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Darkness Can Enlighten

Certain childhood experiences are like good teachers. No matter that they may seem bizarre or pedestrian at the time of their occurrence, they often leave worthwhile, life-long impressions. Henry Brooks Adams, American historian, journalist and novelist put it best when he said: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops”, and so it is with
certain of our lives’ experiences, the importance of which we may only realize years down the road.

I grew up “Jewishly” but not religiously in the 1960 (s) one suburb west of the orthodox community, centered in University City, Missouri. My brother and I lived with our mother, a young, inexperienced divorcee who probably felt overwhelmed by the realities of single parenthood.

My maternal grandmother, Jean Austin nee Pick who lived with us for several years, worked as a professional buyer of women’s fashions and was, I think, a genuine rarity in an age when divorced, independently-minded women were far less common than even in my mother’s generation. She had been a “tough love” parent (a fact I learned from both my mother and my
Aunt Iris, my mother’s sister) who successfully combined hard work and an independent spirit to raise two daughters. “My mother provided us with a fine home,” my mom told me, “but without any Jewish atmosphere.”

I’m not sure why she did what she did or if she even understood it herself, but my mother enrolled my brother and me in the Epstein Hebrew Academy, the first Orthodox Hebrew day school in Missouri almost immediately after our arrival in St. Louis. It sounds like a good first step, right? Well, we hated it. My sole memory was of the alphabet on our classrooms’ walls
which, I recall with perfect clarity, was written in an unrecognizable script. Unbeknownst to us at the time, we had been looking at the aleph-beis posters. My brother and I protested vociferously to our mother. I don’t think we lasted more than several days before my
mother withdrew us.

As a result of my all too brief “close encounter” with Torah Judaism, I became a Jew who knew virtually nothing about his Judaism. The richness of Jewish tradition had largely eluded me and countless other Jewish children whose attachment to Jewish life was largely cultural rather than Torah-based. I suppose had I not disliked the Epstein Academy so passionately, things might have turned out differently, perhaps even better.

Then again, as Jews of faith, our bitachon reinforces our belief that while “things do happen for the best”, I look back upon my limited Jewish upbringing with a slight tinge of regret but with thanks as well. After all, my youth was not entirely barren of Jewish experiences. We
gathered at my Aunt Iris's house for our family's one seder with ample supplies of machine matzah while my Uncle Marvin led us through the redemption of our people, according to the Haggadah from Maxwell House. Shavuos and Sukkos were unknown to us. We celebrated Rosh Ha Shana and broke the fast of Yom Kippur with festive meals. We did not light candles, but
my mother did plug in an electric menorah each of the eight days of Chanukkah. It was not so much that my family lacked the threads of Jewish life (though there were many we were missing) as much its fabric.

My First “Almost” Shabbos

It was exceedingly difficult not to love Reb Moishe and Chava Grossman. The parents of Harold Grossman, my mother’s second husband, Reb Moishe and Chava became Morris and Eve upon their passage through Ellis Island. A tiny twosome, they were a quaint, picture-perfect couple of old-fashioned dignity, each crowned with snow white hair. Speaking a stereotypical
blend of Yiddish and English, dubbed “Yinglish” by author Leo Rosten and living within fifty yards of their shul, I felt drawn to Reb Moishe and Chava. There was just something about them I found so … charming, I guess.

When the sun sets on Friday afternoon, Erev Shabbos begins. For observant Jews, the Shabbos is kadosh, separate and holy, a reminder of the Creation. To me, an eight-year old Jewish boy living outside the observant Jewish community, it was just Friday night. I had no idea that another state of being, Shabbos, existed on a parallel but higher plane than our own. Harold, my mom and I stopped in one Friday night to visit his parents. Already several minutes after
sundown when we arrived, we found Harold’s parents-their feet barely touching the floor (actually Mrs. Grossman's did not), sitting quite properly on their plastic cover-fitted sofa, in total darkness as if nothing were amiss. Except for what little remained of the Shabbos nerot, there was no other light to be had. We sat down with them in a state of virtual bemusement for several moments until Harold’s patience ran out.

