughts, inciting love and memories
We are but fragments
In the notes we wrote, the shoes we wore, the things we held in our hands
Warm and solid and alive
Pieces of me that fit you now, here now and gone tomorrow.
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This was written as a way to recall my parents after we said Yizkor on the second day of Shavuot. Yizkor means "remember."