It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.
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I will be lighting my menorah and plugging in the tree this year with a new family member. Both of us believe in low stress holidays. Not everyone observes family events in the same way; some do nothing at all. My parents had long decided religion was merely a guide for others and they decidedly lived by the principle of “We’re not going to know who’s right until we’re dead, so in the interim be a good person.” Not a shabby way to look at it, if you ask me.
As I work this week on two family celebrations, it reminds me of some guidelines that help keep us all sane and guilt-free:
1. Traditions — keep what you like, ditch what you don’t. Love the desserts your grandmother used to make, but hate spending time in the kitchen? Call Trader Joe’s, work with a caterer or give a recipe to your best friend who loves to cook. Sure it may not be the gourmet way, but it’s another way to make it work for your family. The world will not end.
2. Fake it till you make it. For some folks real Christmas trees can be expensive, if you think you want to make the switch to a fake one, see if someone you know has one you can borrow. There’s nothing written in any religious doctrine that says fake trees are sinful. If you hate it, you can always go back to the real one next year.
3. Who says you have to eat at home? Discuss the option of eating at another family member’s home or a friend’s house from time to time. Even a local restaurant or a vacation spot might be fun during the holidays for a change of pace. You might be surprised at what resorts do for holidays and it might even be considered “off season” for some places.
4. What changes can be made to a holiday so it’s more festive and less frustrating? Notice how I did not say how will “you” change it? Holiday celebrations are meant to be family celebrations, so it should not depend on one single person to “make” the holiday special.
5. Will anything change this year for your family? Are there changes to be considered but the only thing in the way is not knowing how well they would go over with everyone else? Are there changes that have already been made in the way your family observes holidays you would like to share with others? Do tell.
Tradition should always include a little room for change.
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Stay. That’s what we want when we’ve lost a loved one. We want them to STAY. If only for a minute, an hour. To feel again their embrace. To kiss their cheek. To listen to one more word of love, or kindness, or wisdom, or humor. Just, stay… and we have to decide what to do with our grief.
And the pain. Even over the years when it stabs us afresh and reminds us anew of what we have lost. The day comes when we think we are past it and then we read or see something and suddenly are assaulted by a memory and it is as if we are back in that moment, when we lost the one we loved.
And so we gather at important moments, not only in tribute to grandparents or parents or children or sisters or brothers or spouses or friends but also to figure out what to do with the grief that never fully goes away. So what do we do?
We listen to beautiful music. To gentle sounds. We recite prayers and still, we do not always know what to do.
Become that which you have lost.
For some of us we mourn someone who never gave the love that we wanted and so it is our task in this world to give that love that we did not receive to someone else so that the legacy of love not given will be love given. For others it is all the love that we did receive; all the goodness, all the kindness, all the wisdom, all the help. And we know that only way to honor the memory of the person that we have lost is to give that to someone else to become what we have lost because the measure of our loss is the measure of our blessing. There is no grief without there first being a blessing.
And there is no sadness without a previous richness. And so it is our task to use our grief as a springboard. Our sadness is a stage and our grief a beginning because we know that sooner or later we will be there, too. None of us will live forever and the question won’t be to what degree or depth of pain did we feel for those that are lost, it will be to what did we evolve; and what goodness and kindness did we express to those who are still here?
So if you have gathered to pay tribute; remember to embrace the recollection of someone or many whom you have lost, don’t neglect to pay them the greatest tribute which is to be the kind of person of whom they would be proud.
- as delivered by Rabbi Wolpe and listened to by me at this morning’s Kever Avot services, Mt. Sinai Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills
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Asta Beusch brought us all a lot of laughs and love.
She was a reflection of you and her spirit will be here, always.
My heart hurts for you. If I were closer, I’d hug you all very tight.
Love,
p
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My sister turned 50 yesterday. My little sister. In childhood, I remember thinking that in the year 2000 I would be, let me see, 42 years old! That seemed ancient. Today, my sister and I are both over 50. How can that be?
