not saying kaddish

i got an e-mail from a sort-of friend yesterday asking me to come to minyan tonight. i say sort-of because we never see each other socially--we see each other in synagogue and in the store and chat. it was the first anniversary of the death of her father and she was going to talk about him. i figured i could be there. i come in late at the end of mincha in time for the mourners kaddish. ten people stand up. i am struck by the amount of loss in our small community and how much loss there is in every community. i think it stinks that people have to die and then i think if we did not know we were going to die at some point we would never get anything done. my musings have taken me half-way through the evening service.
then it occurs to me it is the anniversary of the death of my grandfather as well. erev erev shavuot is how i always think of it. i was making a cheese knish in my third floor walk-up apartment in lynn, massachusetts on my yellow counter. it was my first shavuot as a working woman and i was playing house to the hilt. i remember holding the stainless steel bowl in one hand and the wooden spoon in the other and the phone was wedged between my shoulder and my ear. and my mother told me the news. i sent my boyfriend david to a travel agent in vinnin square to buy an airplane ticket. and i kept on stirring.
twenty-eight years later, my father and aunt are both gone and no one is there to say kaddish for my grandfather. we have reached the aleinu and soon it will be time for the mourners kaddish. do i stand and say it to honor my grandfather? do i remain seated as a symbol of two generations gone? if we never stopped saying kaddish for someone, if we said kaddish for our grandparents and our great-grandparents and our great-great grandparents, etc., we would be saying kaddish every day. but here i am in a praying community and i am remembering my grandfather and my father who loyally said kaddish for him and i cannot sit. so i stand and do not say the words out loud. it was a compromise that seemed to work.

it's too darn hot

my college-aged daughter is on my case to start writing my blog. but it's too hot. i don't hate many things and i'm pretty sure i don't hate any people, but i do hate hot weather.
the new york times magazine had an interesting article this week (ok, it always has interesting articles) about wisdom and how hard it is to measure. wisdom is one of those things that we can recognize in others, but find hard to define. and if it can't be defined and measured then how can it be studied? and if it can't be studied, can it exist?
and, yet, wisdom is what i seek.
i find glimmers of it all the time. synthesizing in a way that is useful is my challenge.