"Pa,” he pled incredulously, always the dutiful son but who had forsworn Jewish religious observance when he enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, "You're ‘gonna’
sit here in the dark?! Lemme tur ..."

"Zol zein shtil, Herschele! 'Don' touch!” barked Zaide who did not pronounce the 't' in ‘don't’.

"But, but ... " Harold blurted out.

"But, but 'nuting'! Shah!" Zaide thundered.

"Ma!?" pled the son."It'll be fine tatele. Listen to your father," Bubbie counseled.

"Mom, why are we sitting in the dark?" I asked, absolutely intrigued by this most bizarre circumstance.

"Shah! Listen to Bubbie."

If only Mel Brooks had seen this!

To this day some forty-seven years later, I do not know if the Grossmans had set their timers which-for reasons unknown-failed to turn on or simply forgotten to switch on their Sabbath lights. It remains a fond albeit befuddled memory to this very day.

We did not stay much longer. Leaving behind the dark wonderment of Erev Shabbos, we drove back to Friday night. Darkness could and did enlighten me that night to the fascination of Erev Shabbos to which I returned years later. It turned out to be a difficult destination to reach as an adult, but at least I know that-as an eight year old boy-my spiritual odyssey began that
night in the apartment of Moishe and Chava Grossman, may their memories be for a blessing.

Alan D. Busch
7/01/09

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click here http://www.aish.com/spirituality/odysseys/Losing_Ben.asp to read my piece entitled "Losing Ben" published at www.aish.com. please take a few moments to leave a comment. i'd appreciate hearing from you.

sincerely,

alan busch

Dear Friends,



Below please find the final of "Losing Ben" as it appears at http://www.aish.com/



Please leave a comment on this site or if you like, read it at http://www.aish.com/ and leave your comment there.



Thank you,



Alan D. Busch

My father was not an atheist, no matter what he may have told you.


He was rather a grieving grandpa who witnessed the death of his first grandson, my son Ben, on an operating table at Cook County Hospital, a cataclysm which so profoundly shook the fragile architecture of his belief in God that I wondered if any of it would remain standing when the dust settled.


Earlier that morning, the phones had been ringing off the hooks. I picked up one of the lines to help out. I heard the voice of a stranger.


"Mr. Busch?" he queried.


"Speaking," I reluctantly admitted for I knew, with a parent's intuition, he was not the bearer of good news.


"Mr. Busch. My name is Dr. Ibrahim Yosef, chief of emergency surgery at Cook County Hospital."


"Yes, doctor," I acknowledged nervously.


"Are you the father of Benjamin Busch?"


"Yes, I am," girding myself for the worst.


"Your son has arrived by fire department ambulance, having sustained massive, critical injuries in a traffic accident."


At that instant, I felt like I'd been struck by the same truck I later learned had run Ben over.


"Mr. Busch, Ben requires immediate surgical intervention."


I tried to speak but my words were stuck.


"Mr. Busch," his voice now emphatically urgent, "I suggest you come to the hospital right away!"

"Suggest!" I repeated. Digesting the ominous meaning of his "suggestion," I sped away to the hospital in a state of controlled desperation. I knew how this day would end.


While a team of doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save my son's life, my dad --whom I had never before seen pray -- cried out to the Master of the Universe to spare the life of his grandson, who had been crushed under the rear wheels of a 26-foot long moving van. And though he (and I) pleaded desperately with the Almighty for His immediate intercession, it was not meant to be. The spark of life in Ben flickered out.


"I must admit to you, Alan, I don't understand how you've done it," my father told me on more than one occasion. "Your brother and I were talking about you the other day," he added, "and we both agree that neither of us could have done what you did."


He can either choose life accompanied by the permanent presence of grief or he becomes busy with dying.


My father was referring to my resolve, following Ben's death, to continue living my life as best I could, a decision I thought necessary for the sake of my other children, my daughter Kimberly and younger son Zac. My responsibility to them was not only to survive our sudden loss but to lead my extended family in the emotional reconstruction of our lives.


