These Are The Lives That Have Touched Mine
Mr. Irwin Parker, Isser ben Avrum, Z’L
My family and I flew to St. Louis to celebrate a simcha, the bar
mitzvah of my cousin’s son Jeffrey, the grandson of Aunt Iris and Uncle
Marvin. Taking place at Anshes Sholem Knesses Israel where I attended
religious school as a young boy, little could I have expected that a riotous
adventure into both my past and future was about to get underway.
Years before, soon after my parents’ divorce, my mother, brother Ron
and I moved to St. Louis to begin life anew with Grandma Jean. My
mother enrolled us in afternoon cheder at the Epstein Hebrew
Academy. Greatly dissatisfied after only several days, I complained
bitterly to my mother that someone had taped something other than the
“abc(s)” on the wall of my classroom. Whatever it was, I could neither
read it nor did I want to. We cried terribly much, my brother and
I. Between us, we agreed that Epstein Hebrew Academy was not going to
be part of our present or future. My mother, for whom observant
Judaism was of little if any interest, acquiesced. That coup was one of
the few victorious joint operations of our childhood.
Upon the urging of my Uncle Marvin, my mother transferred us to
the religious school of his shul in which, after a hiatus of twenty-five
years, I found myself once again. We arrived there that morning about
thirty minutes before the start of the morning services. Dormant
memories of religious school and Rabbi Benzion “The Boulder” Skoff who,
as it happened, was in attendance awakened that morning. I recall with
fondness Rabbi Skoff, the first rabbi I met-a short, stocky man whose
physical shape reminded me of well … you know … a boulder and whose
voice could be as startlingly powerful as a thunder clap that awakens us
on those stormy, sultry summer nights. Amazingly, he had not changed
at all, the same “tzur gadol” of a man who spoke with a pleasant and
sweet tone ordinarily when you had his undivided attention, but get him
angry and look out! One morning, many years before, he became angry
with us kids and I tell you, the roof beams quaked. Whatever lessons my
teacher may have taught us that day, I do not frankly recall or the reason
for his upset but indelibly engraved in my memory was the wisdom of not
angering Rabbi Skoff!
Jeffrey did incredibly well. I was even honored with hagbah, but the
highlight of the morning was the bar mitzvah boy’s ending brachos over
the haftorah when his voice reached a high melodic pitch: “mekadesh ha
Shabbat.” It seemed so perfectly executed that everyone was b’simcha
upon hearing his final boyishly sweet note - the last taste of the morning
that endured throughout the day-not unlike the matzah of the afikomen
which, when eaten, should endure as the last taste of the meal.
Looking back to that time, it was as if the combination of heavenly
forces, Jeffrey’s bar mitzvah and the melodic and sweet chazzanus of the
cantor’s tenor were converging to steer me along a particular path. If
Yiddishkeit were like a train, it was speeding right past me lest I fail to
leap aboard, grabbing hold of the caboose. I resolved to find a like shul
back home where the sounds would be the same as those I had heard
that Shabbat morning.
I walked into B’nai Emunah, a conservative shul, for the first time
with some trepidation not long after we had returned home from St.
Louis. Having marshaled sufficient gumption to cross the threshold
between reform Judaism-of which I had grown tired-and a more
traditional Judaism that I was sure to find in this surrogate boyhood
shul, I found myself enticingly drawn in by the splendor of an artful
representation of the Aseres Ha Dibros carved into two columns of a
massive marble panel. Yet, some doubt gnawed at me that I may have
bitten off a wee bit too much. Was I ready for this aliyah, this act of going
up, of ascending the ladder of Jewish observance?
Mind you, it hadn’t always been that way. As a matter of fact, I was
at that time finishing two years of a ‘reform tshuva’, if you will. Having
begun to attend Friday night erev Shabbat services with my wife in a
reform temple at which she had been recently hired as executive
director, I looked forward to the sing song erev Shabbat liturgy led mostly
by the cantorial soloist, a lady well- versed in voice and sacred music.
I was on the ascent and had been for some while, but therein lie the
danger of which I was unmindful. Neatly summarized by the adage: “The
family that prays together stays together” I did not foresee what
grave consequences awaited me should I stay this course of
denominational leap-frogging having neither the shared participation
nor approval of my wife and children. Beset with anxiety by my
decision to leave reform, I felt … slightly overwhelmed and often alone.
New friendships and experiences of learning-while attempting to
apply an expression of Judaism that fit my yearnings-consumed me,
as if I were on fire, within a short span of time. I could not avoid
bringing it back home, and it was precisely there where I caused
the greatest disruption and upset. I became a crusader for z’manim.
Candle lighting on Friday night would have to take place at the right
time. No more of this lighting after sundown such as is the custom in
reform temples on Friday night. Well, a fiery furor ignited that erev
Shabbat in our kitchen followed by shrill voices and tears. The Sabbath
Queen must surely have left our home that night out of sheer disgust …
with me.
Not until after about six months had passed did I feel ready
to buy a full shul membership for $600.00, a bit pricey perhaps but I
assured myself that the eventual gain would far exceed the cost of the
investment. Meanwhile, conditions at home worsened.
My initial contact was with Harold Stern, a distinguished-looking
gentleman whom I later learned was rabbi emeritus of the shul, having
served from its pulpit for forty years. Sporting a suede kippah, he sat on
the bench in front of mine. Having noticed a stranger seated behind him,
he turned to me and broke the ice. I sat in the back row in the hope
I would remain inconspicuous for as long as I could, but I soon realized
anonymity was not only impossible but ill-advised for someone who had
come to learn. We had been chatting for a few minutes when I mentioned
I had gone to Rabbi Skoff’s school. I suspected he’d be familiar with
him. As it happened, he was.
Rabbi Stern, a man whose mien seemed locked in a grimace, was
not one to seek out new faces or grasp the hand of the newcomer. Chilly
and distant, I learned he was a bereaved parent, having lost his son
years before after whom the congregation named its school. We each
have our peckel into which we place and carry around our life concerns,
but grieving for a lost child, I could only imagine its enormity exceeded
the size of the peckel itself. So he walked around, Rabbi Stern, a
burdened man, bereft of his son and few if any smiles. Although I never
spoke to him about his loss, the knowledge he had suffered so softened
my perception of such a hardened face.
Though married man I was, I did not own a talis gadol, but rather
one of those questionably kosher tallesim that resemble a scarf
worn around the neck. It was all I had and, not knowing any better,
seemed to work just fine until one day during shacharis, when
seated just behind Rabbi Stern, he turned around and, with a look
befitting his last name, bespoke: “Mr. Busch, purchase a talit gadol for
yourself.”
Minyonim by their very nature become creatures of habit brought on
by the daily, intimate association of each individual with the same cast of
characters. Acceptance, as it were, by such an insular body leaves one
indelibly impressed. Rabbi Stern, though he regularly gave highly
regarded d’varim Torah on Shabbat morning and who sat with the
minyan, was not of the minyan. His tragic past, the loss of his son and
wife, was as if an enormous obstacle had fallen in his path like those
slabs of stone one encounters along certain highways created by civil
engineers whose best efforts leave the rest of us driving but ever mindful
of falling rocks. Rabbi Stern could not do as the psalmist had said:
“ …ivdu Ha Shem b’simcha.”
How often do we consider where the other person was yesterday?
What may have happened, what amalgam of forces and circumstances
congealed to bring that person into our lives today and tomorrow?
I did not meet him that day, but within that minyan sat one Isser
ben Avrum whose acquaintance I was soon to make, but whose
friendship I would forever cherish. Outside the tiny, at times picturesque
refuge of the minyan, he was called Mr. Irwin Parker who, though
small of stature and slight of frame, was a gibor, a lion of a man.
It warms one to be greeted by a smile and an extended hand. Such
middos were naturally characteristic of Mr. Parker, a man whom I met
in his second lifetime. He became my first formative teacher in the ways
of Yiddishkeit when I was forty years old and he in his late seventies or
early eighties who, for reasons I do not know, took me under his wing
and taught me siddur, tallis and t’filin.
“ … ukshartam l'os al yadecha v'hayu letotafos bane einecha.”
So reads the leaf I dedicated to his memory on the Etz Chaim in my
shul. Isser ben Avrum, who had been trained as a pharmacist in
Poland in the years pre-dating WW2, was not, I suppose, an untypical
Jew of his day-not a yeshiva bocher by education, no great chochem of
Gemara-but as a boy had gone to cheder and graduated a mentsh.
A prototype of chesed, there were a few in the congregation who did
not like him, many who loved him, but I dare say not a single soul who
did not respect him. Had you known him as did I and seen how he
interacted with other members of the shul, how he commanded their
respect-not by the arrogance of scholarship or the external, often
superficial signs of piety - but by the kavod they willingly accorded
him and which he characteristically rejected. His was a yiddishe kop but
never a swollen head.
How does one dispute such a man or turn away from his invitation to
impart treasures of the old world from his first lifetime? Like others of his
generation, his life changed irreversibly when the Polish cavalry-as
gallant as it was-proved itself no match for the German blitzkrieg in the
weeks following the first day of September 1939. Although Mr. Parker
survived Mauthausen, his wife and children did not, but a handful of
souls among the incalculable kedoshim . Even the most cursory
examination would reveal that Mr. Parker bore the weight of moral
authority and in whose person resided indisputable proof of the ageless
truism that a new pharaoh arises to destroy us in each generation. He
immigrated to America after the Second World War in the early 1950s.
Beginning his life anew once resettled, Reb Isser-as he allowed me to call
him-remarried and raised a second family.
Though we had to make calls sometimes when short a man or two,
helping out afforded me the opportunity to earn my stripes from Mr.
Parker. “Making a minyan” was a necessity every night. It was that
simple. I gravitated toward Mr. Parker to whom I was drawn like an iron
filing in search of a magnet. Perhaps he saw in me a fledgling having
fallen from the nest or I may have reminded him of someone he had lost
in his first life. Frankly, I do not know, but I remain grateful to this man
and his memory.
Though I would have preferred it had he shown me in private, what
he may have lacked in delicacy he more than made up in generosity.
One summer evening before mincha, Mr. Parker reached into the cabinet
below the reading table and pulled out a small blue velvet bag containing
an aged pair of t’filin.
“Roll up your sleeve,” he nodded toward my left arm. “Slip your arm
through this loop and slide it up to your bicep.”
“Like this?’ I wondered, my legs shaking.
“No, no. You see this knot? It has to be on the inside facing your heart.”
“Oh, okay. Got it.”
We tightened and wound, recited the brocho and donned the rosh.
Since that day, I have felt altogether different about myself, as
though I had been shown the ways of our fathers by a guide
genuine for having survived their worst travails.
He was undoubtedly the handiwork of The One Above whose ways-
while mostly unfathomable-are sometimes discernible in certain
individuals such as Reb Isser. Were it otherwise, the amazing stories of
seemingly ordinary people-whose tales of perilous survival and
reincarnation leave us dumbstruck-would be otherwise inexplicable
unless we relied on "blind luck" as an explanation.
Were you fortunate enough in your childhood to spend some great
times with your grandpa? Well, this is what Mr. Parker, the most
important of all and, by extension, the other gentleman of the minyan
meant to me, an opportunity to learn the basics from ten “grandpas” at
once!
That was its selling point. I had always related easily to older folks
from whom I recognized there was so much to learn. Without
trying to sound boastful, I had had “derech eretz” toward our
grandfathers and mothers-no matter whose they were- even before I
knew what it meant. To rise up before the “hoary head” was what one
did. A tiny group, the minyan was comprised mostly of elderly
gentlemen several of whom were Holocaust survivors. Its charm and
secret lay in its haimishness-the very environment I sought that would
steer me along the path to a higher level of observance. I knew I could
not have gleaned that from the culture of the main sanctuary.
Other than the few shelves containing finger-worn siddurim and
chumashim, there were no other books in the chapel. It was not a beis
medrash, but a simple, cozy room adjacent to the rabbi’s office. We sat
on benches rather than individual seats. Opposite the stained glass but
facing the benches was a reading table for the Torah services and which
served as an omed for the shleach tzibur. The aron kodesh was plainly-
fashioned and set into the northeast corner of the chapel housing one
Sefer Torah. We had no mechitzah though moot ordinarily because few
women ever came to services. It was a warm, intimate place wherein I
made many new friends.
The minhag of the chapel minyan tended away from conservative
practice but was still quite distant from orthodox rite although many of
its regulars had been raised in orthodox homes. One of the minyan’s
more learned members was once asked by a concerned friend if he
felt ill. Seen with his head down resting on his left forearm as if he
were experiencing dizziness or a headache, he raised his head and
explained that he was davening Tachanun.
