May their inspiration be a blessing

There is a Jewish phrase I've always admired and that I have been happy to see edge into popular parlance in recent years. Maybe you've heard it:

• "May their memory be a blessing."

This is typically said between mourners, in what might be the worst moment of a family's history. The lost person may have been among the living only a few days before. Wisps of their hair are still in the nightstand brush. An impression of their final do-list is still on the Sticky pad. The specific musicality of their laugh is still there in the immediate recall chamber of our consciousness. They were with us, so recently and vividly, and now the scatterings they made, around themselves and of themselves, take on the horrific beauty of legacy.

There is the initial severence, and then - no kinder - the garish brute machinery of "carrying on". Breathing must still be done. Food masticated. Children readied for school. Everybody knows this. To continue is a synonym of to exist.

But there may be no greater cruelty than the continuation after loss. We can admit the cruelty and the necessity both at once. As the days pass, we are inexorably pulled downstream of the immediacy of our lost person. That hairbrush must be put away somewhere. The calls about their uncollected photo prints or their bicycle advertisement eventually stop coming. The specific musicality of their laugh becomes impressionistic, except in our dreams, where it is exactly right but arbitrarily granted and taken away again with the morning light.

This is where the Jewish phrase I have mentioned has its power for me. First, it is not a present-tense declaration: "Their memory is a blessing" is not what it said. "May it be" is a wish, whose soft future tense provides a space for the mourner to grow toward and into the feeling. The phrase implicitly acknowledges that memory may not be a blessing at first. On the contrary, it may be tortuous.

But even as the phrase recognizes the cruelty of memory initially, it calls for an overarching transformation. It is not remembering their laugh precisely that's important. It is prompting a laugh from a sulky child with the swamp monster of a warm oven mitt - and making that choice, instead of losing our temper, because we know that's what they, our lost person, would have done or wanted. They remain here in high-definition so long as we remain informed and guided by them from minute to minute in our own lives.

I have family, biological and chosen, in multiple countries. While I am gutted whenever I part from them, they do not cease to exist for me in the months that might pass before I see them again. On the contrary, they remain with me in all their colors as I navigate the world by their example and expectations. They live in my best choices, my kindnesses, my joy, when I lean toward those things in their honor. Just as a faraway person can still breathe in my cells like that, so can a person who has passed beyond human reach. Every time I turn toward good with a sense of them as the pivotal influence, they are present.

As I prepare to run the California International Marathon 2025 in memory of Captain Rebecca Marie Lobach, I'd like to enlarge that cherished Jewish phrase ever so slightly. Here is my proposed adjustment:

• "May their inspiration be a blessing."

Let me explain.

To witness what I never knew

I never met Rebecca. I was born thousands of miles from her, in a different country, in a different decade. I am not a soldier, and I can't pretend I'd be a good one. While I do not lack courage or discipline, that is only so long as I have a pen in my hand and a story in my head. Soldiers cannot only be courageous behind their typewriters. What is demanded of them is decidedly more immediate and all-terrain.

Having served her country since graduating college, Rebecca intended to become a doctor as her second career, and in March 2025 was awarded an honorary acceptance to the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, where she had applied shortly before her death. A warrior turned medic - a wonderful capture of Rebecca's kaleidoscopic abilities. Although, peel back the obvious differences between the two professions and you see the same commitment: to keeping her fellow humans here and safe.

If ever we had met, I might have told Rebecca that I was once on the track to medical school myself. That is, until the self-denial with which I was charging at a future in science finally became unsustainable. I'm a writer. I had an aching precognizance of it then, and it is fact now. I would have failed or only superficially succeeded in the pursuit of anything else, because only as your true self can you endure innumerable challenges. I feel that Rebecca would have understood this.

I never met Rebecca and, tragically, my opportunity to do so has now passed. And yet I feel, from the writings of her family, and from the tributes to her discoverable online, that it remains wholly possible to witness her. Rebecca's accomplishments shine inalienably, whether contemplated with personal knowledge of her or without.

To return to my favorite Jewish phrase, I have no memory of Rebecca to carry forward. But what was formidable about her is as available to me as it is to anyone else, to carry forward as inspiration.

May the inspiration of her be a blessing.

Daily and exceptionally a patriot

Rebecca perished in a wrenching aviation disaster that overturned our glib assumptions about order in the American skies. Some commentators, online and elsewhere, have seized on the tragedy to parade their Medieval views about women. They falsely characterize Rebecca's role or final choices in the cockpit, apparently determined to fashion the frontline female victim of this multi-faceted disaster into a punchbag for it. They do this with zero support from the documented facts or from aviation disaster science in general.

I have no interest in people who spend their time in this way. If there is a perfect contrast to heroism, it is them.

But here is what I will say about Rebecca.

Rebecca stepped up and put her own life on the line to defend every American. She did this every day. She did this with the deep respect and loyalty of her colleagues. She did this exceptionally.

My admiration for the woman Rebecca was, the American she was, and the human she was, is unshakeable.

Along rolling hills for Headstrong

On December 7th 2025 I'll be running 26.2 miles along the rolling hills of Sacramento in tribute to Captain Rebecca Marie Lobach. To celebrate Rebecca's memory, I invite you to donate to The Headstrong Project, a non-profit Rebecca herself championed and about which you can read here.

I could not be prouder to represent Rebecca, even for just a few hours, and to add another medal vicariously to her pile.

– Zoe Marie Bel, writer (and runner)