I thanked my father but protested that nothing I had done merited any praise.
A parent whose child predeceases him does not enjoy a wide range of choices. He can either choose life accompanied by the permanent presence of grief or he becomes busy with dying.


I don't know how it feels to lose a grandson. I regret the fact I never did ask my father about it. How had he coped with Ben's death? Frankly, the devastation from which my family was suffering at the time was unfathomable. Ben's mom and I had divorced several months prior to our loss, which made the initial mourning and subsequent grief even more difficult. I was so preoccupied with recovering my life and struggling daily to watch over my other two children that I did not spend much time with my father. He was emotionally devastated, and truthfully, I didn't know how to balance the loss of my son with that of my father's grandson.


Eight months after Ben's death, my father wrote in a letter to a friend, "For a while there I was depressed. My grandson Benji was killed in a car accident. He was just 22. I miss him. It left a large void in my heart." He said nothing more, although I suspect he was never quite the same again.


Eight years later, my father and I were chatting one afternoon in his apartment. He was home after spending two weeks in the hospital's oncology unit. My dad was dying of colon cancer and although he was enjoying a well-deserved respite from his suffering, we suspected it would be all too brief. We were together quite a lot, better late than never I suppose. He was telling me his story between hands of gin rummy. I dealt the cards and listened.


"Have you heard it said, son, that there are no atheists in foxholes?"


"Sure. I've heard that." We never discussed faith before.


"Well, I assure you. It's the absolute truth. During the war, there were a couple of guys from my barracks who claimed to be atheists. It was just prior to what later became known as the Battle of the Bulge. After my unit had engaged the enemy, I found myself in the same foxhole with these two guys, our heads in the mud, enemy fire, shells bursting all around. In my life, I had never heard so much praying. 'Dear Lord, please get me out of this. I'll be good. I'll never do that again.' You know, the sort of thing that comes out under deep stress."


Here's my chance, I thought excitedly. "What's your belief, Dad?"


"Me? I don't believe in God," he asserted without even so much as a pause.


My jaw dropped. I didn't expect such an answer. What about the story he had just told me? Wasn't it an endorsement of belief in God? There was something very wrong here. Where was the man who had pled before the Master of the Universe for his grandson's life? I wanted to speak to him.


"Were there a God -- a caring, loving, parent-like God, He would not allow the terrible things in life to happen," he asserted.


I had heard it before. I think everyone has. It is an argument that demonstrates the incompleteness of belief in God without the faith that sustains it in times of crisis.


"Dad, do you recall what you said to me after we lost Ben?"


"You mean when I told you I couldn't have gone on with life like you did?"


"What's the source of my strength? It's you Dad."


"Yes, Dad. Well, I have a secret to tell you." I crossed my arms on the kitchen table and leaned slightly forward. A moment like this had never happened before in our relationship. "I wanted to tell you then that you had never been so wrong! What's the source of my strength? It's you Dad, you're "avi mori", my father, my teacher."


I backed off a bit. His eyes had become misty. "That day when Ben died, I watched you as you pled for Ben, for all of us, and I remember thinking: 'This is my dad!' Your strength, the strength of your faith to be able to plead before God, that strength could only derive from God. So when Ben died, in your profound disappointment you set down the strength of your faith. But you know what?" My father answered me with his continuing silence. "I picked up that faith and made it my own."


That's when my father's silence turned into a smile.


He never realized what an important lesson he had taught me that day. Despite my father's earlier assertion that he would not have survived the death of a son, his own actions disproved his claim. He not only survived Ben's death but continued practicing dentistry successfully for an additional eight years before he entered the hospital for a urinary tract infection, high fever and incessant chemotherapy-induced diarrhea.


To my father, Ben was as much his son as were my brothers and I. He routinely called him "Benji son" -- his favorite term of endearment. In his heartfelt prayers - for "Benji son" and for his own life -- my father personified, perhaps unwittingly, a basic, unadorned, unarticulated trust in the words of the psalmist: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: from where shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."


Dad, you were right. There really aren't any atheists in foxholes.