Mr. Parker bore an uncanny resemblance to my maternal
grandfather, Harry Austin, a man I dearly loved but who had left my
grandmother to raise my mom and Aunt Iris by herself. Aunt Iris never
forgave him whereas my mom did to a certain extent. I loved him in part
because I felt bad for him. He had made it very hard on my grandma,
aunt and mom in their earlier years, but he was always good to me as
well as to his other grandsons. I know he knew I loved him. Of his five
grandsons, he bequeathed his diamond ring to me.
My friendship with Mr. Parker may have seemed odd to some, I
suppose. I brought him home one afternoon to meet my family with such
great excitement it was as if I were bringing home a new school chum.
While we sipped tea in the kitchen, I showed Mr. Parker a photo of my
Grandpa Austin whose uncanny likeness to himself was remarkable. Like
my grandfather, Mr. Parker placed a sugar cube or two, which I
happened to have had in the pantry that afternoon, in his mouth
between his lower lip and gum where it functioned as a filter through
which the tea passed on its way down. More than simply amused by this
quaint custom, I knew it represented nothing less than a sweet
fragment of an old world-that of our grandfathers and grandmothers.
It was just before Shabbes Mincha. I had been experiencing many
problems at home. My newly acquired “conservative observance” was
causing quite the stir in my family. My wife was furious at me for my
clumsy attempts to impose new rules on the family. She would have
none of it. Tension was high. Our difference of opinion became a yawning
chasm. Naturally the children sided with their mom for the most part.
Shrimp salad was just too good to give up. I had not acknowledged my
wife’s growing exasperation. I balked at the patently obvious truth. They
weren’t empty threats she had made to file for divorce. Her hurt feelings
concretized into resentment. I persisted in deludingly reassuring myself
everything would work out for the best. My wife wondered aloud,
pleadingly: “Why … tell me why are you doing this?” I recall that question
clearly. “So I’ll have something to do when I’m an old man,” I retorted
having Mr. Parker clearly in mind. Later, when I reminded her, she could
not recall my having said that.
We were in the shul’s downstairs kitchen getting shalosh seudos
ready. I had begun to feel close to him by then. I decided I would ask
Reb Isser for his opinion and advice. “He’ll have the answer,” I reassured
myself. We chatted while preparing the several plates of tuna fish, left
over cake from the main sanctuary’s Shabbat service, other assorted
leftovers and fishballs. Fishballs? You know those quasi-spherical
leftover bits and pieces from the gefilte fish factory. Thankfully, there was
only an occasional need to use the institutional hand-cranked can
opener, loosely bolted to the counter which together with the barely
tolerable general untidiness, made it a challenge to work in that kitchen.
It was as good a time as any, I reasoned, to seek out his sympathetic
ear into which I related a summary version of the whole story. I had
figured upon a favorable response. Listening politely for several minutes,
he shot back without any equivocation: “Go home to your wife!” in a
thick “Yinglish” accent which reminded me of Myron Cohen. He could not
have said it more plainly, and I should have deferred to the advice of
an older, wiser friend. Ignoring Mr. Parker’s advice, I stuck to my
path distinguished as it was by an appalling dearth of sechel. Guess I
had been hoping for a different opinion.
As the gabbai of the traditional minyan, it was he who chose the
shleach tzibur for whichever service it was at the time. If he gave you the
nod, off you went to the omed. There was no second-guessing or arguing
with Mr. Parker. He spoke with authority. An elderly man when we
became friends, his posture was bent over more than what seemed
typical even for a man of his age due to the beatings he had suffered at
the hands of the thugs at Mauthausen. His broken nose, apparently
never reset properly-became permanently misshapen by the same
perpetrators. The tip of his nose was not aligned with its bridge. His
left eye appeared as if he were looking at someone else when, in fact,
he was looking at you-a condition that required one to look at
his right eye.
A tough, gentle soul, Mr. Parker was, I believe, one of His original
prototypes of which there have been few copies.
Isser ben Avrum, Z’L passed away on erev Rosh Ha Shanah, 2000.
Alan D. Busch, Revised 8/4/07
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Friday, August 03, 2007
Dear Readers,
Bare with me as I iron out some wrinkles in these early drafts of "These Are the People ... "
"You know what that is, right?"
"What? This? Aunt Iris made it for me."
"No, not the sandwich, but what's inside?"
"It's salami, I think?"
"You ever see salami look like that?" he asked, lifting off the slice of bread from atop my
sandwich. "It's tongue!"
"What?!" I spewed out, food particles dripping from my mouth.
I was only six years old or so, my brother Ron seven, when my parents divorced. I have a few
remembrances of each of our two homes in Wilmette, Illinois, our blocks and a few of our
neighbors, one of whom included a 'mean old lady' at the end of the block. All the kids were
scared of her, but I do not think that anyone ever met her, a case of more rumor I guess than
substance.
My father was not at home much-at least I don't recall he was, but working hard as a young
dentist to build his practice from which to support his family. I realize this now for the first time.
As a matter of fact, I have no memories of my dad at home in those years, but I do when, after
my folks had divorced and we moved to St. Louis, he used to drive down three or four times per
year and spend the weekend with my brother and me. He would arrive Saturday morning, pick
us up at my mom's apartment, and off we drove usually to the Holiday Inn by the airport, just
the three of us.
We had three special activities that were pretty much constants when we three were together:
We wrestled in the hotel room making quite the mess; on Saturday night, weather permitting,
we'd frequent the drive-in movies and feast on very sour pickles in brine, popcorn and soda pop.
Our third regular activity was bowling! The bowling alley was a huge one that included a fair
number of pocket billiard tables as well. My dad kept us pretty busy. We had quite a lot to
accomplish in less than two days. He would even give my brother and me driving lessons in the
parking lot of the bowling alley on Sunday morning before it opened for the day.
Something about Sundays really colored my mood. Unlike carefree Saturdays,
Sunday was the day when Dad would be going home. I remember dreading the return back to
my mom's house-not that it had anything to do with Mom-it was simply that I did not want him
to leave. I never did find out what it was that had come between them, but it is unlikely they
could have grown apart because they had not been married that long.
"Come over here boys for a few seconds," my mom said. We stopped what we were doing and
came to sit by mom. "We're moving to St. Louis to live with Grandma.
"Hey! I'll tell Dad!"
"No. Daddy is not coming with us."
"Oh ... why not?"
"Well ... " my mother explained something but I do not have the faintist recollection.
I have said it before that we have moments in our lives the recollection of which defies
forgetfulness. I do not remember why it was that my mom was so angry with me, but indeed
she was one day. For reasons unknown, I think it was something about which she had not
thought very carefully in deciding to punish me by refusing to acknowledge as anyone
she knew.
"Mom ..." I said, walking into the kitchen.
"What? Who are you?" she asked, pouring herself some coffee but not feeling too threatened
by a child, even one she did not "know."
"Mom?" I recall repeating myself, tears beginning to stream down my face, and it went on like
this for a day or so. I recall it vividly to this day. Mind you, my mother is a wonderful woman
and I love her dearly, but on this point i think she was a bit misguided. I cried a lot, upsetting as
it was for my mom to tell me to my face that she did not know me. I was utterly confused by
what she was doing. After all ...
"I could and did recognize her! Why all of a sudden was I was a stranger to her?" Well, as the
expression has it, it left a bruise, actually a permanent injury. No, my mom did not hit me or has
she ever, but from that day I trace the origins of my speech impediment. I started to
stutterer.
As a kid I found myself in the most embarrassing when in countless instances whether in
school or out my speech failed me. Stutterers have it rough for not only does it happen they
suffer the indignity of involuntarily sputtering out a syllable for varying lengths of time, but in
their frantic efforts to enunciate the word they wildly contort their faces. Other kids think it
rather amusing. It isn't!
I was for a while in speech therapy as a young boy. For how long, I really do not know. There
have been stretches of time when I was stutter-free, but would recur only on occasion. When it
did, look out! It was always one of the really bad instances when, after it was all over, I felt like
crawling into a hole and never coming out again.
Bare with me as I iron out some wrinkles in these early drafts of "These Are the People ... "
"You know what that is, right?"
"What? This? Aunt Iris made it for me."
"No, not the sandwich, but what's inside?"
"It's salami, I think?"
"You ever see salami look like that?" he asked, lifting off the slice of bread from atop my
sandwich. "It's tongue!"
"What?!" I spewed out, food particles dripping from my mouth.
I was only six years old or so, my brother Ron seven, when my parents divorced. I have a few
remembrances of each of our two homes in Wilmette, Illinois, our blocks and a few of our
neighbors, one of whom included a 'mean old lady' at the end of the block. All the kids were
scared of her, but I do not think that anyone ever met her, a case of more rumor I guess than
substance.
My father was not at home much-at least I don't recall he was, but working hard as a young
dentist to build his practice from which to support his family. I realize this now for the first time.
As a matter of fact, I have no memories of my dad at home in those years, but I do when, after
my folks had divorced and we moved to St. Louis, he used to drive down three or four times per
year and spend the weekend with my brother and me. He would arrive Saturday morning, pick
us up at my mom's apartment, and off we drove usually to the Holiday Inn by the airport, just
the three of us.
We had three special activities that were pretty much constants when we three were together:
We wrestled in the hotel room making quite the mess; on Saturday night, weather permitting,
we'd frequent the drive-in movies and feast on very sour pickles in brine, popcorn and soda pop.
Our third regular activity was bowling! The bowling alley was a huge one that included a fair
number of pocket billiard tables as well. My dad kept us pretty busy. We had quite a lot to
accomplish in less than two days. He would even give my brother and me driving lessons in the
parking lot of the bowling alley on Sunday morning before it opened for the day.
Something about Sundays really colored my mood. Unlike carefree Saturdays,
Sunday was the day when Dad would be going home. I remember dreading the return back to
my mom's house-not that it had anything to do with Mom-it was simply that I did not want him
to leave. I never did find out what it was that had come between them, but it is unlikely they
could have grown apart because they had not been married that long.
"Come over here boys for a few seconds," my mom said. We stopped what we were doing and
came to sit by mom. "We're moving to St. Louis to live with Grandma.
"Hey! I'll tell Dad!"
"No. Daddy is not coming with us."
"Oh ... why not?"
"Well ... " my mother explained something but I do not have the faintist recollection.
I have said it before that we have moments in our lives the recollection of which defies
forgetfulness. I do not remember why it was that my mom was so angry with me, but indeed
she was one day. For reasons unknown, I think it was something about which she had not
thought very carefully in deciding to punish me by refusing to acknowledge as anyone
she knew.
"Mom ..." I said, walking into the kitchen.
"What? Who are you?" she asked, pouring herself some coffee but not feeling too threatened
by a child, even one she did not "know."
"Mom?" I recall repeating myself, tears beginning to stream down my face, and it went on like
this for a day or so. I recall it vividly to this day. Mind you, my mother is a wonderful woman
and I love her dearly, but on this point i think she was a bit misguided. I cried a lot, upsetting as
it was for my mom to tell me to my face that she did not know me. I was utterly confused by
what she was doing. After all ...
"I could and did recognize her! Why all of a sudden was I was a stranger to her?" Well, as the
expression has it, it left a bruise, actually a permanent injury. No, my mom did not hit me or has
she ever, but from that day I trace the origins of my speech impediment. I started to
stutterer.
As a kid I found myself in the most embarrassing when in countless instances whether in
school or out my speech failed me. Stutterers have it rough for not only does it happen they
suffer the indignity of involuntarily sputtering out a syllable for varying lengths of time, but in
their frantic efforts to enunciate the word they wildly contort their faces. Other kids think it
rather amusing. It isn't!
I was for a while in speech therapy as a young boy. For how long, I really do not know. There
have been stretches of time when I was stutter-free, but would recur only on occasion. When it
did, look out! It was always one of the really bad instances when, after it was all over, I felt like
crawling into a hole and never coming out again.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Dear Readers,
Thank you for your support, as always.
"My Dearest Friends"
In these times of emotional stress and upheaval, after suffering the loss of my kallah's love, I
plunged into a deep morass; now mind u, I am no psychologist, but it surely did seem that I was
clinically depressed. Would I tell this to my mother? Of course not! Though I love her dearly,
after all ... she would have insisted upon coming up, started to cook for me, and I ask you, where
then would I be?
Seriously, it got to such a point-this emotional upheaval, this wildly stressful "rollercoaster
ride," that I stepped out on to my driveway one night, walked over to the giant evergreen on
my front lawn, lay my forehead against its roughly-hewn bark and simply began ... weeping.
That's right, a 53 year-old man, standing on his front lawn about 9:30 pm, weeping, then
sobbing .
