Disdain, Anger, and Disgust on High Holy Days
I feel deep pain, extreme disdain, anger, and disgust on this holiest Jewish month of the year. This is not at all how I should feel. However, I feel this way because of the cruel and disgusting behavior of Dina, Maurice, Jamil, and Laman in the way they are defending that cruel, calculating, heartless, and lowly Andrea. In other years, I always felt joy and peace at this time of year; this year I only feel bewilderment and great loss. Why? Why did that hussy of a woman enter Kelly’s life? My eyes well up with tears. I look out of my window and watch families, two and three generations of them, dressed in their holiday finery happily walk to the synagogue. The grandparents saunter behind the children. The older siblings hold the hands of their younger sisters and brothers. Young mothers proudly push a child in a stroller. Fathers herd their families to the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah prayers during this most beautiful and holy month of the Jewish year. This year Kelly is in deep pain. I feel helpless. I do not know how to alleviate his pain. This year he has avoided going to the temple. He is out with the dogs somewhere. The house echoes with a painful, palpable silence. I sit at the table trying very hard to ignore the poisonous feeling of hatred that threatens to gush out of me like lava from an active volcano.
I can picture the lava pouring out and covering the five of them. The image gives me satisfaction, but it does not relieve the pain and anger that I experience in how cruelly and heartlessly they treated Kelly. It makes me feel ashamed of my lack of control of these negative emotions. It makes me feel petty and lowly. “You are not base and cruel like them. Rise above that,” I tell myself. I try, but it pushes and pushes into me until it brings me down to my knees. I try very hard not to shed tears, but in the depth of my soul, I cry out, “Peter, Peter, why did you abandon me? Why did you not take me with you? I am so superfluous without you, so lonely and alone. I am unable to make everything alright!”
I am only greeted with silence. The only sound I hear is the gentle hum of the fridge and the low echo of the pain in my head spinning round and round.
Many years ago, in the prime of our lives, on a long Labour Day weekend, Peter and I had gone to the Village. It was a perfect day. The sun was shining. The crowds were relishing the last of the summer days. As we walked about, we came across a tiny framed picture displayed on a makeshift table on a sidewalk. The artist, a young woman, stood by her table. We were in our early forties then. The picture said, ‘Come grow old with me, The best is yet to come.’ It caught our fancy. We bought it. We pictured ourselves slowly, trudging hand in hand towards that perfect old age. We pictured ourselves happily enjoying the golden years. We did not even fathom that somewhere along the way, Peter would perish, and I would wander aimlessly through life waiting until my time came to join him. We were convinced that when the time came, we would leave this earth together, but that was not to be. And here I am on Rosh Hashanah sitting alone in my lonely house, which echoed with the memories of other High Holy Days that were filled with joy. My son is roaming somewhere trying to alleviate the pain he is feeling. This is how we will spend this Holy Month this year, all because of a heartless hussy who lured my son into marriage for a Green Card.