Today would have been Avi's 17th birthday.

I can only imagine what he would have looked like and what he would have been doing. He either would have been a junior at HHNE, or, more likely, studying at a yeshiva.

And a day does not go by that...

"The Shrine"

My surviving children refer to the small table holding Avi's photos as "The Shrine."

Today's Hartford Courant has a feature about grief during the December holidays. It just so happens that "The Shrine" mirrors one of the quoted bereavement counselor's recommendations:

If you have lost a family member: Don't try to ignore the loss for fear that talking about it will make people sad. Wish said, "An important dead family member is never dead, so why pretend they are really dead? They may be corporally dead, but they are not emotionally dead."

Said Feldman, "Chances are if you are thinking about it, someone else is thinking about it too."

Find a way to commemorate or memorialize the lost family member, by including an extra place setting at the table, setting up photographs or encouraging people to share memories and perhaps funny stories about the person.

Feldman also said that as painful as a loss is, "remember that not all is lost." Try to focus not just on the emptiness of the holiday table, but also on who is still there, he said.

Avi would have been a beloved uncle.

As Avi's nephew grows, I think of how much of a fun uncle Avi would have been to him. He was always good with small children, as was Menachem.

This past Shabbat was the Hebrew anniversary of Avi's bar mitzvah, Mikeitz. Keeping up the tradition in his memory, I layned the entire portion, but not quite as well as Avi had done.

The meaning in a previous post of, "May you live to be 136":
The sum of the traditional blessing of 120 years added to the age that Avi did not make - 16.

The bereavement support group of Connecticut Children's Medical Center last month sent us a notice for their December 3 holiday program, giving parents the opportunity to work together on a photo book featuring their lost children. We couldn't attend, but at least I appreciated the effort. The letter, however, was a trigger...

Last Saturday night was Avi's Hebrew birthday. This Saturday would have been his 17th birthday on the civil calendar.

Knowing myself, Avi and I would most likely have been battling over his secular schoolwork, Judaism, driving privileges, as well as over many of the other demands that teenage boys make. I would rather have endured those battles than not having Avi at all.