That was about twenty days after she had left by which time I had become so overwhelmed
with the grief of her absence ... I made a decision, a rather amazing one given my nature. More
incredible was that I was even able to make a decision at all-no less an important one. Simply, I
needed help and soon. In moments such as these it's a brocho to have family and dear friends
close.
"Zac, " I said, "call Rabbi Louis on my phone and let him know I need to see him now. It's an
emergency!"
"Dad, what?" he asked, with a look of great fright on his face.
"Son, just give him a call and that I'll be coming over." I did this -not as a chutzpa, but in
acceptance of Rabbi Louis and Rebbitzen's earlier invitation that I call them if things became too
rough. Well, indeed they had!
"May I speak with Rabbi, please?" Zac inquired.
"The Rabbi's not in now. Who's calling?"
"Oh, Mrs. L. This is Zac. My dad asked me to call."
"Son, may I have the phone for a moment?"
"Hi Sara, this is Alan, may I come over?
"Alan, yes of course," sensing my distress. "Rabbi is speaking with someone right now at the
shul, but he'll be home soon. I'll let him know now to expect u."
"Thank you, Sara. I'll be over shortly." I lumbered over to their home about a block and a half
away. The shul is adjacent. I knocked once.
"Forgive my appearance, Sara," I asked, looking and feeling slovenly. I hadn't tucked in my shirt
or my tzitzis." Wanting to appear somewhat cheery though truth be told I felt as low as I had
the day Ben died.
"Yea, after Tisha b' Av, I shaved off those darn white whiskers. Made me feel so old."
" You look great with or without them, " opined Benzie, the Rabbi and Sara's older son, while he
sat at the dining room table just, it seemed, finishing up dinner. His sister, "T"-as she is
sometimes called- sat across from him nodding in agreement.
"Sara ... "
"Wait. Let me send the kids out of the room."
Before I could open my mouth in strode Rabbi Louis.
I stood up.
Alan D. Busch
8/1/07
Thank you for your support, as always.
"My Dearest Friends"
In these times of emotional stress and upheaval, after suffering the loss of my kallah's love, I
plunged into a deep morass; now mind u, I am no psychologist, but it surely did seem that I was
clinically depressed. Would I tell this to my mother? Of course not! Though I love her dearly,
after all ... she would have insisted upon coming up, started to cook for me, and I ask you, where
then would I be?
Seriously, it got to such a point-this emotional upheaval, this wildly stressful "rollercoaster
ride," that I stepped out on to my driveway one night, walked over to the giant evergreen on
my front lawn, lay my forehead against its roughly-hewn bark and simply began ... weeping.
That's right, a 53 year-old man, standing on his front lawn about 9:30 pm, weeping, then
sobbing .
That was about twenty days after she had left by which time I had become so overwhelmed
with the grief of her absence ... I made a decision, a rather amazing one given my nature. More
incredible was that I was even able to make a decision at all-no less an important one. Simply, I
needed help and soon. In moments such as these it's a brocho to have family and dear friends
close.
"Zac, " I said, "call Rabbi Louis on my phone and let him know I need to see him now. It's an
emergency!"
"Dad, what?" he asked, with a look of great fright on his face.
"Son, just give him a call and that I'll be coming over." I did this -not as a chutzpa, but in
acceptance of Rabbi Louis and Rebbitzen's earlier invitation that I call them if things became too
rough. Well, indeed they had!
"May I speak with Rabbi, please?" Zac inquired.
"The Rabbi's not in now. Who's calling?"
"Oh, Mrs. L. This is Zac. My dad asked me to call."
"Son, may I have the phone for a moment?"
"Hi Sara, this is Alan, may I come over?
"Alan, yes of course," sensing my distress. "Rabbi is speaking with someone right now at the
shul, but he'll be home soon. I'll let him know now to expect u."
"Thank you, Sara. I'll be over shortly." I lumbered over to their home about a block and a half
away. The shul is adjacent. I knocked once.
"Forgive my appearance, Sara," I asked, looking and feeling slovenly. I hadn't tucked in my shirt
or my tzitzis." Wanting to appear somewhat cheery though truth be told I felt as low as I had
the day Ben died.
"Yea, after Tisha b' Av, I shaved off those darn white whiskers. Made me feel so old."
" You look great with or without them, " opined Benzie, the Rabbi and Sara's older son, while he
sat at the dining room table just, it seemed, finishing up dinner. His sister, "T"-as she is
sometimes called- sat across from him nodding in agreement.
"Sara ... "
"Wait. Let me send the kids out of the room."
Before I could open my mouth in strode Rabbi Louis.
I stood up.
Alan D. Busch
8/1/07
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Weeping For Loves Lost ...
She said I had never grieved for Ben. Now what I think she may have meant is my
grief for my late son Ben hasn't come to an end, and to the extent that that is true I cannot get
on with the rest of my life. Now there is a problem or two with that point of view: first, let me
state unequivocally there is no end to grief; it is on-going and-as much a part of a bereaved
parent's eveyday life as heading off to work or tidying up the house. Grief becomes, in effect, a
constant in the equation of one's routine.
Closer to the truth of this matter is that I first mourned for our loss of Ben-bound by the
framework of Jewish law and custom- moved onto grief and have never stopped grieving for
him. Grieving for a lost child in not at all like thumbing through old photos that you put away
when you have had enough. No, it is an interminable process-actually over variable stretches of
time it becomes a presence, a part of oneself, a companion.
Memorializing that "presence" is entirely individualized. Each parent finds an appropriate
expression. I chose to write a book. It was something I needed to do.Now unless you don't
already know, this business of book writing is a protracted process; as a matter of fact, writing
mostly consists of rewriting and-as once defined by noted historian William Appleman Williams-
it is the art of applying the seat of one's pants to the seat of one's chair and remaining there until
you have something on paper. Searching for that precise word, that ever so elusive turn of
phrase that will clinch it for the reader-such strivings for that illusive "perfection" take time and
unfathomable amounts of patience.'
The stakes were and remain so high; at risk: my happiness, future, life itself. There were
times when I drove myself hard to finish a chapter, tweek a sentence, give voice to an
amorphous thought. And I know now that regretably too often I was driving myself too hard. It
is almost as if I had been promised a reunification of his body and soul were I to realize that my
son's story needed to be told and that I could do it- everything and more depended on it.
We each choose a "derech," a road, a way, a path. Yes, and one can reasonably expect there
will be detours, rough pavement and traffic snarls along the way. While livng with
loss, one mustn't forsake the living to memorialize the dead. There is, in fact, a time and
place for everything. My most difficult challenge has been to find the balance between my life
and remembering my son's life because we all know what happens when we lose our balance.
That's right ... and the getting up-you can be sure-is indeed painful.
She said I had never grieved for Ben. Now what I think she may have meant is my
grief for my late son Ben hasn't come to an end, and to the extent that that is true I cannot get
on with the rest of my life. Now there is a problem or two with that point of view: first, let me
state unequivocally there is no end to grief; it is on-going and-as much a part of a bereaved
parent's eveyday life as heading off to work or tidying up the house. Grief becomes, in effect, a
constant in the equation of one's routine.
Closer to the truth of this matter is that I first mourned for our loss of Ben-bound by the
framework of Jewish law and custom- moved onto grief and have never stopped grieving for
him. Grieving for a lost child in not at all like thumbing through old photos that you put away
when you have had enough. No, it is an interminable process-actually over variable stretches of
time it becomes a presence, a part of oneself, a companion.
Memorializing that "presence" is entirely individualized. Each parent finds an appropriate
expression. I chose to write a book. It was something I needed to do.Now unless you don't
already know, this business of book writing is a protracted process; as a matter of fact, writing
mostly consists of rewriting and-as once defined by noted historian William Appleman Williams-
it is the art of applying the seat of one's pants to the seat of one's chair and remaining there until
you have something on paper. Searching for that precise word, that ever so elusive turn of
phrase that will clinch it for the reader-such strivings for that illusive "perfection" take time and
unfathomable amounts of patience.'
The stakes were and remain so high; at risk: my happiness, future, life itself. There were
times when I drove myself hard to finish a chapter, tweek a sentence, give voice to an
amorphous thought. And I know now that regretably too often I was driving myself too hard. It
is almost as if I had been promised a reunification of his body and soul were I to realize that my
son's story needed to be told and that I could do it- everything and more depended on it.
We each choose a "derech," a road, a way, a path. Yes, and one can reasonably expect there
will be detours, rough pavement and traffic snarls along the way. While livng with
loss, one mustn't forsake the living to memorialize the dead. There is, in fact, a time and
place for everything. My most difficult challenge has been to find the balance between my life
and remembering my son's life because we all know what happens when we lose our balance.
That's right ... and the getting up-you can be sure-is indeed painful.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Dear Readers,
This story is a revision of a chapter from my unpublished manuscript. It symbolizes a "moving on" of sorts even though it's a look into the past. I dedicate it to all my dear friends and relatives and to my daughter "Kimushkele" (an endearment) in particular who have sheparded me through some very rough times of late, and I am thankful they have chosen to stick by me in good times and bad, especially in the latter when love's mettle is cast into the fiery furnace. If it truly is love as its claimant says it is, then it'll be steeled, strengthened by trial, as it were, but if it had never been the real thing, not only would it never survive the fiery furnace but will in fact run away from such a challenge, revealing that at best it was never more than a mere chimera.
Ben’s Cough: Story of An Act of Trust and Kindness
We seldom hear of the many acts of decency
and loving-kindness that make this world a better
place. In a world ever tending toward chaos, knowledge
of such acts of human decency would renew our flagging
hope in hope itself if we heard about them more frequently.
Ben's mom booked a weekend stay for our family in
Wisconsin. It would be just right, far away sufficiently to make
it seem like a vacation but conveniently only two hours from
home.
Our kids were young then and, as with any family outing,
its anticipation was at least as much fun as all the good stuff
you do after you get there. However, the ride up turned out a
bit bumpy. We had set out in one of two family cars, the one
we thought might afford us the more comfortable ride.
And it was going well until after we had gone about ten
miles from home. An old mechanical problem that hadn’t
arisen in a while arose. We pulled over. Oh, not to worry, my
wife and I knew what the problem was and that it couldn’t be
repaired anytime too soon.
“Okay let’s do this,” she began. “Wait here with the kids at
Dunkin Donuts, and I’ll get the other car.”
“How are you gonna do that?”
“We’ll call the auto club. They’ll tow the car back home and
give me a ride at the same time, right?”
“Yep. Sounds like a plan.”
And it was a good one at that. Two hours later, she
was back driving our other car, we packed the trunk, and off
we went uneventfully to the hotel.
Arriving about 2:00 or so, we checked in while the kids ran
off to our room, put on their suits and hurried over to the pool.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing and having fun.
Hours later while we were asleep at 2:30 a.m., Ben began
coughing and coughing and coughing. Believe me when I tell
you it wasn’t a merely ticklish, sore throat, but an unrelenting
deep hacking. Always a sound sleeper, Ben’s mom … slept. So
did Kimmy, but Ben and I were up.
“Give him some cough syrup, right?’
“Well, we forgot it!”
‘Should be a quick fix anyway, right?’
“Wrong!
Ben was diabetic and could not take other than
sugar-free cough medicine, a product not available
everywhere. I checked the phone book and learned
the nearest 24-hour pharmacy was an hour away in
Milwaukee. There just had to be something closer.
Meanwhile, Ben continued coughing uninterruptedly.
Unless I took action quickly, I feared, it might precipitate
an episode of hypoglycemia –a consequence I wished to
avoid at all costs.
So I decided to leave on what became a frenzied mission to
buy sugar-free cough medicine somehow, somewhere at about
3:00 in the wee hours of the morning. I assure you it is not an
easy order to fill.
Grabbing my keys, I got in my car and raced up and down
the local highway until I found a mini-mart at 3:30 a.m.
Although the store was closed at that hour, one could
purchase gas from the attendant seated in a glass
booth. Worried he might sense the transparency of my
smile or even worse call the police, I approached him
reluctantly, feigning normalcy as well I could. Sensing
my presence, the attendant diverted his eyes from his
magazine and looked up-a mien of supreme indifference
etched on his face.
“Uh, excuse me, sir. I know your store is closed, but I have a
sick child at home and am in search of a special medicine.
Might I come in for a moment?" I pled.
“Well,” he paused, looking around and me over, “uh, … okay,
come on in.”
He buzzed me in which he needn’t have done. Under no
obligation to risk his job or put himself in harm’s way, he
would have been perfectly justified had he not done so but
he did! His choice, I prefer to think, was an act of
trust! He took a risk although it is probably true he wasn’t
thinking about any of this at the time. Even more amazing was
the one single bottle of the cough medicine I sought sitting on
the shelf. Snatching it as if there were someone else in the
store looking for the same thing, I paid the clerk, thanked him
profusely, and sped away anxiously hoping my successful
efforts may not have come too late.
