In her poem “Apachetas” (Fall 2011 Intima), Lynn Lawrence’s narrator fulfills a loved one’s desire: to be remembered on the anniversary of her death in the Jewish tradition of yahrzeit. Although the narrator never reveals the loved one’s sex or the relationship’s nature, I read “she” and “mother,” hungry to identify.

My nonfiction essay “Grounded” (Fall 2020 Intima) reflects on the day I tried on my first pair of high heels, coinciding with the day my mother slipped out of hers—permanently. Havoc, wreaked by multiple sclerosis, had impaired her balance and denied her freedom of expression. No longer would she feel “wild,” as she put it while fashioning herself in the feminine ideal of her era. I imagined a fire ritual to ease her loss.

Despite my vivid recollection of that event, I never gave much thought to Mum’s death date, January 2, 1968, a leap year. I never forgot being 18 and away at college, or the phone booth with boys’ numbers jotted on the wall where I took Dad’s call. I can still hear his voice disintegrate from the carbide metal he engineered back to powder.

“She’s gone, babe. I’m coming for you.”

I let Mum’s death anniversary lay dormant in my memory for decades, let the occasion pass by without recognition. When my husband announced his parents’ death anniversaries and the age-they-would-have-been, I cringed. Morbid, I thought, and senseless. Why intentionally unleash pain?

I question my judgment now that I understand yahrzeit celebrates life. Pays tribute to how days once spent together fed the soul, and perhaps, the belly too.

In Lawrence’s poem, “a heady confection of chocolate decadence” rises as the narrator and her loved one create a six-layer Hungarian Drum cake. “Both of our hands needing the others / Kneading and folding.”
These women stir up images of Mum and me: We munch on warm chocolate chip cookies from her first batch, lick Pillsbury Brownie batter from our fingers, and at last, bite into the chewy smear of melted miniature marshmallow and chocolate chip she melts on top.

Though different cultures and different pastries, the narrator and I both bake in our memories. We share the human desire to displace grief and make our sweetest moments last.

I will follow these trails marked with cairns by other wayfarers to lead me home.

Deborah Burghardt writes creative nonfiction after directing Women and Gender Studies at Clarion University. "Spared" was anthologized in Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine. Her essays have appeared online at Globejotting.com and in literary journals, including The Sun, The Watershed Journal and The Bridge Literary Arts Journal. She lives in Fort Myers, Florida, and enjoys summers and autumns in Clarion, Pennsylvania. Her essay “Grounded” appears in the Fall 2020 Intima.