How can fighting over who gets to sit in the front seat and 5 cent Abba-Zabas still seem so real? Maybe because life is just a little more complex and it’s funny to think that back then not getting the front seat or an Abba-Zabba before lunchtime were truly life and death matters.We are fortunate to come from a family that likes to keep moving forward. Day by day. Issue by issue. What else do we have in the long run? Dwelling on past mistakes doesn’t help. Learning from the past does. My best inspiration is from both our grandmothers who left us with an independent spirit, energy to spare and a strong will to succeed. “Live your life and forget your age,” is what they both said to us — in one form or another. Ok, maybe not so eloquently. One said, “What the hell do I care?” and the other’s joie de vivre manifested itself as, “Can you do this?” (Meaning, take care of your self and stay in front).
So, attitude about age is what really keeps us vibrant. The old adage is that you’re as young as you feel, and I try to take comfort in that everyone, regardless of age, has days when they feel 21 and days they feel 91. The f-word is just a word. I still feel as excited about discovering places and things as I was at sitting in the front (or back!) seat gumming a brand new Abba-Zabba.
And I know my sister does, too.
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Whatever the trends, the basic concept of entertaining remains the same – it is an act of generosity on the part of the host. For a brief period of time, you’re taking people out of the chaos and disruption of their everyday lives, and providing for both their physical and emotional well being.
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It’s good to get out of yourself every now and then. Just open up, walk right out and see the world. Part of its goodness is that otherwise, it’s hard to figure out just how much of your environment is just a personal sense of comfort that you take for granted. How much of your sense of normalcy is really just having your own little culture accepted as normal?
But transplant yourself into
a somewhere completely different than home, and you’re in for a pleasant surprise.It’s good for your soul to be reminded that you are a very small being in this universe. History is so deep that we would drown without someone else’s shoulders to stand on. And this world is so vast that we could easily get lost without someone to find us.
English is not the language of the human. America is not the center of the universe. You, your gender, your culture and preferences are not the norm of the universe. Deep down inside, we’ve got to know that. But a reminder never hurts.
It’s good to feel completely out of the loop in another culture. It’s good to feel a little bewildered by a language you don’t know, and by the sense that you really should try to use it in order to be respectful. It’s refreshing to visit a culture of image-bearers who think of their village, their city, their country as their home and not as a tourist trap.
It’s not that they’ve got this humility thing down, and you’re the only one that’s missing out. We’re all missing out, and we all find just a little bit more of who we are, on a visit to some of our family and neighbors.
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Mother’s Day, Sunday 8:50 a.m. — I raced up Van Nuys Boulevard; death grip on the steering wheel “willing” every light to remain green. The southbound Pacific Surf-liner leaves at 9:04 a.m. and my morning lallygagging has now forced me to pray that someone at the little Amtrak station plants his or her body in front of the conductor and monster of a train begging for them to wait just one more minute before it choo-choos off to San Diego.
Then I got to thinking about just one more minute and how a seemingly nothing amount of time can often be a critical moment. So, for giggles I started a list. 60 seconds makes a world of difference when:
. caramelizing sugar
. a light signal changes from green to yellow to red
. kissing
. holding your breath
. preparing soft cooked eggs
. speaking in front of a heckling audience
. trying to come up with Jeopardy’s final question
. betting on the Kentucky Derby… heck any race
. boiling milk (notice I’m in the kitchen a lot here?)
. delivering a pregnant pause
. holding someone’s feet to the fire (figuratively speaking!)
. paying cell phone charges
. listening to a beating heartSo? What else? Leave a comment below and help grow the list.
(Oh, my prayer was answered — we caught our train. The conductor actually waited and yelled out, “Just one more minute!”)
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While in Seattle over the incredibly perfect Easter weekend, we drove by a bronze statue of a young Japanese girl — the figure was covered in what looked like hundreds and hundreds of paper cranes. The statue is located alongside a busy road, the University bridge, and an expressway on-ramp.
Well, after a quick internet search — 10 days later (ok, so I’ve been busy?!) I discovered the following:
“Peace Park was the dream of Dr. Floyd Schmoe, who after winning the Hiroshima Peace Prize in 1998 used the $5,000 prize money to clear a small lot near the University of Washington. From a pile of wrecked cars, garbage, and brush, he worked with community volunteers to build the beautiful Peace Park.”
