Still Green

This past December I became seriously ill, and only later did I understand how close the angel of death had come on that first night in the hospital. Fortunately, those caring for me made sure he was ultimately kept away. I physically recovered, but emotionally I spent much of the year thinking about mortality, realizing I’m not exactly who I was before. I’ve carried an unfamiliar emotional vulnerability ever since, a sense that something deep inside permanently shifted.

I’m now 68 years old, and for much of this year, illness and aging, mortality and time, all got enmeshed together in my head in a way I couldn’t quite pull apart. How much time is left? Who am I at this stage of life? What am I supposed to do with whatever years I have? What is my purpose and how do I let go of youth and age with dignity while also remaining vibrant in spirit and energy in the ways I approach life?

I just recently started hearing the questions differently because I now can say I am also only 68.

I have a wife I love, children and young grandchildren who fill our lives, and work I’m still deeply engaged in and committed to with passion. I still care intensely about my family, my dear friends and the Jewish people. None of those facts have changed. It’s my thinking about them that has.

Maybe that’s why the Yamim Noraim (High Holy Days) feel so powerful to me this year. There’s something majestic and almost overwhelming about the way Judaism holds permanence and impermanence together in the same breath. God is eternal, we are not, the world renews itself year after year while each of us moves through it for only a short time. The Psalmist compares human life to grass, flourishing in the morning and withering by evening, and that image has stayed with me because it’s true. 

Every year when we reach Unetaneh Tokef during Musaf, it feels personal. Who will live and who will die?  What will the coming year bring, and what will happen to the people I love? And, what will happen to me?  There’s no way of knowing any of it. Last Rosh Hashanah I couldn’t have imagined what was coming just a few months later, and none of us ever really knows what’s waiting on the other side of a new year. We build our lives around the assumption of continuity because we have to. We make plans and book vacations and talk about next summer or five years from now, because otherwise we may not get out of bed. And then life has a way of reminding us how little control we truly have.

Post-illness, I approached this with sadness and a sense of loss I couldn’t quite name. Now I’m trying to feel it as gratitude, not through rose-colored glasses pretending everything is wonderful, but as something more deliberate. I’m awakening to noticing what’s here while it’s here, and trying not to let the fear of losing it get in the way of appreciating it.

Over fifty years later, my wife and I still hold hands. We talk over dinner, really talk, the way we did decades ago, and we still sing together in the car, badly, or at least me, and it’s one of my favorite things we still do. I get to walk my granddaughter, Lyla, to her classroom when she gets off the bus, because I’m lucky enough that she attends the very school I lead. And my grandson Micah, three years old now, wants me to sing him the Shema and rub his back before he falls asleep, while he looks up at me with a smile that melts my heart every time. That is noticing. Noticing the small moments full of meaning and love. And I am truly blessed with eight beautiful grandchildren. That is nothing less than an everyday miracle.

Perhaps that’s where Kohelet enters the conversation. We read it later in the holiday season, on Sukkot, and it’s one of the most sober books in the Tanakh. Essentially it comes down to life is unpredictable, we control far less than we think we do, and wealth or achievement or status can’t protect us from time or chance. But Kohelet doesn’t tell us to despair. Again and again it brings us back to what’s actually right in front of us, the small things like eating, drinking, and finding joy. Love the people you share your life with, take satisfaction in your work, and maybe those aren’t small things after all. Maybe they’re the things in life that are supposed to matter.

I don’t know how many years I have left, and neither does anyone else. But I know what I have now. A wife to hold hands with. Grandchildren who run to greet me. Work that still matters deeply. A people and a community I remain deeply attached to. Mornings when I wake up and get the gift of another day.

Rosh Hashanah asks us to take life seriously because life is finite, but I don’t think taking it seriously means living solemnly, especially as we age. Maybe it just means paying attention to what you have, in gratitude, and not worrying about what you can’t control or when the sun will set. That is not an age-related idea. All of us, whether we are younger or older, should strive to embrace our lives that way.

It’s not about denying that the grass eventually withers. It’s being grateful that this morning, it’s still green.