The Shape of Rain

This morning began with a small act of negligence.

I know the date of my father's yahrzeit, of course. I bought the yahrzeit candle. I sponsored kiddush in shul in his memory.

And then, last night before sundown, I forgot to light the candle. At about six o'clock this morning, I sat bolt upright in bed with the realization: "Oh my God. I forgot to light the candle." I jumped out of bed, lit it (sorry, Dad), made coffee, and watched the sun rise over the ocean.

It was raining offshore. Not Florida afternoon rain, where the sky suddenly opens up, and everyone drives with their hazard lights on as if that somehow helps.

This was different. The ocean breeze was pushing the Atlantic moisture ashore. The rain looked almost solid from a distance, falling in broken columns from the clouds to the sea, with the sun shining between. You could see where the rain started. You could see where the rain stopped.

You could see the shape of rain.

That phrase, “the shape of rain,” just landed in me. And I started thinking:

Grief.

Love.

A marriage.

Even a season of illness has a shape.

And a life?

Today is my father’s 49^th yahrzeit. I’m wondering - what was the shape of his life? Every year, I run through the montage of memories, pictures in my mind. They are always the same, frozen, and rather few.

I know facts about my father.

But I never understood his inner life.  

I surmise, I reconstruct from these fragments– but am I even close to the truth of him?

And that got me thinking about how paleontologists reconstruct entire creatures from a handful of bones.

Apparently, this is what happens when I forget to light a yahrzeit candle and drink coffee before sunrise.

Somewhere between the rain and the dinosaur, the following letter emerged:

The Shape of Rain

A paleontologist doesn't find a dinosaur.

They find fragments.

A tooth.

Part of a femur.

A few vertebrae.

A claw.

And then they spend years asking:

What kind of creature leaves these traces?

A law degree he never used.

Motorcycles.

Planes.

A helicopter.

Two marriages.

Five kids.

Cowboy boots.

A business.

The way he greeted his workers by name.

I know facts about my father.

But not his inner life.

Every year, the distance grows.

Still, I grieve.

For what was lost.

And for what never happened.

For the conversations that never occurred.

The adult relationship that never formed.

The version of him that existed after my parents' marriage ended.

The family he built that I was not part of.

A shape.

Rather like the rain this morning.

I can see its boundaries.

But I cannot step into it now.

And yet, every year on his yahrzeit,I strike a match.

I light a candle.

I say, in effect:

"I don't know the whole story."

"But I remember that you were here."

Sometimes that is what the candle is for.

The shape of a life I didn't know.

A sixty-seven-year-old woman standing on a balcony with coffee,

looking at a photograph,

trying to understand the man who carried her.

And the small flame that says both existed.

Is there someone in your life whose shape you know better than their story?

What does this bring to mind for you? 

Feel free to share below.