Threnody (n): a song, poem, or musical piece composed as a formal lamentation or memorial for the dead

I bought the bracelet not long after we lost our last embryo on March 10, 2025. With that embryo, we also lost our last chance to become biological parents to a second child. I was still carrying the weight of the two pregnancies we lost before our miracle Ella, as well as the two losses that followed her. Even as I delighted in Ella every day, I grieved for the future I envisioned for us as a family of four. At the same time, my parents were preparing for their move to Florida. Realizing they are aging, I grieved anew that it took us so long to have a child and that we live too far away for frequent visits. I grieved for the time we lost and the time we won’t have. I grieved the end of my childhood, young adulthood, and the vision I’d had for my future. 

I had trouble speaking about this litany of grief because I also have so much to be grateful for. I know that grief does not undermine gratitude – it actually expands our capacity for it.  But it was still hard for me to name this weight, padlocks dangling heavy on the gates of my heart. 

If anyone else had come to me with this problem, I would have designed a ritual for them, some way to externalize the feeling, acknowledge and validate it. I would have invited them into ritual to honor the memory of what had been lost, and to support their steps into the future. But as our sages taught, in a famous Talmud passage, “A prisoner cannot free themself from prison.” In the story, Rabbi Yohanan, who had the power to heal others from sickness, could not heal himself. He needed a friend to help, and so did I (Talmud Bavli, Brachot 5). It was Reb Irwin who suggested a bracelet made of biodegradable materials. Something that I could keep for a year and then bury. I’d made similar suggestions to others coping with miscarriages – carry a rock for a week, a month, or as long as you carried the pregnancy, and then bury it. In the absence of a body, a casket, or a funeral, it’s helpful to hold a physical item, return it to the earth, and say goodbye. The loss of this embryo seemed to carry all the previous losses inside of it, a set of faceless Russian nesting dolls. With all of those layers, it felt like a year was the right amount of time to carry the bracelet. 

The bracelet I selected was made of turquoise acai seeds and black cotton thread. When it arrived, I counted 22 beads. One for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In Jewish tradition, 22 is a number that represents creation and completion. The mystics teach that these letters were the building blocks of the universe. In Bereishit, God created 22 things within the six days of creation, and rested when the work was complete. And in gematria, Hebrew numerology, the number 22 = יחד yachad, which means “together.” 

Despite my intent to wear it daily (and the mystical meaning I was rapidly assigning to acai seeds on a string), the bracelet itself was not the sturdiest. The woven structure fell apart within two weeks. I bought a second one. After all, if I wanted this item to stay with me for the duration of a year, I needed something durable, something that could hold itself together. The second one fell apart as quickly as the first, and I found myself asking my friend Bekah to help me stitch the beads back in line at ALEPH’s Kallah over the summer. Bekah is a Kohenet, artist and ritual guide; I told her why the bracelet was important to me, and asked for suggestions. How could I keep it from falling apart? 

I spent a lot of time rethreading the beads in the art room during breaks at Kallah. I tied and retied them, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the beads to line up as they had before. Bekah noticed, and she reflected my behavior back to me – my singular focus on stringing the beads in a specific way. And I realized that for years, I had been trying to build my life the same way. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t control the future. I can pick the colors, string the beads, line everything up, create something beautiful – but sometimes, the thread breaks, the colors fade, the last embryo fails to attach. Sometimes, I am left with something less than what I’d envisioned, and more beautiful in its authenticity. I am left with the life I have, and the best thing I can do is wrap it around my wrist, and wear it with love. 

I kept both of the broken bracelets, carried them through my own wilderness, like the broken Tablets of the Covenant the Israelites carried, along with the whole ones, in their traveling sanctuary (Talmud Bavli, Bava Batra 14b). I kept one bracelet within my eyesight in my office, and kept the other in my backpack or purse. These artifacts of my grief made the losses visible, even if they were only visible to me. 

This past Tuesday was March 10, 2026. One year had passed since the day we learned about our last embryo. It was time for burial. Since I had two bracelets, I decided to keep one as a reminder of what I learned in the art room at Kallah. I brought the other out to the yard behind the house we’ve been renting in Urbana for the last four years. I moved into this house mid-miscarriage, and it’s the house we brought Ella home to when she was born. It’s the last home we ever shared with Gulliver. 

It was a beautiful spring day. Ella was wearing her favorite sweatshirt, the one my mom made for her with a dog embroidered on the front. We didn’t have a gardening trowel, but the earth was soft enough that we could dig a small hole with a snow shovel and soup ladle. “Today we are outside in the yard!” Ella chattered, telling us about the trees, the grass, and the wildflowers. She was excited to help us dig, “like a doggie!” I didn’t feel the need to say a blessing of any kind, or to name out loud what we were doing and why. It was beautiful to just be yachad – together – returning these 22 seeds to the earth. Ella asked if we could eat dinner outside afterward, so we sat together on the porch, enjoying the evening. 

One year after a traditional burial, Jews do an unveiling ceremony. The headstone is covered until that time, and at a ceremony around the one year anniversary, the veil is lifted. This was a different kind of loss, and I was burying, not unveiling. But something lifted for me that night as we sat on the porch together after burying the bracelet. For a few moments, there were no veils separating the life I am living from the life I had envisioned. I tied my daughter’s laughter with string, wrapped it twice around my heart, and I knew, in that moment, that we are everything we need.