Several minutes later, I was greatly relieved to find
everyone exactly as I had left them.
“I got it,” I shouted in a hushed tone.
“Open. Say ‘ahhhh.’”
“But Dad I hate cough syrup,” he protested, hoping I’d
back down.
“Ben, at this point, I don’t really care. Now open,” I insisted.
Notwithstanding his dislike of cough medicine, I
would not tolerate anything less than a fully cooperative
and silent mouth! Ben would swallow it regardless of its taste
which, by the way, he did. Within minutes his coughing
stopped. There was still time left. Together we dozed off.
Alan D. Busch
Revised 7/26/07
Copyright 2007
This story is a revision of a chapter from my unpublished manuscript. It symbolizes a "moving on" of sorts even though it's a look into the past. I dedicate it to all my dear friends and relatives and to my daughter "Kimushkele" (an endearment) in particular who have sheparded me through some very rough times of late, and I am thankful they have chosen to stick by me in good times and bad, especially in the latter when love's mettle is cast into the fiery furnace. If it truly is love as its claimant says it is, then it'll be steeled, strengthened by trial, as it were, but if it had never been the real thing, not only would it never survive the fiery furnace but will in fact run away from such a challenge, revealing that at best it was never more than a mere chimera.
Ben’s Cough: Story of An Act of Trust and Kindness
We seldom hear of the many acts of decency
and loving-kindness that make this world a better
place. In a world ever tending toward chaos, knowledge
of such acts of human decency would renew our flagging
hope in hope itself if we heard about them more frequently.
Ben's mom booked a weekend stay for our family in
Wisconsin. It would be just right, far away sufficiently to make
it seem like a vacation but conveniently only two hours from
home.
Our kids were young then and, as with any family outing,
its anticipation was at least as much fun as all the good stuff
you do after you get there. However, the ride up turned out a
bit bumpy. We had set out in one of two family cars, the one
we thought might afford us the more comfortable ride.
And it was going well until after we had gone about ten
miles from home. An old mechanical problem that hadn’t
arisen in a while arose. We pulled over. Oh, not to worry, my
wife and I knew what the problem was and that it couldn’t be
repaired anytime too soon.
“Okay let’s do this,” she began. “Wait here with the kids at
Dunkin Donuts, and I’ll get the other car.”
“How are you gonna do that?”
“We’ll call the auto club. They’ll tow the car back home and
give me a ride at the same time, right?”
“Yep. Sounds like a plan.”
And it was a good one at that. Two hours later, she
was back driving our other car, we packed the trunk, and off
we went uneventfully to the hotel.
Arriving about 2:00 or so, we checked in while the kids ran
off to our room, put on their suits and hurried over to the pool.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing and having fun.
Hours later while we were asleep at 2:30 a.m., Ben began
coughing and coughing and coughing. Believe me when I tell
you it wasn’t a merely ticklish, sore throat, but an unrelenting
deep hacking. Always a sound sleeper, Ben’s mom … slept. So
did Kimmy, but Ben and I were up.
“Give him some cough syrup, right?’
“Well, we forgot it!”
‘Should be a quick fix anyway, right?’
“Wrong!
Ben was diabetic and could not take other than
sugar-free cough medicine, a product not available
everywhere. I checked the phone book and learned
the nearest 24-hour pharmacy was an hour away in
Milwaukee. There just had to be something closer.
Meanwhile, Ben continued coughing uninterruptedly.
Unless I took action quickly, I feared, it might precipitate
an episode of hypoglycemia –a consequence I wished to
avoid at all costs.
So I decided to leave on what became a frenzied mission to
buy sugar-free cough medicine somehow, somewhere at about
3:00 in the wee hours of the morning. I assure you it is not an
easy order to fill.
Grabbing my keys, I got in my car and raced up and down
the local highway until I found a mini-mart at 3:30 a.m.
Although the store was closed at that hour, one could
purchase gas from the attendant seated in a glass
booth. Worried he might sense the transparency of my
smile or even worse call the police, I approached him
reluctantly, feigning normalcy as well I could. Sensing
my presence, the attendant diverted his eyes from his
magazine and looked up-a mien of supreme indifference
etched on his face.
“Uh, excuse me, sir. I know your store is closed, but I have a
sick child at home and am in search of a special medicine.
Might I come in for a moment?" I pled.
“Well,” he paused, looking around and me over, “uh, … okay,
come on in.”
He buzzed me in which he needn’t have done. Under no
obligation to risk his job or put himself in harm’s way, he
would have been perfectly justified had he not done so but
he did! His choice, I prefer to think, was an act of
trust! He took a risk although it is probably true he wasn’t
thinking about any of this at the time. Even more amazing was
the one single bottle of the cough medicine I sought sitting on
the shelf. Snatching it as if there were someone else in the
store looking for the same thing, I paid the clerk, thanked him
profusely, and sped away anxiously hoping my successful
efforts may not have come too late.
Several minutes later, I was greatly relieved to find
everyone exactly as I had left them.
“I got it,” I shouted in a hushed tone.
“Open. Say ‘ahhhh.’”
“But Dad I hate cough syrup,” he protested, hoping I’d
back down.
“Ben, at this point, I don’t really care. Now open,” I insisted.
Notwithstanding his dislike of cough medicine, I
would not tolerate anything less than a fully cooperative
and silent mouth! Ben would swallow it regardless of its taste
which, by the way, he did. Within minutes his coughing
stopped. There was still time left. Together we dozed off.
Alan D. Busch
Revised 7/26/07
Copyright 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
“Lamentations”
(Special thanks to my teacher Ruchama King Feuerman and my fellow students.)
I mourn our "death" as kallah and chossen. Our marriage ended after only fifteen
months. I won't remark how sadly apropos its timing may seem, but the fact
remains that its coincidence with the Ninth of Av seems to call out for attention.
The Jewish people mourns its many national calamities on this day, Tisha B' Av, starting with
the destruction of the Beis Ha Mikdash through the Churban of the Second World War right up
to the contemporary threat of "Islamofascism" to destroy the Jewish state. It is said that
whomever does not mourn the ancient destruction of Jerusalem, "Ir Ha Kodesh," will not merit
to celebrate its messianic restoration.
I too am practiced in the ways of mourning. The effects of personal calamity have
accompanied me since the death of my son Benjamin in November of 2000. As profoundly
devastating as is our national past, so too are the beats of a broken heart and the tangibly
nagging pain in my gut. To my beloved I turn whose love I have lost.
On the day when Jews worldwide will publicly mourn a plethora of tragedies that have
befallen them on this joyless day, my own sense of national mourning is diminished. I struggle
to accept the absence of my kallah whose genuine return I should no longer expect.
I remain in isolation for several days. Grief darkens my days and nights. I turn to my shul
community for comfort and companionship. There I met an elderly man patiently awaiting
Mincha.
"Good evening, Sir."
"Good Evening," he responded with the slightest hint of a smile. “I was worried
we would not have a minyan. It's nearly time, and I've yahrzeit for Ma'ariv.
"Oh," I sought to quickly reassure him. "We'll have a minyan, guaranteed. Please
don't worry about that. Your name, Sir?” I asked.
"Talisman, Irving Talisman," he said.
I saw he had chosen to almost say"Yitzhak," his Hebrew name, but did not.
A slight man with rounded back, he seemed a tiny bit hard of hearing, a little nervous and quite
sad.
"Reb Talisman," I addressed him. "For your wife, your parents, you have
yahrzeit?” Twisting his left arm over with the assistance of his right hand, he
showed me six numbers. Looking up at me with his glistening eyes, they
bespoke the truth, but his lips uttered "my parents" whisperingly. Only
moments before had I looked at his arms for that same sign but did not see it.
Just a slight rotation of his forearm revealed the green subcutaneous numerals.
I was moved.
Though I had seen such tattoos before, in Reb Talisman's case, he presented his
almost as if it were a badge, of honor or shame, I am not sure. Sunken and sallow, his eyes
looked to me as if he had been crying and were underscored by dark rings-a sign almost as
indelibly permanent as the horror of his tattoo. I just wanted to take care of this man.
"This way, Reb Talisman," pointing to the Rabbi Aron & Rebbitzen Ella
Soloveitchik Beis Medrash, some twenty paces down the hallway from where
we stood. Together we opened the door. Reb Dalisman paused.
"Should we enter? There seems to be a bar mitzvah lesson going on." Indeed
there was. Rabbi Louis, looking perturbed, was just finishing up as the bar mitzvah boy chimed
his way through Kaddish Shalem. Rabbi- seeing that I was escorting an elderly gentleman to
minyan-saved his upset for the next two hapless fellows who followed us in after we had shut
the door.
"Close it!" Rabbi barked.
"Abba, it's 8:05. Time,"said Benzie, emphatically pointing repeatedly to the face of his watch.
Reb Talisman slowly approached the one chair unlike any other in the beis
medrash, a comfortable seat though not of the stackable variety, well-
cushioned and distinctively but peculiarly pink in color. It had been the favorite
of Reb Helman, the late father of Rabbi Louis's wife Sara Etta. Rabbi gave a klop on
his shtender.
"Ashrei yoshvei v'secha ... ," we davened Mincha, but when came time for Ma'ariv, I had lost all
my kevana, my focus. I began thinking of her, she filled my head, and I knew she'd not be
home when I opened the door. Now I am aware one should look toward the
heavens should he feel his devotion waning, but I just couldn't. I closed my
siddur and stared out the window.
"Maybe she'll pass by," I mused, "or drop in to meet me." I turned to
the doorway thinking I had heard a feminine voice! Oh … just one of the
younger guys.
"Amen. Yehey shmey rabba ..."
The beis medrash emptied. I escorted Reb Talisman to his car.
"Good night, Sir," I smiled.
"Good night," he said appreciatively. I touched his arm hoping to comfort him. He nodded a
"thank you" as he got into his car.
I watched as he drove away while I fumbled for my keys.
Living close to the shul does have its advantages, but proximity does not allow for much
reflection. I'm good at tiny acts of self-deception and within the time space of one minute, I
convinced myself that her car might be in the driveway. My heart felt lighter though it pounded
desperately.
"How nachesdik would it be to share this story with her!" I turned on the ignition.
"There surely has to be a lesson here," I reflected.
Others grieve too as do I for love lost. Bringing a smile to a thin, worn face and lightening the
burden of an elderly Jew made this one of the nine days just a little less grievous. For my
Kallah's return, I remain helplessly hopeful.
Alan D. Busch
Revised 7/23/07
7/17/07
(Special thanks to my teacher Ruchama King Feuerman and my fellow students.)
I mourn our "death" as kallah and chossen. Our marriage ended after only fifteen
months. I won't remark how sadly apropos its timing may seem, but the fact
remains that its coincidence with the Ninth of Av seems to call out for attention.
The Jewish people mourns its many national calamities on this day, Tisha B' Av, starting with
the destruction of the Beis Ha Mikdash through the Churban of the Second World War right up
to the contemporary threat of "Islamofascism" to destroy the Jewish state. It is said that
whomever does not mourn the ancient destruction of Jerusalem, "Ir Ha Kodesh," will not merit
to celebrate its messianic restoration.
I too am practiced in the ways of mourning. The effects of personal calamity have
accompanied me since the death of my son Benjamin in November of 2000. As profoundly
devastating as is our national past, so too are the beats of a broken heart and the tangibly
nagging pain in my gut. To my beloved I turn whose love I have lost.
On the day when Jews worldwide will publicly mourn a plethora of tragedies that have
befallen them on this joyless day, my own sense of national mourning is diminished. I struggle
to accept the absence of my kallah whose genuine return I should no longer expect.
I remain in isolation for several days. Grief darkens my days and nights. I turn to my shul
community for comfort and companionship. There I met an elderly man patiently awaiting
Mincha.
"Good evening, Sir."
"Good Evening," he responded with the slightest hint of a smile. “I was worried
we would not have a minyan. It's nearly time, and I've yahrzeit for Ma'ariv.
"Oh," I sought to quickly reassure him. "We'll have a minyan, guaranteed. Please
don't worry about that. Your name, Sir?” I asked.
"Talisman, Irving Talisman," he said.
I saw he had chosen to almost say"Yitzhak," his Hebrew name, but did not.
A slight man with rounded back, he seemed a tiny bit hard of hearing, a little nervous and quite
sad.