Published: Sunday, June 21, 2009

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This is the remainder of "Shabbos Minchah With Reb Isser" that ended up on the "cutting room floor". Scroll down to find the link to the story. The editor ended the published version at a very appropriate point. I was actually quite pleased with what she did, but this original ending is a great story in and of itself.

I did as Reb Isser had advised. I could no longer ignore my problems at home, hoping they would simply disappear. The decision I made to keep Shabbos by myself-though difficult- was one I felt I needed to make. The experience not only did not weaken but strengthened my resolve to live more observantly. We did try marriage counseling, but I am certain we both knew ours was a case of too little, too late. If nothing else, counseling delineated our differences so sharply that our irreconcilability became a foregone conclusion.

“I feel this emptiness in my gut,” I confessed to her. We were out one summer evening and had stopped to pick up some ice cream. The kids were home. There wasn’t much time to talk things over. It was just around sundown. I noticed several cars hurriedly pulling into the parking lot of the shul just across the way from where we had parked the car.

“I want to be part of that,” I said, pointing to the shul. “But we’ve not lived that way. It’s too much. We didn’t raise the kids in a kosher home. I just don’t get why you cannot be happy with where we are.” “Jan,” I turned and looked at her, “I don’t understand it myself, but I know in my heart it’s real.”

We headed back home. “You’re sure about this?” she turned to me, “because I can’t go with you.” “I know that, I really do,” I smiled at her understandingly.

“What about the kids? Jan asked. “Tonight, we’ll tell them tonight.”

“Your mother and I love you unconditionally,” I began. I looked at her, the mother of my children and wife of twenty-four years, as if to get the final go-ahead. She nodded approvingly. “But Mom and I have decided … “

Zac, our youngest, wept a little boy’s tears. Ben, our oldest, was incredulous at the announcement but had known something was not right between us for a long time. Kimberly, our middle child, had just completed her freshman year at the university. Her mother drove down and told her on the way home.

I moved out of my house soon thereafter to a nearby apartment. Our children remained at home with their mom, but I tended my bonds with them unfailingly. Never too adept at map reading and unaware of its many stumbling blocks yet before me, I trod the path of Jewish observance very cautiously lest I become irretrievably lost.

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Dear Friends,

PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO READ MY NEWLY PUBLISHED SHORT STORY AS IT APPEARS IN NEW HORIZONS MAGAZINE.

Shabbos_Minchah.pdf.pdf

if you like it well enough to telll someone, write up a note to editor@targum.com

many thanks,

alan

Where authors and readers

dear friends,
shavua tov, a gutte voch
please take a few minutes if you will to read my latest piece at aish.com.

Losing Ben
it is,in fact, a chapter taken from my book in progress about the last weeks of my father's life,Dr. Albert I. Busch, z'l.

i do have a small favor to ask of you. please if you can at the end of the piece, you'll find a "leave a comment" feature. please take a few moments to type a comment, be it negative or positive, long or short ... in memory of my father may his memory be a blessing. i am ...

very sincerely yours,

alan d busch

Where authors and readers come together!




Dear Friends,

Several months ago, I announced that my short story "Tefilin and Teacher" had been accepted for publication by The Jewish Press, America's Largest Independent Jewish Newspaper. Happily, you can read it now in this week's edition, both in print and on-line. I would request that if you are so inclined, leave a short comment at the bottom of the on-line page.

Sincerely,

Alan

http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/39340

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Darkness Can Enlighten (current)

It was exceedingly difficult not to love Morris and Eva Grossman.

The parents of my mother’s second husband, Harold Grossman, Morris and Eva were a tiny twosome, a quaint couple of old-fashioned dignity, each crowned with snow white hair, their language-a comic blend of Yiddish and English, that Leo Rosten dubbed “Yinglish”. They spoke like comic Myron Cohen who appeared often on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” If you remember that, you’re one step ahead of the game.

Certain childhood experiences are like good teachers. To paraphrase Charles Francis Adams, they affect eternity because we never know where or when their influence stops.

I grew up Jewishly but not religiously. The net result of my upbringing was I knew myself to be a Jew but one who knew nothing about his Judaism. Sound paradoxical? Not really as long as one remembers there are Jews for whom the cultural components of Jewish life are at least as important as traditional Torah learning.

