Anniversary of My Mother's Death

   My parents died two years ago, four days apart. On the first day of June, it was two years since my father's death. My mother followed him, four days later. She said, even as he lay dying next to her in his bed in their shared hospice room, that she heard him calling to her.
  To all appearances, he could not call anyone, and, being totally deaf and almost wholly oblivious in her dementia, she could not have perceived any such literal call, but all the same, I am sure it was true,
and that he guided her away from the wreck of her body to whatever was to follow.
  I could not be sorry that she had left because I knew she didn't prefer to delay any longer her leavetaking. But all the same, of course, I was overwhelmed by the loss, not the least because of these mixed feelings.
  Today I honor her memory, though I will wait to formalize that till Friday when the synagogue will mark their yartzeit, the anniversary of their deaths, according to the Hebrew calendar.