304 Days until the Big Five-0

Based on a prompt from the book Branches by Nancy Beckett.

Prompt Number 7:

“Write a description of a person sobbing. Locate the moments before and after the outburst so that the crying is one long leap between the two points. Let us see the body, the hands and the immediate area around them.”

My mother reached with one hand to the cupboard above her to take the waxed filled glass from the shelf while using her other hand to pull out the drawer at her large waist where she reached in without looking and grabbed a book of matches along with a small book. She opened the book first and then lit a match to the candle within the glass. As she started to recite the words from the small book she began to cry. My mother was not a quiet crier. She poured her whole body which was now quite large into every single sob. I imagined that this is what an earthquake looked like. My mother was lighting a Yahrzeit candle, the tradition of Jewish people who are remembering the anniversary of the death of a loved one. My mother’s sobs were accompanied by her loud screams “Ruthie, my Ruthie, my Ruthie.” She was also rambling in Yiddish. Her arms reached high into the air as if she was going to catch a baby falling from the kitchen ceiling. I wondered why the neighbors upstairs did not come running down to see what was wrong. I watched her the entire time she screamed and cried, frightened and curious. I am convinced she knew I was standing near by since our apartment was rather small and the kitchen, dining room and living room were all open to one another. I had been watching television in the living room only moments earlier when I first heard her talking to herself in the kitchen. I could tell by the tone of her crackling voice she was going to cry. She cried so often and so much, but when she lit the Yahrzeit candle, the crying seemed to fill the entire apartment, and all of us in it. These episodes would increase over the years as my father died, my grandmother, my uncle. The hysterics and the tears never extinguished the small flame from the glass in front of her. My mother’s regular tidal waves of grief eventually caused me to quickly run for cover in the bedroom. At first, they scared me into paralysis, helpless to squash my mother’s agony. Then eventually all the crying simply turned me numb.


The only time I ever cry in front of my young children is if we are watching a sad movie. I would never even think of letting them see me cry. I think it would upset them. I did cry a lot when my first son was born for about one year when his colic drove me into a state of sleep deprivation I am sure the Geneva Convention would categorize as prolonged torture. I go back to that first year of my first child’s life a lot and think how insanely difficult it was. I should use it to motivate myself to great heights. Hell if I survived a year without sleep, I can survive anything. Right, even writing everyday for an entire year until I reach the Golden Anniversary of My Life with My “self”? Or, did I lose my "self" in the ocean of my mother's tears so long ago? And is this exercise in writing a countdown to my 50th Birthday simply an attempt to find a lost soul at sea.