as we reckon time

Here's a story some of you will like.

My father's parents were married in 1944 (So were my mother's parents, as it happens, but this is not a story about them.), on September 10.

Along about the early 90's, my grandmother started thinking about what kind of party she was going to make for their 50th anniversary. There's a picture in the album of her parents' golden wedding party, and although she didn't have as many children and grandchildren as her mother did, nevertheless, her golden wedding was going to be, if possible, an even bigger blowout.

Dates were saved. Lists were begun. Plans were hatched. In about March of 1994, my grandmother went in to the hospital for a minor outpatient procedure having something to do with her hand, and came home with the news that her blood count was hinky, and before long it turned out she had leukemia.

Over that spring and summer, it gradually became clear that the party was going to have to be rather less of an affair than had previously been intended. Then it became clear that it was going to be a very quiet celebration with just those fewer children and grandchildren than her mother had had, and the cousins and friends and whatnot would come another time. Then it became clear that she wasn't realistically fighting for her life any longer, but for the day of her anniversary - everybody knew she couldn't live long, but maybe she could live long enough.

My grandmother died August 30, 1994, which is why I'm telling this story now; I always think of it about this time of year. One of my clearest memories from the next day or so is of my father saying how unfair it was that she'd hung on for all those months just hoping to make it to the anniversary, because achieving fifty years of marriage was so important to her, and she got so close, but succumbed with less than two weeks to go. It was just that little bit extra that made the loss bitter as well as devastating.

At the funeral home, we were given yahrzeit calendars for the next ten years. Many of you who will like this story already know this, but some others of you may not: it is the custom for the decedent's siblings and children (and, God forbid, parents) to light a candle on the anniversary of the death; but the Hebrew calendar being what it is, this is obviously not the same day on the Gregorian calendar every year. A person could look up the dates, of course, but in this case the funeral home did this small favor for us.

I also have a clear memory of someone embracing my aunt and wishing that the new year should bring better times for her. Rosh Hashanah comes in the autumn, of course. And someone else said yes, Rosh Hashanah is very early [on the western calendar] this year, it's already next week, September 6, and look how in 1996 this day, 23 Elul, isn't until September 7.

So we looked, and we saw that the first yahrzeit for my grandmother was going to be September 18, 1995 -- and after that, September 7, 1996; September 25, 1997; September 14, 1998; and so on, almost always in September, because Rosh Hashanah normally comes later in September or even in October. (In 2001, 23 Elul was September 11. 23 Elul is not a good day.) I wonder, someone said, what day 23 Elul was in 1944.

You can see where this is going, I imagine. We didn't have the internets to do the looking-up for us at the touch of a button at that time, but a year behind me at school was a girl whose father was a rabbi, and I asked her to ask him to find for me the date in 1994 that corresponded to September 10, 1944, and what do you think it was.

Right: September 10, 1944 was 22 Elul 5704. My grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary was August 29, 1994. She won after all.