It’s hard to believe that my year of saying Kaddish for my father ends in two weeks. The “year” is actually eleven months. The Sages taught that no misdeeds require a year’s recitation in order to elevate a loved one’s soul to the next world. I am loath to let go of this practice that has kept my father at the forefront of each of my days. Reciting daily Kaddish affords me a few quiet moments just the two of us.

Reciting the words of the Kaddish (which make no mention of death but offer only praises of G’d) is a balm. Some evenings I recite Kaddish as a lullaby to him. Other evenings it is a tribute, a flow of love from my heart to my father now abiding in some imagined heavenly realm. Many times while reciting the words in Hebrew I simultaneously read the English translation: exalting. sanctifying, blessing, praising, extolling, honoring elevating and lauding the Holy One who allowed me to have my father well into my sixties.

In a fortnight my evenings will be my own again. I will remain seated during services when mourners are invited to stand and recite Kaddish for their deceased loved ones. Six weeks from now will be my father’s first yahrzeit, the yearly anniversary of his death. My status will no longer be “mourner” but one of those “observing a yahrzeit.” In that new and now forever role, I will once again rise and recite Kaddish in his memory.

Judasim’s mourning practices acknowledge that mourning doesn’t stop at burial. That “getting back into the swing of things” takes time. Reciting Kaddish confirms that the “swing of things” will never quite be the same. There will always be an empty space where a parent once lived. Kaddish enables me to re-enter that empty space in community to recite ancient words whose cadence becomes a  lullaby we sing to ourselves, missing and remembering the one who is no longer here.