“When a person dies, he or she is mourned by someone they loved in life, and every time that mourner recites the yizkor prayer, the mourner is holding on to the end of a rope. This rope stretches all the way to heaven, where, the comforting presence of God grips the other end tightly. Sometimes, our loss overwhelms us, and we drop our end of the rope. Sometimes, in our sorrow or panic, we grab onto it more tightly. But God never lets go of the end of the rope in heaven.”

— Rabbi Pamela Gottfried on the Yom Kippur tradition of reciting yizkor, the remembrance prayer for the dead