Eight years is a long time. Eight doesn’t seem like a special number at first, unless you’re Chinese, and then, I’m told, it’s extremely lucky. But even in Judaism, eight is a special number: it means one more than nature, as we see in connection with bris milah and the eight-day miracle of Chanukah. It’s also my shoe size, if you don’t count the half. When it comes to a yahrzeit, eight feels like the first "big" number, the first time you can't honestly say "it's only been a few years..." Today, we sat basically at the same bus stop where we sat across from the Merkazit (central station) in Yerushalayim eight years ago. Today, we were minus two kids in one way, but minus four kids in another, because the two who were babies then have magically been replaced by two who are quite a bit older and smarter (and GZ can walk now, which is a plus). Today, we didn’t do anything we haven’t done before: