A Eulogy for Mom
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| November 11, 1972 |
Thank you, Cantor Wallach. Thank you, everyone, for coming this morning. Some of you I haven’t seen in many, many years. Thank you all for coming.
A special thank you to Rose and Fayona, nurses who helped take care of my mom in her final weeks.
I just have a few notes, I’m not going to take very long, I didn’t formally write anything but I sent myself a few notes that I’d try to say in a few minutes and that I thought might be worth hearing.
I’m going to start with a brief story from something my mom and I experienced a few years back. I was back here 1990, it happened to be Tisha B’Av, which is, to those who are familiar, it’s one of two Jewish fast days on the calendar, the other, of course, being Yom Kippur. For whatever reason, I was here on a break from my job in California that day. My mom wanted to go to Kings to get some groceries for later on. It’s not one of those non-work days so you can do that, except of course Kings was sampling cookies, so there went my fast. I just took the David’s cookie and then had an “oops” moment.
But after that I said, well, “I’ll go with you to Kings, but you know, then I’d kind of like to go to the Mincha service over at CBI,” which started at 4 o’clock. And we walked in there, and they were in the Junior Congregation. That room still exists? They renovated that, didn’t they? Anyway, they were in the Junior Congregation room. We walked in, and in the first seat there — there were maybe 15 or 20 people - the first seat was Rabbi Gruenewald. Some of you, I think a couple of you in this room remember Rabbi Gruenewald. And you know, it was not long before he passed away.
That Tisha B’Av service is kind of one of the weirder services in the Jewish calendar. It’s an afternoon service, but you put tefillin on, and they have some interesting readings. So it got to a point, and Rabbi Gruenewald said, “I didn’t prepare anything, but I’m going to say a few words.” And then, off the cuff, in about 4 or 5 minutes, gave, for my mom and myself and others, the best sermon I’ve ever heard.
Why it makes sense now is, you know, Tisha B’Av is a really dark day on the Jewish calendar. You read Lamentations, which is an incredibly dark book. What Rabbi Gruenewald chose to do is, he focused on two words in the book of Aicha, which are in chapter 3. The two words, well, one word, really, if you count the hyphen, the word is “al-ken,” (עַל־כֵּ֥ן) and therefore.” It’s followed by “Ochil,” (אוֹחִֽיל) “al-ken ochil,” which is “and therefore, I have hope.”
It’s all these dark things, and the narrator saying, “I remember better times, and therefore I have hope.” And then you have about half a dozen verses after that which are insanely hopeful before it goes back in to unrelenting darkness. And that’s what Gruenewald did. His last few years of life, his last few months of life, I think he died about 5 months later. That’s what he chose to highlight that day.
So I was glad to be there for that. I was glad my mom was there for that.
That sort of resonates with me a little bit now. Tisha B’Av is sort of a national day of mourning. This, today, is a personal day of mourning. But the theme kind of remains the same. I’m not half or a tenth of the speaker that Rabbi Gruenewald was, so I’m not going to make it in philosophical tone like only he could, but I wanted to get that point across.
As for my mother, transitioning over to that. She was, maybe, the most unassuming, unaffected person I knew. Our neighbor came over last night and told us one story, you can hear it at the house later, because I wasn’t there for that one, which is… which was particularly wild.
I just have a couple of vignettes. One from myself, and one from later on.
I went to nursery school, you know, I grew up in this town. I went to nursery school basically across the street, one year at a little nursery school on Myrtle Avenue and Linden Street, where it was there at the time. One day my mom came to pick my up after nursery school, they let out at 11:30, the parents would pick them up. In the nursery school, teachers were all excited. They’re trying to tell me mom, oh, “your son put on his coat 3 minutes ago.” Mom way like, “ok, fine, what’s special about that?” “Well, your son said, ‘it’s 11:27 and we’re leaving in 3 minutes, shouldn’t I be getting ready?” They said, “your son can tell time, and do the math on the time!” My mom replied, “ok, and…?”
That was just who she was. There are, like, a thousand vignettes similarly, just, “ok, and what else”? And Steve’s story last night was the same thing.
The other one was when we were seeing “The Real Thing” in New York. You were so excited because we were seeing Jeremy Irons and so forth. It was 1981, maybe. It was sometime in the ’80’s, I don’t care when, that doesn’t really matter for the story. So you waited at the stage door for Jeremy Irons to come out, and he comes out, and he’s all pleasant, you know, my mom gives him the pen to sign the program, whatever. And then she said, “we’re just going over to the deli, you want to come with us?” No, he said no, I’m sorry. And then my mom was just annoyed because he neglected to give the pen back.
So I was thinking, you know, what I’d want to say, we’re on Soon, and I’ve got relatives watching Zoom, and thank you all the relatives who are watching, or if you’re in Detroit watching, or if you’re in Oregon watching. Thank you. We have no idea how many of you are watching, but for those of you who are, I know there are a few, thank you.
So I was thinking, sort of the thesis, if you will, of the mini-sermon here. You know, what constitutes a blessed life. You know, cantor, you sang Eshet Chayil. It’s sort of a hint of that. I love that melody for Psalm 23, by the way, my current synagogue doesn’t use it.
But… what constitutes it? I had a friend, once, who said his life goal was to be able to leave a million dollars to his son. Like, ok, do you win? Is that special? Is it fame that makes a blessed life, or fortune? Or it is, you know, memories that I have, which would be, like, when I was 12 years old, and coming home from Junior High School, and it comes to 4 o’clock, and mom says, “do you want to have a cup of tea?” Just have a cup of tea at the kitchen table and talk. Is that it?
I think, for what she wanted in life, that’s what it was. Doing things like, to be with family, to be in those moments. I remember one time in ’75. It was spring break, and for some reason she said, “I hear the Mets have a game at home today. Why don’t we go?” We went out, we took the train, took the PATH across from Hoboken to Gimbels, to the number 7 train that went out to Shea Stadium. That day, it was Tom Seaver pitching against Bob Gibson, so I could say that I’ve… yeah, thank you, Howard. Not that many people can say they’ve seen Seaver against Gibson, but that’s what we did that day.
Or, the time, just 9 years ago, my sister had this fantasy of seeing the Gilbert and Sullivan Players do a show on New Year’s Eve, but they were up at Hunter College, which is not really close to anything. And, coming back New Year’s Eve, we did not make the subway that we needed to make to get the train back to New Jersey before the ball dropped. So, you know, my mom going all over the city, this is just 9 years ago, it’s not that long. And ending up in a bar in Penn Station for the ball dropping, because we were not crazy enough to go up to Times Square. But we were crazy enough to be in a bar in Penn Station for the ball dropping. And just things like that. I’m sure Gwen will have more.
Those are things that, to me, I would say, “yeah, I had a pretty blessed life. I might hav liked to stick around a little bit longer,” but you know, as we all know... I could be Ecclesiastical about it, but I won’t be.
Again, I want to thank all of you for being here. For her, you know, those I haven’t seen in many years, those who maybe I don’t remember anymore, and those of you on the Zoom, and again, Fayona and Rose, thank you for looking after her, her last days.
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