The main feature of Peace Park is the sculpture, Sadako and the Thousand Cranes, created in 1990 by artist Daryl Smith. The statue is a life-size bronze of Sadako Sasaki, the young Japanese girl who survived the Hiroshima bombing only to die of radiation sickness at age 12. She lived one mile from Ground Zero.
“Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl living in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan on August 6, 1945. In 1955, at age 11, Sadako was diagnosed with leukemia, cancer caused by the atomic bomb.
While in the hospital, Sadako started to fold paper cranes. In Japan, there is a belief that if you fold 1000 paper cranes, then your wish will come true. Sadako spent 14 months in the hospital, folding paper cranes with whatever paper she could get. Her wish was that she would get well again. Sadako also wished for an end to all suffering and to attain peace and healing to the victims of the world.
Sadako died on October 25, 1955, she was 12 years old and had folded over 1300 paper cranes. Sadako’s friends and classmates raised money to build a memorial in honor of Sadako and other atomic bomb victims. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial was completed in 1958 and has a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane. At the base is a plaque that says:
This is our cry.
This is our prayer.
Peace in the world.In Seattle, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Dr. Floyd Schmoe, built a life-size statue of Sadako. The statue was unveiled on August 6, 1990, 45 years after the bombing of Hiroshima. The statue is in the Seattle Peace Park and often has paper cranes draped over it.”
Sadako’s story is very poignant and moving. Right after the Japan earthquake, there were so many paper cranes covering Sadako that the statue itself was hard to see.
I saw it!
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Quite often it is at a Celebration of Life that families lament not having planned any family gatherings sooner.
So why not start planning one now?
The Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass chooses to celebrate every day! You can think about planning a family celebration now… just because.
Planning your family celebration can seem to be a formidable task when you consider all the variables and conflicting needs that demand your attention. The logistics of the planning involve bringing distant family members together, each with unique needs, budgets, time constraints, and contributions to the family dynamic. The rewards of your celebration can be felt for generations in your family, so don’t let these points drive you away from hosting an event. Here are some thoughts of ours, as seen from the perspective of professional planners, that might help you in your planning.
- First and most importantly, appoint someone in the family as chairman, benevolent dictator, or in the case of a fiscally secure sponsor, as a patron to be a point person and make decisions. Events seldom materialize out of committee. The designated celebration leader should be someone with understanding of the family dynamics, and possess the time, patience, and tact to arrange the details. If you are fortunate enough to have a patron or even a partial sponsor, you will eliminate some of the family’s exclusion due to budget limits and simultaneously diminish the family dynamic of comparative wealth analysis between reunion attendees.
- Once the wishes and constraints of family members are expressed as to date, place, activities, budget limits, and schedules, then decide what the plan will be. Once the decisions are made, build anticipation by frequently communicating with attendees about itineraries, shared assignments, and attendance lists.
- It will be impossible to meet everyone’s schedules and desires. Not everyone will be able to attend.
- Create time and activities that enable interactions between otherwise distanced family members.
- Enjoy, enrich, & enable. Dilute overly intense family dynamics with activities that bring laughter, light-hearted fun, cultural growth, and whole family participation. Try to avoid events that restrict cross generational participation or are overly competitive. Good family activities can be cultural and informative or simply zany and silly.
- Sibling rivalries, comparisons of achievements, and resurrected past conflicts are a few of the potential pit-falls to the reunion that can lead to disappointments and injured relationships. The reunion should be a time to strengthen and evaluate relationships. With a mind set of compassionate tolerance and a gift of generous emotional space, incendiary events will be minimized.
- Build reunion memories that can be preserved in photographs, videos, T-shirts and other long lasting reunion memorabilia. We have seen marvelous cookbooks compiled by contributing reunion attendees. Scrap-booking nights, and recordings of family histories and genealogy also make great reunion activities. Consider assigning attendees to bring favorite family photos and ancestral images that can be incorporated into the family history.
- Finally, remember that the reunion organizer will no more be able to fully satisfy every family member than politicians can satisfy every constituent. You are serving the interests of the family as a whole. Through your efforts, the family elders will find joy in their posterity and all will realize the blessings of a more connected extended family.
If you are looking for additional help with your family celebration planning, Ever After CELEBRATIONS will provide suggestions for locations, themes and more.
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