Behold Your Days Are Numbered

Anticipatory GriefCan one say kaddish in advance?After all,  yitagadal veyitkadash is in the imperfect tenseOr the jussive?May His name be magnified, sanctified!Each time I leave JerusalemThe apartment, My father,I hug his slender frameHis bones more and more prominentWondering if this is the last time I feel himHis warmthHis statureHis upright posture.He too saw his father on that Viennese platform in 1938Not knowing he would never see him again.Now I replay this scene every time I leave Jerusalem.An epigenetic wound I carryA return to the primal scene of traumaPlayed out in the next generation.The pain is unbearableThe not-knowing insaneThe slow decline observable nowA loss each visit of this or that.This time a new unsteadiness on his feetAn ataxia of the soul readying for its dizzying flight to come.He proudly shows me his new hobbyHaving watched Mum, paint for years he has now taken up the art.And drawing horse after horse in varying posesHis love of equus always expressed in my childhoodFrom dressage to that disturbing play in the West EndA psychic drama unfolding in the psychiatrist’s officeOf a young boy who violently enucleated a horse.With a heart as heavy as a stone mountainI take my leaveIn the unknowing that characterizes my life more and moreAs uncertainty bathes me like a dark shadowIn so many areas of my lifeThe only certainty is our mortalityAnd the slow dying of the leavesIn the chill of autumn.