Skip to content
Menu
beitmalkhut.org beitmalkhut.org
  • contact us
  • yizkor—minyan remembrances
  • tzaddik stories
  • seymour fromer z”l
    • mira z. amiras — san francisco
    • harold lindenthal — nyc and hartford
    • fred rosenbaum, brooklyn and berkeley
    • joe hoffman, jerusalem
  • jewish mysticism, magic, and folklore
    • study group topics and schedule
  • recommended readings
    • death and dying
    • selected articles by mira
beitmalkhut.org beitmalkhut.org

the end of memory

Posted on 23 August 2011 by mira

It’s a very simple proposition: what if we forget?

What if we forget the details?

What if we forget their faces?

What if they become reductionist cartoons, selective memory, fixed inside our stories, unverified by outside confirmation?

What if they were not at all as we remember them?

What if we got the stories wrong?

What if they’re just cringing in their graves that we speak of them at all?

What if they still have consciousness?

What if there is reincarnation (or whatever) after all?

What if they don’t forgive us?

What if we can’t forgive them?

What if we’ve nothing left to say?

What if there’s plenty to say, but we can’t say it, or can’t say it out loud?

What if we want to preserve memory but are afraid to write it?

What if we obliterate their memory?

What if we leave their graves unmarked?

What if we say what we really feel?

What if we keep our feelings to ourselves?

What if we don’t say kaddish?

What if we don’t say kaddish anymore?

What if we forget them?

What if we are in turn forgotten?

What if the living just get on with living?

What if we don’t?

I fear the end of memory. Fear the letting go the last story. Fear losing their faces, holding conversation with them, remembering their smells, their laughter, their words, their love, their lack of love — whatever it is, I fear it.

And I don’t fear it at all.

2 thoughts on “the end of memory”

  1. PokerShrink says:
    23 August 2011 at 22:09

    Someone needs to superglue the “W” on your keyboard.

    “Why” you ask.
    “Exactly” I answer.

  2. mira says:
    24 August 2011 at 10:06

    “What if” I ask — which is followed by many hypothetical chronologies.

    I don’t ask “why” — which too easily could be followed by gnashing of teeth and tearing out of hair.

    I like the ‘W’ — I wish I heard it more often in the classroom. What are we, after all, if we don’t question?

Comments are closed.

email mira and erin: kaddish@beitmalkhut.org

  • kaddish in two-part harmony (554)
    • essays (159)
    • guest essays (11)
    • podcasts (388)
    • project news (13)
    • tzaddik stories (31)
  • Seymour Fromer z"l (16)
  • the rebbe's queer daughters (11)
  • Protected: a sample recording
    by erin
  • a kaddish for the forestry buff who also played horn pretty well
    by erin
  • in the beginning…
    by erin
  • kaddish for anke akevit (2015-20)
    by erin
  • a kaddish for too many suicide victims—but it gets better!
    by erin
  • a kaddish for sigrid syltetøy vang, b. 2006, d. 27 February 2018
    by erin
  • guest kaddish: velvet marquesa flicka storm, 11 august 2005–9 april 2015
    by erin
  • the stones I cannot place
    by mira
  • oh amy, how could you — a kaddish for amy smith
    by mira
  • guest kaddish: Gudrun Fossum Vang (16 June 1905–3 April 1972)
    by erin

anthropology backstage cats Charlotte Adams China choreography collaboration dads death death and dying divorce dogs exhaustion grief japan Jewish identity John Manning kabbalah kaddish life cycle Magnes Museum Malkah Middle East moms mourning murder music musicians musicology parenting piano ritual Sephardi Seymour Fromer Space Place suicide supine text the rebbe's queer daughters tzaddik tzaddik stories University of Iowa women writing yahrtzeit

Copyright

© 2010–24 by Mira Z. Amiras and Erin Vang (beitmalkhut.org). All rights reserved worldwide.

thank you—תודה רבה

Permission to use Lev Kogan's "Kaddish," © 1982 by Israel Brass Woodwind Publications
In-kind support: Global Pragmatica LLC®

meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
©2025 beitmalkhut.org | Powered by Superb Themes