"Reb Talisman," I addressed him. "For your wife, your parents, you have
yahrzeit?” Twisting his left arm over with the assistance of his right hand, he
showed me six numbers. Looking up at me with his glistening eyes, they
bespoke the truth, but his lips uttered "my parents" whisperingly. Only
moments before had I looked at his arms for that same sign but did not see it.
Just a slight rotation of his forearm revealed the green subcutaneous numerals.
I was moved.
Though I had seen such tattoos before, in Reb Talisman's case, he presented his
almost as if it were a badge, of honor or shame, I am not sure. Sunken and sallow, his eyes
looked to me as if he had been crying and were underscored by dark rings-a sign almost as
indelibly permanent as the horror of his tattoo. I just wanted to take care of this man.
"This way, Reb Talisman," pointing to the Rabbi Aron & Rebbitzen Ella
Soloveitchik Beis Medrash, some twenty paces down the hallway from where
we stood. Together we opened the door. Reb Dalisman paused.
"Should we enter? There seems to be a bar mitzvah lesson going on." Indeed
there was. Rabbi Louis, looking perturbed, was just finishing up as the bar mitzvah boy chimed
his way through Kaddish Shalem. Rabbi- seeing that I was escorting an elderly gentleman to
minyan-saved his upset for the next two hapless fellows who followed us in after we had shut
the door.
"Close it!" Rabbi barked.
"Abba, it's 8:05. Time,"said Benzie, emphatically pointing repeatedly to the face of his watch.
Reb Talisman slowly approached the one chair unlike any other in the beis
medrash, a comfortable seat though not of the stackable variety, well-
cushioned and distinctively but peculiarly pink in color. It had been the favorite
of Reb Helman, the late father of Rabbi Louis's wife Sara Etta. Rabbi gave a klop on
his shtender.
"Ashrei yoshvei v'secha ... ," we davened Mincha, but when came time for Ma'ariv, I had lost all
my kevana, my focus. I began thinking of her, she filled my head, and I knew she'd not be
home when I opened the door. Now I am aware one should look toward the
heavens should he feel his devotion waning, but I just couldn't. I closed my
siddur and stared out the window.
"Maybe she'll pass by," I mused, "or drop in to meet me." I turned to
the doorway thinking I had heard a feminine voice! Oh … just one of the
younger guys.
"Amen. Yehey shmey rabba ..."
The beis medrash emptied. I escorted Reb Talisman to his car.
"Good night, Sir," I smiled.
"Good night," he said appreciatively. I touched his arm hoping to comfort him. He nodded a
"thank you" as he got into his car.
I watched as he drove away while I fumbled for my keys.
Living close to the shul does have its advantages, but proximity does not allow for much
reflection. I'm good at tiny acts of self-deception and within the time space of one minute, I
convinced myself that her car might be in the driveway. My heart felt lighter though it pounded
desperately.
"How nachesdik would it be to share this story with her!" I turned on the ignition.
"There surely has to be a lesson here," I reflected.
Others grieve too as do I for love lost. Bringing a smile to a thin, worn face and lightening the
burden of an elderly Jew made this one of the nine days just a little less grievous. For my
Kallah's return, I remain helplessly hopeful.
Alan D. Busch
Revised 7/23/07
7/17/07
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Dear Readers,
Special thanks to my friend Renee for one of the key ideas in this post!
All these words I dedicate to my Kallah. May she be safe!
In the previous post, I told you the number of persons with whom I bond makes up a mere handful of souls. I suppose that is not so entirely unusual, but it does certainly acknowledge the veracity of the adage that Quality-not Quantity-is the measure by which friendship becomes love.
While seeking to avoid the truly "schmaltzdik," we see love exists between two persons when both are willing, able and ready to give of themselves to the other. In that case, we have what I'll call "reciprocal love." There is also for lack of a better name "potentially reciprocal love." In this instance, one of the two cannot yet and/or is not ready to give of him/herself to the point of willingly making excruciating sacrifices. That ability will come, let us hope, in time but at present it's not quite there. This particular issue has no necessary linkage to the ability to make proper moral choices.
So what happens? Here, I'll tell it like this ... I will let go of my Kallah because at this point in time, there is an existential void in her experience that can be filled only by her leaving and my letting go. Do I like it? No, of course not, but I demonstrate my love for her by not standing in her way so that she will be able to fill the void she truly believes needs filling. If she cannot, happiness will elude her. And if she is not happy, then neither can I be. In this way, she leaves knowing who loves her. It is not unlike the unconditional nature of the love we have for our children.
Mind you, I am no hero or anyone seeking the martyr of the year award. I would rather she not need to go and i've got the tear-saturated tissues to prove it, but my choices are limited. By not standing in her way, she witnesses indisputable proof of my love for her. Of course, I do not like it but there are such times in life when letting go is the only right choice. Difficult? May you never have to find out! Though it is equally true that anything less would constitute selfish, stifling greed.
This is why the song "Time to Say Goodbye" is so gut wrenchingly painful because it speaks to one of life's several great truths ... that to love another genuinely requires that, as in this instance, I let go. And it isn't that my fingertips were not doing their "darndest" to hold her close! But the fact remains, and this you could not have known. She always beat me in thumb wrestling! Were life not so complex, such problems would not arise, but they do.
So, I am entirely confident my Kallah knows I love her enough to say goodbye. One more point ... I do not believe in changing locks. That would render the new copy of the housekey I'm going to have made and give her rather moot, wouldn't it?
You ask ... what if she does not come back? To which I respond ... I am thankful for the time we did have together rather than bemoaning the time we didn't. I have written elsewhere that I will never say-once upon a time-I HAD a son named Ben. He is and will always remain in my present tense. So it is with my Kallah. Though she has left, she is not in my past but will remain in my present tense. In this way, the door not only remains open but unlocked! Should I forget, well ... you'll have your key, right?
Special thanks to my friend Renee for one of the key ideas in this post!
All these words I dedicate to my Kallah. May she be safe!
In the previous post, I told you the number of persons with whom I bond makes up a mere handful of souls. I suppose that is not so entirely unusual, but it does certainly acknowledge the veracity of the adage that Quality-not Quantity-is the measure by which friendship becomes love.
While seeking to avoid the truly "schmaltzdik," we see love exists between two persons when both are willing, able and ready to give of themselves to the other. In that case, we have what I'll call "reciprocal love." There is also for lack of a better name "potentially reciprocal love." In this instance, one of the two cannot yet and/or is not ready to give of him/herself to the point of willingly making excruciating sacrifices. That ability will come, let us hope, in time but at present it's not quite there. This particular issue has no necessary linkage to the ability to make proper moral choices.
So what happens? Here, I'll tell it like this ... I will let go of my Kallah because at this point in time, there is an existential void in her experience that can be filled only by her leaving and my letting go. Do I like it? No, of course not, but I demonstrate my love for her by not standing in her way so that she will be able to fill the void she truly believes needs filling. If she cannot, happiness will elude her. And if she is not happy, then neither can I be. In this way, she leaves knowing who loves her. It is not unlike the unconditional nature of the love we have for our children.
Mind you, I am no hero or anyone seeking the martyr of the year award. I would rather she not need to go and i've got the tear-saturated tissues to prove it, but my choices are limited. By not standing in her way, she witnesses indisputable proof of my love for her. Of course, I do not like it but there are such times in life when letting go is the only right choice. Difficult? May you never have to find out! Though it is equally true that anything less would constitute selfish, stifling greed.
This is why the song "Time to Say Goodbye" is so gut wrenchingly painful because it speaks to one of life's several great truths ... that to love another genuinely requires that, as in this instance, I let go. And it isn't that my fingertips were not doing their "darndest" to hold her close! But the fact remains, and this you could not have known. She always beat me in thumb wrestling! Were life not so complex, such problems would not arise, but they do.
So, I am entirely confident my Kallah knows I love her enough to say goodbye. One more point ... I do not believe in changing locks. That would render the new copy of the housekey I'm going to have made and give her rather moot, wouldn't it?
You ask ... what if she does not come back? To which I respond ... I am thankful for the time we did have together rather than bemoaning the time we didn't. I have written elsewhere that I will never say-once upon a time-I HAD a son named Ben. He is and will always remain in my present tense. So it is with my Kallah. Though she has left, she is not in my past but will remain in my present tense. In this way, the door not only remains open but unlocked! Should I forget, well ... you'll have your key, right?
See you at Starbucks.
Alan
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Dear Readers,
This post is a revision of the previous one. I apologize if I'm driving you crazy with revisions and more revisions, but it's what I do. Writing is best defined as "rewriting."
Those who know me closely know how few are the persons to whom I bond closely. And that bond is so extraordinarily strong that there is nothing I wouldn't do for them. They know who they are. I make no secret about my love for them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I mourn the "death" of "us", of my kallah[1] and me whose marriage lasted but
fifteen months. Sadly, I became all too familiar with the pain of mourning
following the death of my son Benjamin in November of 2000. And as maudlin
as it may sound, I can tell you there is something frighteningly tangible about a
broken heart and the nagging pain in my gut.
Soon Tisha b’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, will be upon us
when Jews worldwide will publicly mourn the destruction of the Beis Ha
Mikdash[2] along with a plethora of innumerable tragedies that befell
us on this joyless day throughout the centuries.
My own sense of mourning for the innumerable tragedies of Jewish history-
which is supposed to heighten as we near that dark day-is diminished while my
thoughts and hopes turn to my beloved whose love I have lost, but whose caring attitude and
friendship I thankfully retain.
At such times when grief monopolizes my days and nights, I turn to my shul
community for comfort and companionship. But something happened there earlier this evening
when I met an elderly man who was patiently awaiting Mincha that was scheduled to begin at
8:15.
"Good evening, Sir."
"Good Evening," he responded with the slightest hint of a smile. "I was worried
we would not have a minyan. It's nearly time, and I've yahrzeit for Ma'ariv.
"Oh," I sought to quickly reassure him. "We'll have a minyan guaranteed. Please
don't worry about that. Your name, Sir?" I asked.
"Dalisman, Irving Dalisman," he said.
I could see he almost said "Yitzhak," his Hebrew name, but did not.
He seemed a tiny bit hard of hearing, a little nervous and quite sad.
"Reb Dalisman," I addressed him. "For your wife, your parents, you have
yahrzeit?" Twisting his left arm over with the assistance of his right hand, he
showed me six numbers. He looked up at me. His glistening eyes bespoke the truth, but his lips
uttered "my parents" whisperingly. Only moments before I looked at his arms for
that same sign but did not see it. Just a small rotation of his forearm
revealed the green subcutaneous numerals. I was speechless. Not that I hadn't
ever seen such a tattoo before, but in Reb Dalisman's case, he presented it as
I had never experienced-almost as if it were a badge, of honor or shame, I am not sure.
His eyes were sunken and sallow as if he had been crying and were underscored by dark rings-a
sign almost as indelibly permanent as the horror of his tattoo. I just wanted to take care of
this man.
"This way, Reb Dalisman," pointing to the Rabbi Aron & Rebbitzen Ella Soloveitchik Beis
Medrash, some twenty paces down the hallway from where we stood. Together we opened the
door. He paused.
"Should we enter? There seems to be a bar mitzvah lesson going on." Indeed
there was. Rabbi Louis was just finishing up as the "bocher" chimed his
way through Kaddish Shalem. Rabbi looked disturbed. Seeing that I was
escorting an elderly gentleman to minyan, he saved his upset for the next two
hapless fellows who followed us in after we had shut the door.
"Close it!" Rabbi barked.
"Abba, it's 8:05. Time for mincha. We have a minyan," said Benzie who, as it
happened, was one of the two who came in after us. Reb Dalisman slowly approached the one
chair unlike any other in the beis medrash, a comfortable seat though not of the stackable
variety, well-cushioned and distinctively but peculiarly pink in color. It had been the favorite
chair of Reb Helman, the late father of Rabbi Louis's wife Saretta. Rabbi Louis gave a klop on his
shtender.
"Ashrei yoshvei v'secha ... ," we davened Mincha, but when came time for Ma'ariv, I had lost all
my kevana, my focus, and began thinking of her, and how she'd not be there when I arrived
home. Now I am aware that one should look toward the heavens should he feel his devotion
waning, but I just couldn't. I closed my siddur and stared out the window.
"Maybe she'll pass by," I mused, "or drop in to meet me here."
I turned my head to the doorway thinking I had heard a feminine voice! Oh … just one of the
younger guys.
"Amen. Yehey shmey rabba ..."
The beis medrash emptied. I followed Reb Dalisman to his car.
"Good night, Sir," I smiled.
"Good night," he said appreciatively. I touched his arm comfortingly.
I watched as he got in his car and drove away.
I fumbled for my keys.
"There surely has to be a lesson here," I ruminated.
