Happy Freaking New Year

I obviously failed spectacularly at preparing for the High Holidays and 5782 has started off less than ideal.

The last few weeks have been stressful and the not-great news has been piling on. Last night, as I was preparing to leave for Rosh Hashanah services, my mom began having chest pain and shortness of breath. Erring on the side of caution, we went to the emergency room. For some reason, both of us thought it would be a quick visit, but, of course, it was not. As a result, instead of attending services, I spent several hours with her in the emergency room, thanks to a very kind nurse who somehow got permission for me to accompany my mom despite the strict covid protocols. My emotions were all over the place, from annoyance at my plans falling through to fear about my mom’s health to incredible sadness at not being at Temple and with community to exhaustion from everything that’s been going on these past several weeks. It was not how I had wanted to start the new year.

My mom was discharged this afternoon and is now back home. I had planned on attending tashlich at White Rock Lake tonight, but after my mom’s unexpected hospital visit and a call from my doctor with some distressing news about my own health, I decided against it. I’m just not up to putting up a facade right now and any sense of humor I may have had left about the universe’s apparent new hobby of throwing curveball after curveball at me and my mom is long gone.

This is the part where I would write something about my hopes for the new year, but I’m too tired emotionally to even think about that. Besides, with all that’s happened in the last nine months, I just don’t want to get my hopes up.

I hope your new year started off better than mine. Shanah tovah.