October 2 , 2006 - FINDING ONESELF TO BE A SQUIRREL - (Yiskor Service 5767)

At this hour and on this year, I specifically remember my Dad. When he passed away, I, as dutiful son, shared in the responsibility of helping to dispose of his things…well, at least, a small portion of them. My father had been a professor at the Reform seminary, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in Cincinnati. When, after thirty years of teaching at the College, he retired to Albuquerque, he continued teaching, both in the areas of Finance, of all things---he had gotten his MBA the years just prior to his retirement from the University of Cincinnati’s School of Business—and he taught courses in Judaica and also the Holocaust. So, when he passed away, I found a rather sizable library on these subjects. More to my fascination, I found lots and lots of business and office supplies. I say that I was fascinated because my dad had known that he was battling cancer for well over the last two years of his life. And yet, he had squirreled away several years’ worth of sticky notes of several sizes, and other paraphernalia that people, who do a lot of office work, tend to keep around: boxes of pencils, all as yet unsharpened, bottles of rubber cement and thinner, reams of computer paper…those sorts of things.

Of late, I, too, have become something of a squirrel. I’ve gathered boxes of those same sticky notes, bottles of rubber cement…with that same sized “re-filler can” my dad had on his desk, and I still have a box of unsharpened pencils that I had carted home from his house over a decade ago.

I think I have a better understanding of my father now that I’ve passed my third score of years. I recognize why he became something of a squirrel (as opposed to the appellation, “pack rat”) in his later life. Especially now with the expensiveness of gasoline, I keep supplies on hand because, when I have a need for something, I don’t want to have to set a project aside for lack of something I need to finish it, and I wouldn’t want to interrupt something whose direction was taking shape to have to jump up, run to some office supply store and then have to resume working. There’s something about having that extra something around that just makes life more organized and a bit less hectic. The word I am searching for is “convenience”. It’s about having enough in one’s life not to have to worry having a few extras on hand. That’s it. It’s all a matter of convenience.

I have a better understanding of a lot of people I used to know and have had the dubious honor of having out-lived. I suspect that for the centenarian, outliving one’s friends and acquaintances becomes a true burden, one filled with sorrow. Unless one likes to keep one’s own company, I don’t think that growing old, especially in this society, is all that meaningful or enjoyable anymore, if it ever was.

It would be something else were our culture to respect the old and pay deference to the wisdom one gathers through the years. I suspect, however, that a good deal of the grouchiness that we encounter in the elderly, and that I increasingly find in myself, is a product of the lion still needing to know that if he roars, someone will pay attention. Far better, I think, to win people with kindness, but having one’s darts in the ready should that first ploy fail, seemingly also is in vogue.

All this in an effort to say that as we come into our years, and if we are truly fortunate, our hours of reflecting on our loved ones open to us understanding the reasons for most of their ways. As those pertain directly to us, we may find great solace in finally discerning what they may have been trying to convey to us as we ourselves were growing.

The pangs of separation that we feel at Yizkor are somehow mitigated if our grieving has led us to this level of comprehension. I believe that this is what the theologians and the psychologists have labeled “elements of good grief.” It is that which enables us to learn and integrate those lessons and gather in those acts of love and kindness that our dear ones gave to us as pearls of their lives by which we now remember them. To recall these loved ones and the lessons they imparted is to enrich our own lives, as they would have had us do. Good grief enables us also to forgive them and ourselves for what we were not able to accomplish with, for and from them. Not being super-human, not able to be omniscient, but if we are fortunate, we later come to understand that we could never fulfill every wish, never accomplish every dream, never bring every desired thought, word or deed to fulfillment…and we learn, because of the years of separation to forgive ourselves.

Oh, I understand a great deal more now than I did when first my father’s remains lay before me; before the shock and disbelief had had a chance to dissipate, and my mind could begin the process of internalizing the reality of his being gone: what his life meant to me then, and what he means to me now. I’m not bothered by the fact that I see in myself many qualities that live on in me that are replications of his habits and his compulsions, his neuroses as well as his finer attributes.

In fact, I’m OK with my now having become something of a squirrel, myself. I still like a clean car; I still try to empty my email each night; I still read the mail from each day rather than to leave it until the next; I still fully unpack my bags no matter how exhaustedly I arrive home or how late it might be. And I’m grateful that I have emulated my father enough to carry on these quirky, squirrelly habits. Somehow, through all the emotional stuff, I am proud to be carrying on his rabbinic legacy and to stand in his stead. I have come to believe that I do so, indeed, with his blessing.