Purim falls on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar. About Adar, we say, “When Adar arrives, our joy increases.”

Not this year. Not for me. It’s still a month of sheloshim, the 30 days of mourning for Aunt Sylvia. It’s still a year of mourning for Mom. Most years, Purim falls close to Sylvia’s birthday. And just last Purim, Mom had the surgery that confined her to the hospital for the last five months of her life.

Wonderful learned discourses explain the value of setting aside your sorrow to rejoice. Ms. Chaya Batya Neugroschl says that joyous Jewish holidays invite us to be grateful for spiritual community, whatever our personal situation. Toni Bernard, in her Buddhist book How to Be Sick, explains the value of genuinely being happy for others.

But I am tired. Spiritual community can be demanding. Often I rejoice with and for people who are happy, and grieve with and for people who are sad. In fact, some days I do both, with a committee meeting in between.

Yes, I will fulfill my obligation on Erev Purim to hear Megillat Esther. I will even participate in the Purimschpiel. But then I want to escape the party early and sit quietly with one good friend.

Our escape from the party is an annual ritual. Usually we drink and dance at the synagogue till quite late, and then head out, in costume, to a local restaurant for a final drink. We enjoy confounding people with our costumes. After all, it’s neither Halloween nor New Year’s, so most passersby do a double take until they slowly realize we have been to some kind of costume party.

My weirdest memory is of our outing on Purim 2007. At 2:00 a.m. we find ourselves at the only Main Street establishment still open: a Hong Kong style Chinese restaurant. Full of drink, I am desperate to eat. So I order the closest thing I can find to kosher food: a scrambled egg sandwich. The server brings me a sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off. It is so different from any sandwich I would prepare that I think I may be tripping on a psychedelic drug. Is this a Hong Kong delicacy, I wonder, or what Chinese people think white people eat? Or are they just making fun of a tipsy, costumed me?

My best memory is of our outing on Purim 2010. Coinciding with Vancouver 2010, of course, on the last night of the Winter Olympic Games. At the Olympic curling rink in our neighbourhood, the Canadian men’s curling team had won a gold medal; the Canadian women’s team won a silver. Half the synagogue, including me, dresses as curlers on Purim eve. Some wear wacky colours honouring the Norwegian team’s harlequin golf pants; others wear red in honour of Canada’s teams; all carry some type of broom. I dress Canadian, carrying a kitchen broom and a whistling teakettle that looks a lot like a curling stone, telling people that curling was invented by creative housewives in their kitchens.

At midnight, my friend and I arrive at a restaurant called Locus — Latin for “the place.”

“Are you with the curling team?” the hostess asks.

“No,” I say, “This is a teakettle.”

The hostess shrugs. “I don’t know anything about curling. But the team booked the back of the restaurant and they’re coming here to celebrate.”

We take a table in the front, and order our drinks. Soon a rather drunken man, about our age, wearing a floppy hat and a red Canadian hockey jersey, comes in the front door. He throws his arms jubilantly in our direction and says, “I’m here! You’re here! What else is there?”

Of course we blow him off. We don’t want to be picked up by a drunk; we just want to relax with each other.

Soon it dawns on us that we have blown off the skip (captain) of the world champion curling team. His hat had confused us; from television and the rink, we know him to be bald. Embarrassed, we stop by the back of the restaurant to congratulate the teams on their win.

The next day, Purim vanishes into thin air. It’s overwhelmed by the final Olympic men’s hockey game—for the gold medal—between the US and Canada. Which Canada wins in the last five seconds. Cheers rise in the streets, shouting fills the neighbourhoods. People pour out of their homes, on to the main streets and begin a spontaneous march downtown. We wear red, we carry flags, we give them away, we walk, skate, cycle, board buses. We are a group mind with a single celebratory intention.

In our mind, we have won the Olympics. Thirteen gold medals, more than any other country, with the final gold win in our national sport.

This, I think, is how you are supposed to feel at the end of the Megillah, when your team wins.

That’s why I’m not in the mood for Purim this year. My team has had too many losses.

Images: Photos by Lily Salja, roboppy.net, Charles Kaplan, Dicken Lau.