Oneida Moon: A Yahrzeit
Yahrzeit is the Jewish term for the anniversary of a person's death, observed annually on the Hebrew calendar date. It's a day for remembering and honoring the deceased, often involving lighting a special 24-hour yahrzeit candle and reciting the Mourner's Kaddish.
“You’re still hiding” said Gram, 17 years to the day after she’d died. The last words my grandmother had said to me were, Hide your pain from people who love you, or they’ll resent you. She passed from cancer and complications due to fibromyalgia not long after that. All of which she’d hidden from everyone. But she was wrong. I’d found family and started a company, both based intentionally in not hiding your pain and more embracing healing. I was excited to light her yahrzeit candle and tell her. I’d never lit a remembrance candle for her before. I’d never been ready before. So I was shocked to hear her respond ahead of me. I recited Kadish Yatom and turned all the way into myself to look.
It was sunset where I was, but early morning in her living room. She’d left the door to her small balcony open and the smell of rotted wood and basil grown in a plastic bucket drifted in on the summer breeze. She stood at her easel, working on a painting that had come from me a few weeks before. Oneida Moon was monochromatic blue acrylic on black canvas. Gram had taught me the word monochromatic. The painting depicted Oneida Lake, where my younger sister and I had learned to swim, at nighttime. An off center, lonely and hungry full moon, hung over it. Leyla had died seven years after Gram and in the seven years since, I couldn’t find a way home. The silence of my heart had started to scare me. But when I painted OM, I knew my soul was preparing me a way. Since gram was dead, she didn’t add anything to it. Yet, with a fine detail brush, she went gently and fiercely around the edges of the moon’s anxious aura.
“What do you mean?" I asked, moving around her to a chair while trying to hold my adult shape. It was hard to do so with certain ancestors and this was our first time together in so long. I couldn’t help but slip a little into my younger sprite. “My sweetie” she said, not taking her concentration off the moon. The term of endearment slipped me back to 19, but I shifted hard into 36. I both needed and wanted to be the man I am for this. “You show your pain and healing, but you hide your love.” she said. Suddenly, it didn’t matter what shape I took. All the ages I never wanted to see again and ones I’d never seen before–Every version of me connected in a pearl grasping pause. It became funny, how I'd run to her altar ready to speak, but didn’t have shit to say to that. The longing I’d “gotten used to” but truly don’t know how to embody started to creep up my throat. She was right this time.
Gram worked on the painting for what seemed like hours before it happened. But at some point, I could feel the brush strokes inside my chest. Memories flickered from my top surgery scars and drifted into her brush. Years of people ripping up my art and throwing it in the garbage, transitioned into years of me ripping it up and throwing it out before anyone else could, into years of making nothing. All of them slipped through the bristles and worked their way into the painting. She sculpted them into the moon, which had begun to breathe the impasto into itself. I’d always experienced sensational and intense emotion. She’d always known that and had taught me to show the depth of my love through art. But she hadn’t shown me what people who hated me would do to it. Do to me. And now it occurred to me that maybe she never could have.
“You were so young. I didn’t know how to show you that your own art can provoke you,” she said, as if in response to my thoughts. “Or what to do when it does.” She stopped and stood back, still focused on the moon. She cleaned the fine detail brush of the memory pigment and put it back in a container. “But I think even if I had lived, it would still have been something you had to show yourself.” I stood up beside her and looked at the painting. At my first pass at it, the moon had looked as if it might plunge itself into the lake for fear of its own yearning. Now after hers, while it still felt lonely somehow, it was both brighter and warmer. Steadier in its own need and willing to be witnessed for it. Then without warning, my Gram hugged me. Her crumbling paperback and wet paint scent broke the last bit of gender resolve I had. In her arms, it was ok to be the girl who lost her Gram. In her arms, it was ok to be the man who found both within me again. And it was time to let that be witnessed. I closed my eyes and inhaled as deeply as I could, so grateful that our magic was strong enough to bring me home. When I opened them, tears flowed down my face. I was back in my own room again and the yahrtzeit candle gently whispered out.
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Qamar Yochanan (he/him) CEO of Your Trans Fundraiser is an out and proud Black, transgender, Jewish artist, organizer, and development professional who has raised over half a million dollars in funds directly since 2020. The first thirty thousand was in mutual aid and went to Black trans and Native two spirit/trans artists. He’s since worked on teams cross-functionally to generate revenue from multi-million dollar donor pipelines. In 2024, he was selected as an Association of Fundraising Professionals IDEA Fellow.
Qamar loves being transgender and is passionate about supporting his community. He’s served on the Minneapolis Trans Equity Council and Arts Commission, to which he was appointed by the first two Black Trans officials elected in the US. He was also the MC for the 7th Annual Minneapolis Transgender Equity Summit. Currently, he serves on the board of Trans Lifeline as the Fundraising Chair.
Qamar is an alumus of NYU Tisch and an Audie Award-nominated storyteller (SAG-AFTRA) with 25+ years of experience. You can listen to his work on Audible.
