sarah in nyc

Yesterday I was ready for a small post-Shiva adventure. My husband and I decided to go to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. The museum is in one of my favorite neighborhoods in New York. You get off the subway in a neighborhood of abandoned and repurposed factories, and then walk through streets where industrial and residential buildings are crammed in side by side. The industrial buildings and the modest homes feel comfortably familiar to me. I grew up not far from shoe factories, and the ship yard was just a few miles from my house. The light was wonderfully dramatic as we made our way to the museum. After visiting the excellent Mad Men exhibit we decided to walk around in the neighborhood. We went into a thrift store. My husband and I tend to have very different shopping styles so we naturally split up when we go into a store. after several minutes we found one another. my husband said he noticed something truly great in the store. I had noticed the same thing....

My days now start with morning services.  I took my camera this morning to catch the weak early morning light. I have been slowly trying to emerge into the world of the living. I have been writing thank you notes to all of the people who have been so kind to us. Mostly I am exhausted. I am not sure if this is simply being tired after all of the stress of the past several months or if my grief is expressing itself as deep exhaustion. I promise not to make this blog all death all the time. Either way, I thought it would be a good idea to try to get some stuff done. A dear friend invited us for dinner. I made sorbet. Yes, it does look a little dreary. If I were cleverer, I would come up with a flavor for this sorbet. maybe you have a good idea. I made a simple syrup and then candied a finely sliced orange in the syrup. I used that syrup to make a custard with coconut milk, pomegranate molasses, walnuts dates and cardamom and ginger. if I were serving this just to my fam...

There are relatives and friends who were not able to attend my mother's funeral. The service was recorded so it could be accessed by anyone who would like to listen to it. Zipporah Jacobs Funeral (audio) Amazon.com Widgets

Shiva ended this morning.   I would like to make sure to thank my friend Sue who dropped everything to help me untangle my messy thoughts over mounds of sushi so I could give a decent eulogy.   I was completely blown away by who came and how many people came to give comfort. Our dear friend traveled over two hours each way by train from Philadelphia so he could visit me for 40 minutes.   I have had as little as possible to do with the day school I attended for elementary school and high school since I graduated, and yet three of my classmates came to either the funeral or to the Shiva.   One college room mate came to the Boston Shiva and another to the Shiva at my apartment. The girl who sat behind me on RoshHaShannah for most of my childhood showed up yesterday. It did take me a minute to place her face, but we soon settled into an intense conversation about our past together.   I was touched that people who I had been close to when our kids...

My mother was not doing well. She had been declining for a while. My mother officially entered hospice care at home. I took the train up to Boston on Wednesday. I thought about my mother as the familiar landscape went by my window. I thought about the many trips I had taken to visit my parents over the years, and the many visits they had taken to visit us. The bleak winter landscape suited my mood. When I arrived at my mother’s she was not really relating to the here and now but had retreated to a place in her head populated with her parents, grandparents and the man with the crazy face. My mother had retreated so far back in her life that she never mentioned my father. My mother mostly slept. We waited for her calls of distress. We would wash my mother and shift her in her bed so she would not get bedsores. My sisters our mother and I were in a netherworld  between the world of the living and the dead. We threw out some things. We threw away all of the free greetin...