
I am writing this after having officiated at another close friend’s funeral. This was a man, at times larger than life, whomm I met 50 years ago. Over those years we shared a lot of work, fun, some adventures, some disagreements and some quiet personal moments. He was ill these last few years, had dealt with a series of personal losses and had become somewhat frail. Yet, his death, sudden, marked the end of an era. It also triggered strange and strong emotions, not unknown to many of our generation. Time, it seems, has lost meaning. Just this morning, the wife of my closest friend called to chat about life, politics and “stuff”. We somehow got on the subject of her husband’s death, as she was commenting on the fact that she was thinking of him a lot lately. She then reminded me of the number of years that had passed since his death. Time had telescoped in my mind. That seems to be happening a lot lately.
I have no answer for all of this. It is a mystery to me. In these last 5 years, too many close friends have died. In quieter moments, I find myself trying to “make sense” out of it, trying to understand it and trying, not well I may add, to not have it impact my own sense of mortality. I have never been more aware of time passing and the fact that in no way can one ever count on the future. It unfolds as it wishes and, in many ways, we are along for the ride. And the ride is getting shorter.
Looking back, somehow, it was easier to counsel the bereaved when I was a little younger rabbi. Now, it gets a little more personal. I find myself also trying to find some sense of meaning through traditional texts. Not the funeral texts, but other sacred texts, often Torah. I keep coming back now to the interpretations of Deuteronomy 29 in which the word for “the day” (“ha yom”) is repeated and the commentators who speak of this repetition as a symbol of living in the day, in the moment. These were commentators who lived way before the Mindfullness meditation craze. They just saw that it was folly to try and change what was, impossible to know what the future will be, and that the only thing we could have any sense of control over was the now. I guess the tradition’s call to live each day as if it were our last, to celebrate the gift of life and to see blessings in the every day; is a message that seems to be more meaningful with every passing year and especially, with every passing friend.
Shalom,
Rabbi Richard F Address
I have found a lot of comfort in Erica Brown’s book, Happier Endings. Perhaps you will too.
Would that we could remember to cherish the days we have .
Too often everyday things make us forgetful and time flees .
Thank you for this column.
It helps me to focus.
I am a Muslim, and will leave that aside to address what I think we as older people are going through. My father, when his brothers started passing away thought of them often and mentioned there was no one left who remembered what his childhood was like, so he had no one to share his memories with. He was lonely although he was comfort able and well loved. I find now that as a senior, I feel that just as keenly and specially. This has been as rebated by the loss of a cousin this year who had been a large part of my childhood. I still have the loneliness this brings.