Thinking About Diabetes and Guilt on Yom Kippur

How often has diabetes made you feel guilty?  It happens to me all of the time.  I feel guilty when I don’t check my blood sugar.  I feel guilty when I eat something like the amazing fudge brownies (Mrs. Fields recipe) that are in my refrigerator right now.  I feel guilty when I don’t exercise (which happens way too often).

*I should note here that guilt comes very naturally to me and even accidentally stepping on an ant makes me feel bad. 

So, being the sort of person who blames herself for everything, on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, you’d think I’d be racing to synagogue to ask God for forgiveness.  But I’m not religious, so instead of going to pray and ask for forgiveness, I’m just going to stay home and feel guilty about not going to synagogue and asking for forgiveness.

Yom Kippur and feeling guilt have always gone hand-in-hand for me.  Growing up in Houston, I went to synagogue every Yom Kippur with my family, including my great-grandfather and my grandmother, Bashy.  Bashy was obsessed with feeding me and my brother, so nothing worried her more than the thought of a full day in synagogue and no food in sight.  To be sure we wouldn’t starve, Bashy packed the trunk of her car with homemade baked goods. 

Shortly after the services began, Bashy, who was always dressed in colorful, silk outfits and medium-heeled shoes, would sneak us out.  She was anything but subtle, which made the whole sneaking thing especially ridiculous.  She’d lead us down the long hallway to the exit near the parking lot, straight into the 95 degree Texas sun.  “You need to eat!” she’d declare, although barely two hours had passed since we’d had breakfast.  Then she’d unlock the trunk of her car and pull out strudel that was triple wrapped in aluminum foil.  If you think Bashy’s strudel was tasty, you’re wrong.  When cooking and baking, Bashy was more interested in speed than accuracy.  And she wasn’t big on mixing ingredients.  Things just sort of came together in a bowl to form a dough, some jam was smeared onto the dough, and then it was baked until rock-hard.

Year after year my brother and I obeyed Bashy and followed her outside where she took chunks of strudel from the boiling trunk of her car.  The jam dripped everywhere, oozing from the heat, and staining our synagogue clothes.  Eating on Yom Kippur, even for kids, seemed wrong, especially on synagogue grounds.  But Bashy’s law was more powerful than God’s.  We understood this well, so we didn’t object when Bashy told us to eat.  We understood that in her mind, she was saving us.  

But we also knew Bashy felt shame in what she was doing because when it came time to eat, she told us to sit in the roasting car so no one would see us.  Her line was that we had to hide because if other kids saw her strudel, they would want some, and then we wouldn’t have enough.  It was an obvious lie.  No one wanted her strudel and anyway, she had enough in the trunk to feed the entire congregation.  Still, we did as Bashy ordered.  We downed our gravelly strudel with sweat on our brows and shame in our hearts.  But we had reason to be grateful, too- at least she wasn’t pulling tuna sandwiches out of the trunk.

Today I also have reason to be grateful.  Yom Kippur is the one day of the year when diabetes gives me an advantage.  Diabetes makes me exempt from fasting.  I can eat tomorrow without guilt, as long as I stay away from the brownies.

Jessica Apple

Jessica Apple grew up in Houston. She studied Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, and completed an MA in the same field at the Hebrew University. She began to write and publish short stories while a student, and has continued to write essays and fiction while raising her three sons (and many pets).

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Jessica Apple

Jessica Apple grew up in Houston. She studied Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, and completed an MA in the same field at the Hebrew University. She began to write and publish short stories while a student, and continues to write essays and fiction while raising her three sons (and many pets). Jessica’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Financial Times Magazine, The Southern Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, Tablet Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the diabetes correspondent for The Faster Times. In 2009 she and her husband, both type 1 diabetics, founded A Sweet Life, where she serves as editor-in-chief. Jessica loves spending time with her sons, cooking with her husband, playing with her cats, reading, biking, drinking coffee, and whenever possible, taking a nap. Follow Jessica on Twitter (@jessapple)