So much missing at the holiday table now

My Grandmom Goldberg's Rosh Hashanah matzo balls were virtually inedible. Huge, dense and heavy, they sank into the chicken soup, challenging us to figure out ingenious ways of disposing of them. We grandchildren found our methods. Never mind what they were.

As Gertrude Goldberg wore down, as she inevitably did after years of running a mom-and-pop fruit store with my sweet, silent grandfather Joseph, her daughter - my mother - took over the Jewish New Year/Rosh Hashanah holiday meal. And the matzo-ball situation improved dramatically.

Plump, and just soft enough to crumble into flecks of doughy delight with only the slightest pressure of a spoon, my mother's matzo balls became the highlight of the holidays. I can remember sneaking downstairs to eat them cold and "straight" - no soup involved - for breakfast.

There was always chaos in the kitchen during those years when the post-synagogue Rosh Hashanah meal was my mother's province. Chickens roasted and holiday puddings simmered, and while she grumbled about all the work involved, we all knew Mom adored the fuss and tumult.

In young adulthood, I had a fleeting notion about doing Rosh Hashanah. My parents were getting older and my husband and I had a home of our own, and three little daughters who gave my parents endless delight. "No, let it be," I told myself. And I never made the offer in that era.

But as the seasons came and went, time played its tricks. My father was suddenly gone, my widowed mother sadly but bravely moved to a Center City apartment with a postage-stamp dining room, and the holiday dinner was transplanted to our home in the suburbs. Mom still made the matzo balls, and arrived carrying endless jars and tubs of them.

Making those matzo balls seemed balm for her - the sense of loss was somehow mitigated as long as she could present the crowning achievement of her golden hands. I'd do the brisket and puddings, my sister would bring the cake, and Mom would make the matzo balls.

Each fall, it seemed, the circle grew. Suddenly, there were young men at our holiday table who morphed from boyfriends to fiances to our daughters' husbands. Mom needed larger vessels in which to carry her matzo balls. We needed more leaves in the old dining room table.

And then one year, there was a high chair jammed in among us as our first grandchild bulldozed her way into the center of our universe. Hannah lost her primacy when six more joined us.

And Mom just kept adding more and more matzo balls to her armamentarium.

Foolishly, we assumed it would all just go on and on. Like most families, ours was resistant to the notion of change, and renunciation. We wanted to believe that our matriarch, still vital and beautiful in her 90s, would continue to be at the head of the table beaming at all of us - especially her great-grandchildren - as we literally applauded her matzo balls.

But one summer three years ago, the script changed. Mom's robust good health was compromised by one assault after another. There was a horrible year, punctuated by doctor visits, hospitalizations, and grim words like malignancy and metastases.

There would be one more Rosh Hashanah. And yes, more matzo balls. We made sure to deliver the ingredients to Mom's apartment. My sister and I stood by as she mixed and seasoned and simmered. We saw to it that she took breaks.

That Rosh Hashanah the applause rang out louder than ever, even as some of us blinked back tears. She knew - we knew - that this was to be her last Rosh Hashanah. She died three months later, on the first day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

As we huddled in her bedroom, by then transformed into a dispensary, and lit the first holiday candle, our matriarch's own light was extinguished.

I was sure that last September, the first Jewish New Year without Mom, would be the hardest. But the anesthesia of mourning was still there, and we got through it.

This year, as I bake and chop, saute and stir, I often find myself weeping. In the most primitive sense, I weep for being nobody's child. My mother and father are gone.

I weep for what once was, and will never be again.

I find this second year more painful. The reality has set in. Grief, the most unpredictable of emotions, has got me this time.

And there is one small, lingering regret among the mighty ones that cries out, "Too late now!"

I never did get the recipe for Mom's amazing matzo balls.