The morning of my mom's memorial, November 29, 2025

Here’s something I wrote the morning of the memorial for my mother, Judith Fried (10-15-26—7-25-25). In bold is what I read (along with a brief history of her early life). “All below” refers to 10 pages of logistical notes and lists accumulated in the weeks before. 

All below is the business of this, business of which is mine – ours, but organized by me, by my own choosing. But here now at my dining room table (and there, by hers) I won’t share – that’s not what I’ve set for myself to do – what it was like for me; where I began, where she ended; the metaphor of emotion, metaphors of emotions. Name them! The names we know, names I know. Let’s be distracted by those daily bothers, the hidden pushes, the personality, the history, the Wheel; and then return to the subject at hand: I await the moment when I rend the garment of personality in proper mourning. In the meantime, feel the weight, the loss – when sad is not hidden anger, just sad, because – and here’s what I’ve long thought I’d say at some memorial, and may yet do, though not for my parents, that chance comes and goes in a few hours, as our second such transpires: this is how we are made: to be inextricably bound; to come from; to belong to, and with, and for; to have heart and soul and all those oceanic metaphors always tied to another, to others; so when we are left alone, we are not alone, and when we are not alone, we are left alone; so when we reach, sometimes we touch.