I knew how to say Kaddish.

When my father, ז״ל, died, I said it whenever I could. I had younger children then, and I couldn’t take on the commitment of finding a minyan every day. I said Kaddish when I made it to shul, grateful for the opportunity and accepting the days when I couldn’t.

But that wasn’t the same thing.

Then, Kaddish fit itself into the rhythm of my life.

This time, my life had to bend to the rhythm of Kaddish.

There is an enormous difference.

Saying Kaddish every day is like learning to swim.

At first, you are drowning.

You cannot catch your breath. The congregation races through the words. Before you’ve reached one phrase, everyone else is already halfway through the next. You gulp for air between syllables, trying to keep your head above water.

Eventually, almost without noticing, your breathing changes.

You stop fighting the rhythm and begin to find it. Like a swimmer who learns that breathing is not something you force but something you trust, Kaddish slowly becomes part of your body. You know when to inhale. You know when to pause. You know the cadence before the congregation reaches it.

And then, after eleven months, comes the strangest question of all.

Will I remember how to breathe outside the pool?

Starting Kaddish felt like drowning.

Stopping it left me breathless.

The hardest part of losing my mother was not the dramatic moments. It was the silence.

For years, my days were punctuated by conversations with her. Some were practical, some philosophical, most were trivial. I would go over a class I was preparing; she would be my first audience. I would call to ask a question, to tell her a story, to hear her opinion, even when I already knew what she was going to say.

In her later years, every conversation ended exactly the same way.

It became her signature. A gentle signal that the conversation was over, that everything important had been said.

And if I ended by saying, “I love you,” she would always answer, “I love you more.”

“It isn’t a competition,” I would protest.

It never made any difference.

Then, one day, there were no more phone calls.

No more “So that’s that.”

No more “I love you more.”

Kaddish did not replace my........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)