And it was, I concluded, "The One Above" had sent Reb Dalisman to remind me how
others are grieving too and afford me the opportunity to perform the tiniest act of
gemilus chasadim that brought a smile to a thin, worn face and relieve an elderly Jew of his
burden if for but a moment.
I turned on the ignition. How I hoped she’d be home. I would have liked to share this story
with her … perhaps tomorrow.
Alan D. Busch
[1] Hebrew:bride
[2] The ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem
This post is a revision of the previous one. I apologize if I'm driving you crazy with revisions and more revisions, but it's what I do. Writing is best defined as "rewriting."
Those who know me closely know how few are the persons to whom I bond closely. And that bond is so extraordinarily strong that there is nothing I wouldn't do for them. They know who they are. I make no secret about my love for them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I mourn the "death" of "us", of my kallah[1] and me whose marriage lasted but
fifteen months. Sadly, I became all too familiar with the pain of mourning
following the death of my son Benjamin in November of 2000. And as maudlin
as it may sound, I can tell you there is something frighteningly tangible about a
broken heart and the nagging pain in my gut.
Soon Tisha b’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, will be upon us
when Jews worldwide will publicly mourn the destruction of the Beis Ha
Mikdash[2] along with a plethora of innumerable tragedies that befell
us on this joyless day throughout the centuries.
My own sense of mourning for the innumerable tragedies of Jewish history-
which is supposed to heighten as we near that dark day-is diminished while my
thoughts and hopes turn to my beloved whose love I have lost, but whose caring attitude and
friendship I thankfully retain.
At such times when grief monopolizes my days and nights, I turn to my shul
community for comfort and companionship. But something happened there earlier this evening
when I met an elderly man who was patiently awaiting Mincha that was scheduled to begin at
8:15.
"Good evening, Sir."
"Good Evening," he responded with the slightest hint of a smile. "I was worried
we would not have a minyan. It's nearly time, and I've yahrzeit for Ma'ariv.
"Oh," I sought to quickly reassure him. "We'll have a minyan guaranteed. Please
don't worry about that. Your name, Sir?" I asked.
"Dalisman, Irving Dalisman," he said.
I could see he almost said "Yitzhak," his Hebrew name, but did not.
He seemed a tiny bit hard of hearing, a little nervous and quite sad.
"Reb Dalisman," I addressed him. "For your wife, your parents, you have
yahrzeit?" Twisting his left arm over with the assistance of his right hand, he
showed me six numbers. He looked up at me. His glistening eyes bespoke the truth, but his lips
uttered "my parents" whisperingly. Only moments before I looked at his arms for
that same sign but did not see it. Just a small rotation of his forearm
revealed the green subcutaneous numerals. I was speechless. Not that I hadn't
ever seen such a tattoo before, but in Reb Dalisman's case, he presented it as
I had never experienced-almost as if it were a badge, of honor or shame, I am not sure.
His eyes were sunken and sallow as if he had been crying and were underscored by dark rings-a
sign almost as indelibly permanent as the horror of his tattoo. I just wanted to take care of
this man.
"This way, Reb Dalisman," pointing to the Rabbi Aron & Rebbitzen Ella Soloveitchik Beis
Medrash, some twenty paces down the hallway from where we stood. Together we opened the
door. He paused.
"Should we enter? There seems to be a bar mitzvah lesson going on." Indeed
there was. Rabbi Louis was just finishing up as the "bocher" chimed his
way through Kaddish Shalem. Rabbi looked disturbed. Seeing that I was
escorting an elderly gentleman to minyan, he saved his upset for the next two
hapless fellows who followed us in after we had shut the door.
"Close it!" Rabbi barked.
"Abba, it's 8:05. Time for mincha. We have a minyan," said Benzie who, as it
happened, was one of the two who came in after us. Reb Dalisman slowly approached the one
chair unlike any other in the beis medrash, a comfortable seat though not of the stackable
variety, well-cushioned and distinctively but peculiarly pink in color. It had been the favorite
chair of Reb Helman, the late father of Rabbi Louis's wife Saretta. Rabbi Louis gave a klop on his
shtender.
"Ashrei yoshvei v'secha ... ," we davened Mincha, but when came time for Ma'ariv, I had lost all
my kevana, my focus, and began thinking of her, and how she'd not be there when I arrived
home. Now I am aware that one should look toward the heavens should he feel his devotion
waning, but I just couldn't. I closed my siddur and stared out the window.
"Maybe she'll pass by," I mused, "or drop in to meet me here."
I turned my head to the doorway thinking I had heard a feminine voice! Oh … just one of the
younger guys.
"Amen. Yehey shmey rabba ..."
The beis medrash emptied. I followed Reb Dalisman to his car.
"Good night, Sir," I smiled.
"Good night," he said appreciatively. I touched his arm comfortingly.
I watched as he got in his car and drove away.
I fumbled for my keys.
"There surely has to be a lesson here," I ruminated.
And it was, I concluded, "The One Above" had sent Reb Dalisman to remind me how
others are grieving too and afford me the opportunity to perform the tiniest act of
gemilus chasadim that brought a smile to a thin, worn face and relieve an elderly Jew of his
burden if for but a moment.
I turned on the ignition. How I hoped she’d be home. I would have liked to share this story
with her … perhaps tomorrow.
Alan D. Busch
[1] Hebrew:bride
[2] The ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem
Monday, July 16, 2007
Dear Readers,
Please read this short piece in conjunction with the previous post in which I declare my love for my kallah. It replaces the previous post.
Tonight, I went to shul as I do on most nights. Today was the first day of the Hebrew month
of Av during which on its ninth day we publicly mourn the destruction of the Beis Ha Mikdash as
well as a plethora of other dark days throughout the centuries of Jewish history.
This year, as we experience the "nine days" preceding Tisha B' Av, I feel the pangs of
mourning as never before- not as much, I confess, for the myriad of catastrophes that have
befallen the Jewish people on the ninth of Av, as for the "death" of "us" that was
just days before the marriage of my kallah and me. Mind you I know well the pain of mourning
and-as maudlin as it may sound- I can tell you there is something quite tangible about this
nagging pain in my gut and a broken heart.
But something happened at shul tonight. I met an elderly man who was patiently
awaiting mincha that was scheduled to begin at 8:05.
"Good evening, Sir."
"Good Evening," he responded with the slightest hint of a smile. "I was worried we would not
have a minyan. It's nearly time, and I've yahrzeit for Ma'ariv.
"Oh," I sought to quickly reassure him. "We'll have a minyan, guarenteed. Please don't worry
about that. Your name Sir," I asked.
"Dalisman, Irving Dalisman," he said. I could see he almost said "Yitzhak," his Hebrew name,
but did not. He seemed a tiny bit hard of hearing, a little nervous and quite sad.
"Reb Dalisman," I addressed him. "For your wife, your parents, you have yahrzeit?"
Twisting his left arm over with the assistance of his right hand, he showed me six numbers.
He looked up at me. His glistening eyes bespoke the truth, but his lips uttered "My
parents" whisperingly. Only moments before had I looked at his arms for that same sign but did
not see it. Just a small rotation of his forearm revealed the green subcutaneous numerals. I was
speechless. Not that I had never seen such numbers before, but in Reb Dalisman's case he
presented it as I had never before experienced-almost as if it were a badge, of honor or shame,
I am not sure. His eyes were sunken and sallow as if he had been crying and were underscored
by dark rings-a sign almost as indelibly permanent as the horror of his tattoo. I just wanted
to take care of this man.
"This way, Reb Dalisman," pointing to the Rabbi Aron & Rebbitsin Ella Soloveitchik Beis
Medrash, some twenty paces down the hallway from where we stood. Together we opened the
door. Reb Dalisman paused.
"Should we enter? There seems to be a bar mitzvah lesson taking place." Indeed there was.
Rabbi Louis was just finishing his lesson as the bocher chimed his way through Kaddish Shalem.
Looking somwhat perturbed, but seeing that I was escorting an elderly gentleman to minyan,
Rabbi Louis saved his upset for the next two hapless fellows who followed us in but only after we
had shut the door.
"Close it!" Rabbi barked.
"Abba, it's 8:05. Time for mincha. We have a minyan," said Benzie who, as it happened, was one
of the two who came in after me and Reb Dalisman.
Reb Dalisman slowly approached the one chair unlike any other in the beis medrish, a
comfortable seat though not of the stackable variety, well-cushioned and distinctively but
peculiarly pink in color. Butted up too closely against another chair, I pulled it back. He sat down
in what had been the favorite chair of Reb Helman, the late father of Rabbi
Louis's wife, Sara Etta.
Rabbi Louis gave a klop on his shtender.
"Ashrei yoshvei v'secha ... ," we davened Mincha. But when came time for Ma'ariv, I had lost all
of my kevana, focus, and began thinking of my kallah , and how it would be that she'd not
be there when I arrived home. Now I am aware that one should look toward the heavens should
he feel his devotion waning, but I just couldn't. I closed my siddur and stared out the window.
"Maybe she'd pass by," I mused. "Even drop in to meet me here as she had done on several
occasions." I turned my head to the doorway hearing what I had thought to be a feminine voice!
Turns out just one of the younger guys.
"Amen. Yehey shmey rabba ..." the minyan declared.
I followed Reb Dalisman to his car.
"Good night, Sir," I smiled.
"Good night," he said appreciatively. I touched his arm comfortingly.
I watched as Reb Dalisman got in his car and drove away.
"There surely has to be a lesson in all of this," I ruminated, turning the ignition on.
The One Above reminded me that others are suffering too. It was as if He had sent Reb
Dalisman to remind me of this and afford me the opportunity to perform the tiniest act of
gemilus chasadim that brought a smile to a thin, worn face and relief to an elderly Jew
whose burden was lightened if for but a moment.
How I hoped she'd be home. I would have liked to share this story with her ... perhaps
tomorrow.
Alan D. Busch
7/17/07
Please read this short piece in conjunction with the previous post in which I declare my love for my kallah. It replaces the previous post.
Tonight, I went to shul as I do on most nights. Today was the first day of the Hebrew month
of Av during which on its ninth day we publicly mourn the destruction of the Beis Ha Mikdash as
well as a plethora of other dark days throughout the centuries of Jewish history.
This year, as we experience the "nine days" preceding Tisha B' Av, I feel the pangs of
mourning as never before- not as much, I confess, for the myriad of catastrophes that have
befallen the Jewish people on the ninth of Av, as for the "death" of "us" that was
just days before the marriage of my kallah and me. Mind you I know well the pain of mourning
and-as maudlin as it may sound- I can tell you there is something quite tangible about this
nagging pain in my gut and a broken heart.
But something happened at shul tonight. I met an elderly man who was patiently
awaiting mincha that was scheduled to begin at 8:05.
"Good evening, Sir."
"Good Evening," he responded with the slightest hint of a smile. "I was worried we would not
have a minyan. It's nearly time, and I've yahrzeit for Ma'ariv.
"Oh," I sought to quickly reassure him. "We'll have a minyan, guarenteed. Please don't worry
about that. Your name Sir," I asked.
"Dalisman, Irving Dalisman," he said. I could see he almost said "Yitzhak," his Hebrew name,
but did not. He seemed a tiny bit hard of hearing, a little nervous and quite sad.
"Reb Dalisman," I addressed him. "For your wife, your parents, you have yahrzeit?"
Twisting his left arm over with the assistance of his right hand, he showed me six numbers.
He looked up at me. His glistening eyes bespoke the truth, but his lips uttered "My
parents" whisperingly. Only moments before had I looked at his arms for that same sign but did
not see it. Just a small rotation of his forearm revealed the green subcutaneous numerals. I was
speechless. Not that I had never seen such numbers before, but in Reb Dalisman's case he
presented it as I had never before experienced-almost as if it were a badge, of honor or shame,
I am not sure. His eyes were sunken and sallow as if he had been crying and were underscored
by dark rings-a sign almost as indelibly permanent as the horror of his tattoo. I just wanted
to take care of this man.
"This way, Reb Dalisman," pointing to the Rabbi Aron & Rebbitsin Ella Soloveitchik Beis
Medrash, some twenty paces down the hallway from where we stood. Together we opened the
door. Reb Dalisman paused.
"Should we enter? There seems to be a bar mitzvah lesson taking place." Indeed there was.
Rabbi Louis was just finishing his lesson as the bocher chimed his way through Kaddish Shalem.
Looking somwhat perturbed, but seeing that I was escorting an elderly gentleman to minyan,
Rabbi Louis saved his upset for the next two hapless fellows who followed us in but only after we
had shut the door.
"Close it!" Rabbi barked.
"Abba, it's 8:05. Time for mincha. We have a minyan," said Benzie who, as it happened, was one
of the two who came in after me and Reb Dalisman.