When the sun sets on Friday afternoon Erev Shabbos, the eve of the Sabbath, begins. For observant Jews, the "Shabbos" is "kadosh", separate and holy, a reminder of the Creation.To
me, an eight-year old Jewish boy living outside the observant Jewish community, it was just Friday night. I had no idea there is a parallel dimension, another state of being called
“Shabbos”, the Sabbath.

Harold, my mom and I stopped by to visit his parents in their apartment on Briscoe Court on the western edge of University City, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb with a sizeable observant
Jewish community. Already after sundown when we arrived, Harold’s parents would not have answered the phone had we called them, and even had they wanted to invite us over, they could not have because their apartment was, we discovered, enveloped in pitch darkness. After our eyes adjusted, we saw Mr. and Mrs. Grossman, whose feet barely touched the floor; (actually Mrs. Grossman’s did not) sitting quite properly on their plastic cover-fitted sofa as if nothing
were amiss. Not one ray of light shown.

"Pa," said Harold incredulously, always the dutiful son but who had forsworn Jewish religious observance when he enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, "You're ‘gonna’ sit
here in the dark?! Just lemme tur ..."

"Zol zein shtil, Herschele! 'Don' touch!” barked Zayde who did not pronounce the 't' in ‘don't’.

"But, but ... " Harold blurted out.

"But, but 'nuting'! Shah!" Zayde thundered.

"Ma!?" pled the son."It'll be fine tatele. Listen to your father," Bubbie (a Yiddish term of endearment for "grandmother") counseled.

"Mom, why are we sitting in the dark?" I asked, really very intrigued by this most bizarre of circumstances.

"Shah! Listen to Bubbie."If only Mel Brooks had seen this!

To this day some forty-seven years later, I do not know if the Grossmans’ lights were on timers but had neglected to set them in time before sundown or simply forgotten to turn on
their Sabbath lights. It remains a fond albeit befuddled memory to this very day!

We did not stay much longer. Leaving behind the magical, albeit dark wonderment of Erev Shabbos, the Sabbath Eve, we returned home to Friday night, a dimension in time far more
illumined but much less interesting than the mystery of Erev Shabbos in the apartment of Morris and Eva Grossman.

Alan D. Busch
Revised 5/13/09

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Dear Readers,

I am currently working on a second book about my last weeks with my father.
You may also access other chapters from the manuscript and much more at www.authorsden.com/alandbusch1

My Brother Does Not Look Like My Dad

My brother Ron cooked spaghetti on Saturday mornings for
the two of us when our mother was at the beauty parlor. He
had always been a “take charge’ kind of guy who preferred
using Open Pit Barbecue Sauce on his pasta instead of
concocting his own special blend, but that was okay with me.
I’ve loved Open Pit ever since.

Ron did, I guess in the great tradition of older brothers
everywhere whose parents had divorced, assume the role of
surrogate dad. And, it made sense because-as it happened-he
was always bigger and stronger than I. He looked out for me
and you know what? I rather liked it. Our relationship was
straight out of “Leave It To Beaver” but without Ward
Cleaver-our parents had divorced, and though we visited with
our father no more than three-four times a year, he was
forever able to cement and reinforce a very strong bond
between us.

It will not surprise you to know I look like, dress like, emote
and sound like my father. I am my father’s son, as is my older
brother Ron who looks like our mother but not nearly as
pretty. Our father’s illness brought us back together after a
hiatus of many years. We had never before faced any problem
together of this magnitude, but of my brother Ron, I can
say that it was an absolute pleasure to get to know him again,
but this time as an adult, a grown up, caring and loving son to
our father.

Ron and I spent the better part of a Wednesday afternoon
with our father at his dental office. He’s closing it down after
more than a half century of business. Though he enjoyed an
all too brief improvement after his first hospitalization, he
knows he can no longer treat patients due primarily to his
neurapathy.* Though he has been practicing dentistry in
Chicago since 1950, (“One of these days, I’ll get it right,” he
often quips with an irrepressible smile.) he accepts his
involuntary retirement as he does his cancer, with grace.

