A day each year that’s rich in meaning

My mother died 20 years ago today. Among some old papers, I discovered a “report card” from when she attended a franchised weight-loss program in 1967. The card lists her name—June Lovenheim—and records week by week how much weight she lost. One entry, for Sept. 12, showed she’d lost a total of 9 1/4 pounds. That caught my eye because, nearly 40 years later, that date—Sept. 12—would be the day on which she would die.

Typically, we memorialize loved ones on their birth dates. For national figures—Lincoln and King come to mind—we make their birthdays official holidays.

In the Jewish tradition, however, it’s common to remember a person primarily on the date of death. The Yiddish term “yahrzeit” (pronounced “yart-site”)means years’ time, or anniversary. On that date, we light a memorial candle, recite Kaddish—the mourner’s prayer—and perhaps give to charity in the deceased’s memory. It’s not that we forget a loved one’s birthday, but as the years pass, the yahrzeit becomes the key date on which the person is remembered by family and community.

This Sept. 12th is my mother’s 20th yahrzeit, and in preparing to observe it, I found myself intrigued by one fact: each year throughout her life she lived the date of her own death without knowing it—as we all do. Each year, for each of us, the date of our eventual deaths is just another day and passes unnoticed.

This prompted me, as we approach the Jewish High Holy days—a time to reflect and take stock of our lives—to imagine other Sept. 12ths of my mother’s life. Here are a few:

Sept. 12, 1927: My mother, June Knopf, is 10 years old and this is the first Monday of the first full week of school. At No. 1 School on Hillside Avenue (now School 15, the Children’s School of Rochester) she sits at her desk in a fifth-grade classroom. At noon, she walks home—over a bridge spanning the city’s trolley line—for lunch.

Sept. 12, 1935: Now a high school graduate, my mother takes a year-long secretarial course. She practices taking dictation in Gregg Shorthand, recording today’s date as a mysterious combination of squiggles and lines.

Sept. 12, 1945: Now 28, my mother has polio. It’s a mild case, but still, with a two-year-old son and seven months pregnant, the day is a struggle.

Sept. 12, 1957: My mother gets all three kids off to another day of school. Just weeks ago, she and my father moved the family to their new suburban home.

Sept. 12, 1969:  It’s Friday, the day each week my mother, now 52, volunteers as a “Gray Lady” (so-called because of the color of the uniform) at the old Genesee Hospital. Seated at the main information desk, she handles phone inquiries about patients’ conditions and helps visitors find their way around the hospital.

Sept. 12, 1981:  My parents host a late-summer party at home. Scores of their friends attend. My mother toasts my father on his recent 65^th birthday. The evening is warm and couples dance to recorded music on the backyard patio.

Sept. 12, 1989: It’s Tuesday, so my mother plays bridge with her sister and a small group of friends, most of whom she has known since childhood. Remarkably, these “Tuesday Group” bridge players will experience only one change of membership in 64 years.

Sept. 12, 2001: My mother now listens to television with an audio loop and reads with a magnifying lens—but still follows the news. Watching TV, she is stunned—as we all are—by the attack of 9/11 and speaks of other shocking days she has lived through: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt’s death, the assassination of President Kennedy.

On the last Sept. 12 of her life, my mother is at Strong Memorial Hospital, where she was taken by ambulance only the previous day. She has advanced pneumonia. At 6:15 p.m., my father and siblings and I gather by her bed and watch as she turns her head to the side and stops breathing. She was 88.

 As we go through life, our date of death—our yahrzeit—remains unknown to us. Yet how rich in meaning that one date can be. Lined up, year upon year, the repeating dates—some filled with hope, some with achievement, others with struggle, and others with love—can tell a full story: not of death, but of a life.

Peter Lovenheim is Washington correspondent for the Rochester Beacon. He is author of “In the Neighborhood” and other works. His most recent book, “Gift Shop of Gratitude,” was published in 2024. He can be reached at [email protected].

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