Reb Dalisman slowly approached the one chair unlike any other in the beis medrish, a
comfortable seat though not of the stackable variety, well-cushioned and distinctively but
peculiarly pink in color. Butted up too closely against another chair, I pulled it back. He sat down
in what had been the favorite chair of Reb Helman, the late father of Rabbi
Louis's wife, Sara Etta.
Rabbi Louis gave a klop on his shtender.
"Ashrei yoshvei v'secha ... ," we davened Mincha. But when came time for Ma'ariv, I had lost all
of my kevana, focus, and began thinking of my kallah , and how it would be that she'd not
be there when I arrived home. Now I am aware that one should look toward the heavens should
he feel his devotion waning, but I just couldn't. I closed my siddur and stared out the window.
"Maybe she'd pass by," I mused. "Even drop in to meet me here as she had done on several
occasions." I turned my head to the doorway hearing what I had thought to be a feminine voice!
Turns out just one of the younger guys.
"Amen. Yehey shmey rabba ..." the minyan declared.
I followed Reb Dalisman to his car.
"Good night, Sir," I smiled.
"Good night," he said appreciatively. I touched his arm comfortingly.
I watched as Reb Dalisman got in his car and drove away.
"There surely has to be a lesson in all of this," I ruminated, turning the ignition on.
The One Above reminded me that others are suffering too. It was as if He had sent Reb
Dalisman to remind me of this and afford me the opportunity to perform the tiniest act of
gemilus chasadim that brought a smile to a thin, worn face and relief to an elderly Jew
whose burden was lightened if for but a moment.
How I hoped she'd be home. I would have liked to share this story with her ... perhaps
tomorrow.
Alan D. Busch
7/17/07
Friday, July 13, 2007
Time to Say ... I Love You
You say you needed to hear me say it before I could ...
but I wasn't ready.
I felt it though.
You and I had just begun ...
to be an "us."
It seemed so simple then,
before us nary a challenge,
except one: what to say, how to react
when folks mistook us for father and daughter.
Did we ever figure that out?
You know what?
As upsetting at times as it may have seemed ...
I think we revelled in it.
Bold but not unprecedented ...
an older man loves a much younger woman,
but perplexing was how a much younger woman
could love me?
That confounded me, even troubled me at times.
So when you said "I love you" it made me feel special.
It really did!
But I knew something then you may not have known yet.
No fault of your own.
Just a matter of time.
to show you "I love you."
I held those words back because I feared they
might be cheapened if I could not back them up with deeds.
And I wanted to give you only the very best I could because it was
for you, and that meant everything to me and ...
still does.
Because you were ready, but
I was not ...
my words for you I wanted to not utter before it was right,
but like all things for which there comes a time ....
now it is ...
I
love
you.
Alan
You say you needed to hear me say it before I could ...
but I wasn't ready.
I felt it though.
You and I had just begun ...
to be an "us."
It seemed so simple then,
before us nary a challenge,
except one: what to say, how to react
when folks mistook us for father and daughter.
Did we ever figure that out?
You know what?
As upsetting at times as it may have seemed ...
I think we revelled in it.
Bold but not unprecedented ...
an older man loves a much younger woman,
but perplexing was how a much younger woman
could love me?
That confounded me, even troubled me at times.
So when you said "I love you" it made me feel special.
It really did!
But I knew something then you may not have known yet.
No fault of your own.
Just a matter of time.
to show you "I love you."
I held those words back because I feared they
might be cheapened if I could not back them up with deeds.
And I wanted to give you only the very best I could because it was
for you, and that meant everything to me and ...
still does.
Because you were ready, but
I was not ...
my words for you I wanted to not utter before it was right,
but like all things for which there comes a time ....
now it is ...
I
love
you.
Alan
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Ben Z'L*Dear Friends,
Today, 7/11/07, is Ben's 29th birthday.
"No matter how many years have gone by or however many are yet to come,
Ben’s death for me will always remain in the present tense. I will never
say: “Once upon a time I had a son named Ben.” I won't tell you I'm not
glad to be alive because I know I am a better person for having known and loved
him. He taught me so much. Still ... know there are moments when I am filled
with guilt it was he and not I."*
*Z'L, Hebrew: Zichron L'vrocho (May his memory be a blessing.)
*excerpted from In Memory of Ben by Alan D. Busch
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Name: Alan D. Busch
Location: TheBookofBen.Blogspot.com
My first book, In Memory of Ben, a compendium of vignettes about the life of my late son Benjamin, Z'L, is available for sale ON CD. The cost is $15.00 plus $3.95 shipping. Personal checks are accepted with drivers' license identification It is newly revised and expanded. I am certain you will enjoy the experience of reading it although there is a great deal of sensitive material. Please scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the fourth link to read newly revised Chapter 1.
Samplings from the book and other writings are available here at www.thebookofben.blogspot.com. Click on first link below.
One chapter of my book, "Mourning's Reflections" is published in a poetry anthology Passing, a link to which is below. Click on the fifth link to read "Mourning's Reflections"
Two additional pieces, one poem "From Your Room" and an article "Musings of A Bereft Father Six Years Later" will appear in the 2007 summer edition of the magazine Living With Loss.
Please click on third link below. To read From Your Room, please click on the sixth link below.
I am pleased to announce the News Magazine of the Jewish Federation/JUF of Chicago will publish the first chapter of In Memory of Ben, I am told by its editor, in its September 2007 edition. To read the revision of Chapter 1 as it will appear in the September 2007 edition of the News Magazine of the Jewish Federation/ JUF of Chicago, click below on the link http://www.thebookofben.blogspot.com/
NEW as of 4/18/07! The online journal The Jewish Magazine has published in its May 2007 edition my article entitled "Escorting the Dead." Click Closing the Grave
Please click on the last link below New Jersey Faith Forum which features a guest posting about Ben's story.
News as of 6/21/07, the editor of Living With Loss e-mailed me: "Good news! I received a request for your article, "Musings of a Bereft Father" from the Executive Director of The Jewish Funeral Directors of America ! They would like to publish it in their annual magazine that will go out to 200 members, to the mortuary college libraries, to all of the state funeral associations, and to various national professional funeral associations."
Links:
www.TheBookofBen.blogspot.com
Passing Authors
Bereavement Publications, Inc - Your source for support on issues related to grief, bereavement and death
Newly posted, Chapter 1 (scroll down a bit ... you'll see it.)
mourning's
From Your Room http://hometown.aol.com/fitterthanudad/page20.html
Musings of A Bereaved Father http://hometown.aol.com/fitterthanudad/page21.html
New Jersey Faith Forum: A Father's Tribute to His Late Son
New Jersey Faith Forum: It Happened Again
Jewish Magazine Closing the Grave
http://hometown.aol.com/fitterthanudad/page22.html
Location: TheBookofBen.Blogspot.com
My first book, In Memory of Ben, a compendium of vignettes about the life of my late son Benjamin, Z'L, is available for sale ON CD. The cost is $15.00 plus $3.95 shipping. Personal checks are accepted with drivers' license identification It is newly revised and expanded. I am certain you will enjoy the experience of reading it although there is a great deal of sensitive material. Please scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the fourth link to read newly revised Chapter 1.
Samplings from the book and other writings are available here at www.thebookofben.blogspot.com. Click on first link below.
One chapter of my book, "Mourning's Reflections" is published in a poetry anthology Passing, a link to which is below. Click on the fifth link to read "Mourning's Reflections"
Two additional pieces, one poem "From Your Room" and an article "Musings of A Bereft Father Six Years Later" will appear in the 2007 summer edition of the magazine Living With Loss.
Please click on third link below. To read From Your Room, please click on the sixth link below.
I am pleased to announce the News Magazine of the Jewish Federation/JUF of Chicago will publish the first chapter of In Memory of Ben, I am told by its editor, in its September 2007 edition. To read the revision of Chapter 1 as it will appear in the September 2007 edition of the News Magazine of the Jewish Federation/ JUF of Chicago, click below on the link http://www.thebookofben.blogspot.com/
NEW as of 4/18/07! The online journal The Jewish Magazine has published in its May 2007 edition my article entitled "Escorting the Dead." Click Closing the Grave
Please click on the last link below New Jersey Faith Forum which features a guest posting about Ben's story.
News as of 6/21/07, the editor of Living With Loss e-mailed me: "Good news! I received a request for your article, "Musings of a Bereft Father" from the Executive Director of The Jewish Funeral Directors of America ! They would like to publish it in their annual magazine that will go out to 200 members, to the mortuary college libraries, to all of the state funeral associations, and to various national professional funeral associations."
Links:
www.TheBookofBen.blogspot.com
Passing Authors
Bereavement Publications, Inc - Your source for support on issues related to grief, bereavement and death
Newly posted, Chapter 1 (scroll down a bit ... you'll see it.)
mourning's
From Your Room http://hometown.aol.com/fitterthanudad/page20.html
Musings of A Bereaved Father http://hometown.aol.com/fitterthanudad/page21.html
New Jersey Faith Forum: A Father's Tribute to His Late Son
New Jersey Faith Forum: It Happened Again
Jewish Magazine Closing the Grave
http://hometown.aol.com/fitterthanudad/page22.html
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Debbie Schlussel click on this to acquaint yourself with the basics of the wrongful death of Joseph Applebaum. Any questions, email Alan at fitterthanudad@aol.com
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Dear Readers, this is a revision of "son" 7/1/07
Son
My father calls me “son” more often than he calls me by my
name, and because I am my father’s son, I adopted the
same usage with respect to my boys. Kimberly, my daughter, I
call: Kimuschkele, Kimmy, Kimmy Babe, Sweetheart, Sweety,
Sugar. You get the idea. The list is as saccharine as it is
lengthy.
When Ben was little, people called him by the diminutive
“Benji.” There was always something so grown-up sounding
about “Benjamin” or “Ben.” You know what I mean?
“Ach, such a shayne punim, my baby Sam!’ Sounds funny,
like Morris, Irving, Harry or Ben.
I always enjoyed Ben’s name[1]. As a matter of fact, even as
a young adult of twenty-two years, 6’ 2” in height and around
250 pounds, many still called him “Benji”-as did I on occasion
though he didn’t like it very much. So it became my habit to
call him “son” or “sonny boy.”
One evening before bedtime, he mustn’t have been more than five years old, we
discussed ornithology,[2] of all things.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Sonny Boy."
“How come the birds don’t fall out of the sky?” he asked
brilliantly, but not without a partly suppressed yawn.
“D’ya feel the wind on your face when you’re outside, Son?"
“It feels good Dad.” he answered, cheerfully following along.
“What you feel, Son, is God’s breath that He blows, but we call it the ‘wind.’
“Ooookay,” he responded, appearing somewhat quizzical, “but
Daddy remember the birds?” he dutifully reminded me.
“Yes, Son, when God wants to, He blows his breath,” I said.
“Like this, Dad?” he smilingly queried, inflating his cheeks and blowing.
“Yes, Ben, just like that, but when God blows his breath, it
catches under the wings of the birds and lifts them up.” I
explained.
“Ooooh,” he replied, scratching his head, eyebrows perplexed
but clearly intrigued by the answer.
We were young parents back then-our children tiny-
a time predating Zac, my younger son.
We were abundantly blessed with Ben and his sister Kimmy, a
time in our lives when we never did not smell of talcum
powder. Much too young back then to have wisdom but abundantly poor so that
we could not afford a house, we rented an admittedly
spacious apartment from a nice Greek lady just on the
southern edge of of a progressively northward Jewish
migration. Frankly I forget her name, but I figured it was okay
to rent from her because Lenny Bruce had commented that all
Greeks are Jews anyway! Alright, truth be told, she was more than
just a “bissel” annoying.
The kids’ mom and I naturally knew little of
parenting; after all, we were in its infancy-barely adults ourselves-but we
did know enough to read to our children every night unfailingly. “Baby-
babble" was an unknown tongue to us.
There was a short while when Ben and his sister were young
enough that they could share a bedroom. Actually, the real
reason was we only had one bedroom other than the master
bedroom. Do you know the age when the kids are already
almost too big for their cribs but not quite big enough for
regular beds? We had to lower the height of the mattress level
in the cribs so that it was not too far above the floor itself.
At that time, the kids’ mom worked the evening shift for a
local grocery distributor. I taught the seventh and eighth
grades at Resurrection School, a Chicago Roman Catholic
parish, on the west side of Chicago. Though they did not pay
me much at all, dismissal was at 1:45 p.m, a fact that made it
very possible for me to get home in time to make a seamless
transition between our two jobs. I was certain back
then that I was the inspiration for “Mr. Mom” though not a
single dime in royalties did I ever receive.
