Living Because of You
Reflections on loss, inheritance, and choosing light
It’s been a few years since I spilled some ink on this sacred day, the yahrzeit of my parents, Zev and Rochel Simons OBM.
For a long time, my parents lived somewhere between memory and distance, out of sight and out of mind. Life moved forward, responsibilities grew, and without meaning to, I kept them at arm’s length. That changed a few years ago when I was gifted these paintings from a family friend, Robert Kremnizer.
Now, most Shabbat mornings, while the house is still quiet and everyone is still sleeping, I sit here on this couch and let them back into my life.
These paintings don’t just hang on the wall.
They sit with me.
They remind me where I come from and how much is still alive.
So this year, on your yahrzeit, I decided to write you a letter for the first time since you passed.
Eighteen years of living without you,
and eighteen years of living because of you.
I lost you, but everything meaningful I’ve built has been rooted in what you gave me.
Tonight, I feel gratitude and love more than ache.
A grief wrapped in family.
The kind that no longer overwhelms,
but reminds me how deeply we are bound.
This past Shabbat, we gathered as we do every year in your honor.
Ten siblings.
Nine spouses.
Fifty-one of the next generation, including three great-grandchildren.
Seventy of us, all together under one roof.
We sang.
We danced.
We laughed.
The kind of joy you can’t buy, plan, or manufacture.
Only inherit.
What we inherited from you was not ease.
It was a commitment to living.
To a life of service.
To a deep loyalty to family and to one another, guided by the light of Torah and Chassidus through the eyes of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
You taught us something simple and demanding.
The world contains darkness, and we don’t get to choose that.
But we do get to choose who we are in response.
There are victims, and there are people who choose light.
That doesn’t mean it’s fair.
It doesn’t mean it isn’t painful or incredibly hard.
This isn’t optimism.
It’s a decision.
I felt that decision this Shabbat.
A joy shaped over eighteen years of refusing to let loss, distance, or hardship come between us.
I received many kind messages wishing me comfort “during this difficult time.”
And I noticed something had shifted.
I no longer experience this time as difficult.
It has become a deeply connecting family time.
Thank You, Hashem.
Not because there is no loss,
but because love has grown larger than absence.
When Jacob went down to Egypt and reunited with Joseph after years of separation, the Torah tells us they were seventy souls.
Seventy then.
Seventy now.
That number doesn’t feel like coincidence.
It feels continuous.
Even after betrayal, famine, exile, and heartbreak, a family can still arrive whole.
Our hardships shaped us.
They did not shrink us.
They refined us.
You showed us how to hold pain without letting it harden us.
How to keep shining light by building, singing, dancing, and loving,
even when the story did not unfold the way we imagined.
And now I watch my own children.
You live on not only in memory, but in your grandchildren.
I see your love of learning and teaching in their curiosity and the questions they ask.
I see your kindness in how they care for one another.
Your thoughtfulness in how they show up to friendship.
Your humility in how they offer gratitude.
Your values in their loyalty to family and their capacity for joy.
I am not the same person I was when you left.
If you met me this year, you would notice that I listen more.
That I pause more.
That I am less interested in proving
and more committed to becoming.
Losing you taught me early that nothing is guaranteed.
And it forced me to choose how to live.
Tonight, eighteen years later, I choose to honor you
by staying present when I want to numb,
by leading without losing myself,
by loving my children without letting fear write the story,
by living a life that feels aligned and awake.
You are not behind me.
You live within the way I choose to live.