Bitter

Sunday 9 April 2023

Pesach (Passover) is the festival of freedom, the time when we remember the foundational story of hope that was the Children of Israel being freed from slavery in Ancient Egypt.

Strangely, we are told to experience the retelling as if we personally had left Egypt or even as if we are still leaving our own Egypt. We recount the story of the Exodus and we talk about others telling the story but we also imply that we are not yet free and that only next year in Jerusalem will the story and our freedom be complete.

I think that provides a message that although there is maror (bitterness) in all of our lives, we can work towards a future with hope where we overcome our maror or at least learn how to balance it with joyous times.

After six years, it's still so hard not having Shani with us, not seeing her smile and laughter lighting up the room, her determination inspiring us all.

It's around now that we would have been celebrating her Bat Mitzvah, surrounded by her friends and ours, watching her dancing, singing and having the time of her life, stubbornly refusing to slow down, until it all got a bit much for her and she had to stop in happiness and exhaustion.

Instead we had our wonderful family with us for an afternoon of chatting, stories, lighting candles, and painting stones in Shani's memory, decorating them with rainbows, hearts, sky, sea, piers and beach huts, in Mum's words 'united in transforming pebbles into works of art by imagination and love, to rest with Shani, memories layered between stones'.

With the message of hope from Pesach, we can reclaim joy by painting on a Sunday afternoon, storytelling and singing on seder night, and enjoying future celebrations with family and friends, remembering Shani and living life alongside that memory.