Taxicabs

Nattily dressed in suit, a freshly laundered and starched white
dress shirt with French cuffs, with matching silk tie and
handkerchief (stuffed in his outer breast suit pocket with just
the right panache), topped off by a black straw fedora, my
father looked that day as he had always and as far back as I can
remember.

The three of us hailed a cab home that afternoon-actually it
was Dad who stood at the curb and waved his hand while
attempting a shrill whistle. For some unknown reason, my
father could never whistle well though I guess he thought he
did. What came out invariably was more spittle than whistle.
Ron and I always thought that enormously funny, never
disrespectfully, just in good fun. You know what I mean.
“Eleven ten north Michigan please,” my father directs the cab
driver. We have ridden in cabs many times together, but
today was the first time in many a year. Dad fell asleep almost
instantaneously, Ron opened his copy of Ekhart Tolles’ new book and …

I was six years old, my brother eight when the three of us left
Dad’s office at 25 E. Washington Street on the east side of
Chicago’s Loop. We would hail a yellow or green Checker
Marathon cab. Failing that and, should one arrive first, we’d
hop on the bus. Frankly, I preferred the cab although It never
ceased to amuse us to watch Dad fall asleep while hanging on
to the “standees’ strap”. Naturally, a taxicab was the preferred
choice because it had two distinctive folding jump seats
anchored to the floor for additional passenger seating. Great
for kids. “’Fellas’, always enter and exit the taxi on the
curbside,” Dad faithfully reminded us. My father was an
effective teacher who chose his pragmatic life lessons carefully
and hammered them home. They remain with me to this day.

He awoke one half block before our arrival. Ron marked his
page. “Son, get out on the curb side,” he reminded
me, pointing toward the right passenger door with the thumb
of his right hand as if he were hitch-hiking. “Yes Dad. I know,”
I reassure him. Even though I’m fifty-four years old and have
been exiting from the curb side ever since I was six and sitting
on the folding jump seat in the back of the old Marathon
cabs, it annoyed me a bit. I glanced at Ron whose shrugged
shoulders and faint smile reminded me that some things
simply do not change. Then again, maybe Dad and I had had
the same dream.

It was getting late in the afternoon around 4:30. I got up to
leave for home around 5 o’clock. Ron walked me to the front
door I could see our father reading the paper at the kitchen
table. His wife, Bobbie, sat across from him.

“So, Alan, any words?” Ron asked.
“None at the moment,” I responded, hoping to preclude an
emotional scene.“God, I feel so … so guilty about leaving, but I’ve got to get
home,” Ron confessed in an undertone. “I understand,” I
reassured him. My brother Ron feels bad. He’s got it tougher
than I do. I can see Dad anytime I wish and do. I visit with him
three days a week, and I think he’d agree this has been the best
time we’ve ever spent together. Ron, however, lives in St.
Louis. Not far away, to be sure, a one hour flight. Still, it
worries him.

“What if,” my brother’ voice quivered … “what if this is the
last time?” “No, no. Not going to happen. Not now,” I insisted, my tone
rising as if in denial of that realistic possibility. “Dad is a
pugilist, Ron, remember? He’s a boxer, a fighter, you know.”
(As a matter of fact, my father had been a “golden gloves”
boxer in his youth).

Though Ron is only eighteen months older than I am, that
difference has always defined our relationship. It was an odd,
yet defining moment. I sensed a shift between us. For the very
first time, I was “taking care” of Ron-who had forever been
my big brother and a darn good one too.
“Hey listen, call me if you want to get together tonight,” I
clumsily changed the topic.
“I’d like to but I’d better not.”
“Listen, we’ll talk,” I reassured him.
I picked up my computer bag. “Dad, we’ll talk later.”
That’s how it ended that day. Actually there wasn’t an ending,
just a “to be continued”. Our father was sick. We knew where
it would take him and … us. For the moment, he had taken
some steps forward. We were doing our best to honor him.
Somehow it made sense and I think we felt pretty good about that.

Alan D. Busch