ELUL 23 · DAY 23 of 29 · SEPTEMBER 3, 2026

Two months after my sister Susie’s funeral, I’m in my mother’s kitchen in Minneapolis. She tells me there’s a dead muskrat in the pond.

“What should I do?” she asks.

I walk down alone. The light is thin and gray, and the algae has thickened into a carpet. Nothing moves. Under a sweeping elm I find it, face down in the shallow water—a huge, smooth-backed, oddly polished thing, already dissolving into the pond’s green membrane.

Normally I’d call a professional—gloves, trucks, disinfectant. Nothing about this is normal. My mother stands, watching at the picture window. She doesn’t wave, doesn’t move.

What’s the difference between me and the men you’d call for this? Maybe it’s her sadness, her peering through the glass. Maybe it’s the shivah. Maybe it’s just having been in Israel, where a man doesn’t hand off the ugly, physical part of grief. Whatever it is, something in me hardens and clarifies.

I go to the garage and grab a hoe and a snow shovel. Both are heavier than I remember. I don’t hesitate at the pond. The hoe bites into the muskrat’s rib cage with a dull, sucking give. I lift the mess into a plastic garbage bag. The weight surprises. The stench does not.

Twisting shut the drawstring; I’m struck by how free of sin I feel. Not righteous. Not proud. Just clean in a way I haven’t felt in weeks.

I look up. My mother. Still standing in the living room, still watching me from behind the picture window.