For five years — 2010 to 2014 — I did a blog post on or about Yom Kippur. I missed last year, I missed all of the High Holy Days last year. On Rosh Hashanah I was in Massachusetts with Chris, in her last days, and didn’t even consider leaving to go services in NH. Yom Kippur was less than a week after Chris died and I wasn’t yet able to face so many people I know asking how I was. Would I lie and say fine, or be honest and tell them my sister had just died and it had been a long, difficult summer, helping to take care of her and watching as another loved one disappeared into the fog of cancer? Rather than answer that question, I stayed home.
Now I’m fasting and ruminating, my usual Yom Kippur afternoon. Last week at Rosh Hashanah services I felt Eric sitting by my side. I kept seeing the sports jacket he always wore to the Temple, because he would ask what he should wear and I’d suggest the brown jacket with black and tan threads woven into a tiny check design. My favorite. When I got home I took out the jacket — one on the few pieces of Eric’s clothing I’ve saved — and hung it in my study. I can see it now, facing me as I sit at my desk.
Since attending Kol Nidre services last night, and through this morning’s service, I’ve been thinking about forgiveness, contrition, sin, wrongdoing, right action, justice and peace and regret, which is what we’re meant to consider on this solemn day.
The Rabbi’s sermon last night was about regret, and how people more often regret something they didn’t do, a risk they didn’t take, a goal they didn’t fully commit to, a hand they didn’t reach out, a letter they didn’t write. I remember how often Eric said, in the last weeks of his life, as he faced his death, “I have no regrets. But I’m having so much fun living, I’m not ready to be done.”
I’m certainly not ready to be done either, but I can’t say I have no regrets. Like most people, my greatest regrets are about things I didn’t do — a card I didn’t send, a story I haven’t dared to write, a call I didn’t make. I’ve also judged people according to my version of the narrative we share, not challenging myself to see the world from their eyes. It can be too easy for me to think I’m the one who has it right.
Yom Kippur is about being honest with ourselves, digging deep and admitting to the ways we’ve not been our best selves, then using that knowledge, not to be ashamed or give ourselves a hard time, but to do better.
I can do better. Eric’s jacket helps me see that.
Grace Mattern 