“Okay Ben get back in there,” I gently scolded him, almost too big for
the crib-his mattress being so low that he could climb in and out
with ease.
“Kimmy Babe, your turn Sweety, what story you want?” I
asked perfunctorily, as if I didn’t know.
“Cassie, Daddy, Cassie,” she shrieked, much to her brother’s
discontent.
“Dad, we read Cassie last night, “member?” he protested.
“Oops, you’re right, Son,” I acceded. “Okay, okay, I gotta a
deal. You’ll have the next two nights, okay?” I asked him, hoping for
a conciliatory approach.
“Okay, Dad,” he conceded resignedly.
“Kimmy, understand? Ben gets to choose the story for the next
two nights,” I said, seeking her agreement with a nod of my
head.
“Cassie, Daddy, Cassie!” she impatiently exclaimed, and so
Cassie and Her Magic Flowers it was … again! Even at a very
young age, Ben was a ba’al shalom.
Against this idyllic background would soon come the time
in our lives when we’d bid farewell to normalcy. Not too long
after we moved to Skoke from the Jewish enclave of West
Rogers Park, Ben was stricken with diabetes at ten and-a half-years.
~~~~~~~~
It’s almost wholly invariable that melancholia overtakes
me whenever I am there. I don’t think it debilitating, short-
lived as each instance is, but it remains a constant in the
equation of my grief.
Yet, I know this is where a grieving Jew should be
because it is a makom kodesh, a holy place, wherein I feel the
presence of my son Ben in its most intense manifestation.
I’ll even venture a remark that may seem odd to some. As
strong a pull as it is to stand before Ben’s grave, I struggle to
sense his presence. Oh yes. I know his body is beneath my
feet, but that’s just it. Ben’s body remains, but his neshuma,
his soul, is elsewhere Where it is, well … that’s anyone’s
guess; it’s in the Olam Haba, floating-as it were-like a feather
caught up in the draft of God’s exhalation-or somewhere in
shamayim waiting for another aliyah that’ll bring him closer to
God. But such is the paltriness of our conception, as if it were
possible to approach Him, The Infinite Holy One. For that
would imply physicality, finiteness of which He has none. Even
the "He of Him" implies a ring of closure around our conception
of what God is and where. You know what? Never mind the
theological gymnastics. I'm satified with that explanation however
much it might make me an apikoros-just as long as Ben “returns” on a regular basis.
I’ve few if any other choices.
And return he does, a sort of tshuva in reverse in that he
returns to us from God whereas we seek, in doing tshuva, to
near Him, to approach Him. We may even cross each other’s
paths on occasion. A heavenly intersection, a cosmic
crossroads-if you will-where neshamos and the t’filos of those who love(d)
Ben may barely escape collision.I believe his neshuma
hovers in shul when I am there. He spends time with me in
that way, I suppose. It is his way of making up for the time
when I sit in our row by myself.
I felt it recently on Purim- a feeling unlike that
of any other experience, anywhere else, including the time I
spend writing in Ben’s room. Though I fully expect this grief, I
am thankful to take my seat in the row behind my dear friend,
Rabbi Louis and his two sons. It affords me the opportunity to
look over the mechitza[3] to the yahrzeit[4] panels on the south
wall and see Ben’s name, the eleventh one in the first column
on the first panel. We have a tradition in shul life that one’s seat
becomes his makom kavua.[5] His seat is next to mine though I should tell you Ben was not a
regular shul-goer. Nobody else sits there however, except my father on Erev Yontif Rosh
Hashanah.
Whether it be the thanksgiving of Purim, the revelry of Simchas Torah[6]
or the trepidation of Yom Kippur,[7] my son remains by my side. Other fathers
have their sons sitting next to them. I miss that but I possess something they
do not-the certainty my son lived a life abundant in loving-kindness.
Time moves forward inexorably. It pauses for no one. That Purim
morning I lamented how much time has passed without Ben. I am reminded
daily his absence is forever. No matter how many years have gone by
or however many are yet to come, Ben’s death for me will always remain
in the present tense. I will never say: “Once upon a time I had a son named
Ben.” I won't tell you I'm not glad to be alive because I know I
am a better person for having known and loved him. He taught
me so much. Still ... know there are moments when I am filled
with guilt it was he and not I.
Alan D. Busch
@2007
In Hebrew, “ben” means “son."
[2] The scientific study of birds; avian science.
[3] Partition in an orthodox synagogue separating women’s from men’s section.
[4] The anniversary of a death
[5] set place where one sits
[6] holiday celebrating the “joy of Torah”.
[7] Day of Atonement
Son
My father calls me “son” more often than he calls me by my
name, and because I am my father’s son, I adopted the
same usage with respect to my boys. Kimberly, my daughter, I
call: Kimuschkele, Kimmy, Kimmy Babe, Sweetheart, Sweety,
Sugar. You get the idea. The list is as saccharine as it is
lengthy.
When Ben was little, people called him by the diminutive
“Benji.” There was always something so grown-up sounding
about “Benjamin” or “Ben.” You know what I mean?
“Ach, such a shayne punim, my baby Sam!’ Sounds funny,
like Morris, Irving, Harry or Ben.
I always enjoyed Ben’s name[1]. As a matter of fact, even as
a young adult of twenty-two years, 6’ 2” in height and around
250 pounds, many still called him “Benji”-as did I on occasion
though he didn’t like it very much. So it became my habit to
call him “son” or “sonny boy.”
One evening before bedtime, he mustn’t have been more than five years old, we
discussed ornithology,[2] of all things.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Sonny Boy."
“How come the birds don’t fall out of the sky?” he asked
brilliantly, but not without a partly suppressed yawn.
“D’ya feel the wind on your face when you’re outside, Son?"
“It feels good Dad.” he answered, cheerfully following along.
“What you feel, Son, is God’s breath that He blows, but we call it the ‘wind.’
“Ooookay,” he responded, appearing somewhat quizzical, “but
Daddy remember the birds?” he dutifully reminded me.
“Yes, Son, when God wants to, He blows his breath,” I said.
“Like this, Dad?” he smilingly queried, inflating his cheeks and blowing.
“Yes, Ben, just like that, but when God blows his breath, it
catches under the wings of the birds and lifts them up.” I
explained.
“Ooooh,” he replied, scratching his head, eyebrows perplexed
but clearly intrigued by the answer.
We were young parents back then-our children tiny-
a time predating Zac, my younger son.
We were abundantly blessed with Ben and his sister Kimmy, a
time in our lives when we never did not smell of talcum
powder. Much too young back then to have wisdom but abundantly poor so that
we could not afford a house, we rented an admittedly
spacious apartment from a nice Greek lady just on the
southern edge of of a progressively northward Jewish
migration. Frankly I forget her name, but I figured it was okay
to rent from her because Lenny Bruce had commented that all
Greeks are Jews anyway! Alright, truth be told, she was more than
just a “bissel” annoying.
The kids’ mom and I naturally knew little of
parenting; after all, we were in its infancy-barely adults ourselves-but we
did know enough to read to our children every night unfailingly. “Baby-
babble" was an unknown tongue to us.
There was a short while when Ben and his sister were young
enough that they could share a bedroom. Actually, the real
reason was we only had one bedroom other than the master
bedroom. Do you know the age when the kids are already
almost too big for their cribs but not quite big enough for
regular beds? We had to lower the height of the mattress level
in the cribs so that it was not too far above the floor itself.
At that time, the kids’ mom worked the evening shift for a
local grocery distributor. I taught the seventh and eighth
grades at Resurrection School, a Chicago Roman Catholic
parish, on the west side of Chicago. Though they did not pay
me much at all, dismissal was at 1:45 p.m, a fact that made it
very possible for me to get home in time to make a seamless
transition between our two jobs. I was certain back
then that I was the inspiration for “Mr. Mom” though not a
single dime in royalties did I ever receive.
“Okay Ben get back in there,” I gently scolded him, almost too big for
the crib-his mattress being so low that he could climb in and out
with ease.
“Kimmy Babe, your turn Sweety, what story you want?” I
asked perfunctorily, as if I didn’t know.
“Cassie, Daddy, Cassie,” she shrieked, much to her brother’s
discontent.
“Dad, we read Cassie last night, “member?” he protested.
“Oops, you’re right, Son,” I acceded. “Okay, okay, I gotta a
deal. You’ll have the next two nights, okay?” I asked him, hoping for
a conciliatory approach.
“Okay, Dad,” he conceded resignedly.
“Kimmy, understand? Ben gets to choose the story for the next
two nights,” I said, seeking her agreement with a nod of my
head.
“Cassie, Daddy, Cassie!” she impatiently exclaimed, and so
Cassie and Her Magic Flowers it was … again! Even at a very
young age, Ben was a ba’al shalom.
Against this idyllic background would soon come the time
in our lives when we’d bid farewell to normalcy. Not too long
after we moved to Skoke from the Jewish enclave of West
Rogers Park, Ben was stricken with diabetes at ten and-a half-years.
~~~~~~~~
It’s almost wholly invariable that melancholia overtakes
me whenever I am there. I don’t think it debilitating, short-
lived as each instance is, but it remains a constant in the
equation of my grief.
Yet, I know this is where a grieving Jew should be
because it is a makom kodesh, a holy place, wherein I feel the
presence of my son Ben in its most intense manifestation.
I’ll even venture a remark that may seem odd to some. As
strong a pull as it is to stand before Ben’s grave, I struggle to
sense his presence. Oh yes. I know his body is beneath my
feet, but that’s just it. Ben’s body remains, but his neshuma,
his soul, is elsewhere Where it is, well … that’s anyone’s
guess; it’s in the Olam Haba, floating-as it were-like a feather
caught up in the draft of God’s exhalation-or somewhere in
shamayim waiting for another aliyah that’ll bring him closer to
God. But such is the paltriness of our conception, as if it were
possible to approach Him, The Infinite Holy One. For that
would imply physicality, finiteness of which He has none. Even
the "He of Him" implies a ring of closure around our conception
of what God is and where. You know what? Never mind the
theological gymnastics. I'm satified with that explanation however
much it might make me an apikoros-just as long as Ben “returns” on a regular basis.
I’ve few if any other choices.
And return he does, a sort of tshuva in reverse in that he
returns to us from God whereas we seek, in doing tshuva, to
near Him, to approach Him. We may even cross each other’s
paths on occasion. A heavenly intersection, a cosmic
crossroads-if you will-where neshamos and the t’filos of those who love(d)
Ben may barely escape collision.I believe his neshuma
hovers in shul when I am there. He spends time with me in
that way, I suppose. It is his way of making up for the time
when I sit in our row by myself.
I felt it recently on Purim- a feeling unlike that
of any other experience, anywhere else, including the time I
spend writing in Ben’s room. Though I fully expect this grief, I
am thankful to take my seat in the row behind my dear friend,
Rabbi Louis and his two sons. It affords me the opportunity to
look over the mechitza[3] to the yahrzeit[4] panels on the south
wall and see Ben’s name, the eleventh one in the first column
on the first panel. We have a tradition in shul life that one’s seat
becomes his makom kavua.[5] His seat is next to mine though I should tell you Ben was not a
regular shul-goer. Nobody else sits there however, except my father on Erev Yontif Rosh
Hashanah.
Whether it be the thanksgiving of Purim, the revelry of Simchas Torah[6]
or the trepidation of Yom Kippur,[7] my son remains by my side. Other fathers
have their sons sitting next to them. I miss that but I possess something they
do not-the certainty my son lived a life abundant in loving-kindness.
Time moves forward inexorably. It pauses for no one. That Purim
morning I lamented how much time has passed without Ben. I am reminded
daily his absence is forever. No matter how many years have gone by
or however many are yet to come, Ben’s death for me will always remain
in the present tense. I will never say: “Once upon a time I had a son named
Ben.” I won't tell you I'm not glad to be alive because I know I
am a better person for having known and loved him. He taught
me so much. Still ... know there are moments when I am filled
with guilt it was he and not I.
Alan D. Busch
@2007
In Hebrew, “ben” means “son."
[2] The scientific study of birds; avian science.
[3] Partition in an orthodox synagogue separating women’s from men’s section.
[4] The anniversary of a death
[5] set place where one sits
[6] holiday celebrating the “joy of Torah”.
[7] Day of Atonement
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Dear Readers,
I am 99% sure that this little piece will conclude the text of In Memory of Ben.
"Son"
My father calls me “son,” more often than he does by my name, and because
I am my father's son, I too adopted the same usage with respect to my boys. Kimberly, my
daughter, I call Kimuschkele, Kimmy, Kimmy Babe, Sweetheart, Sweety, Sugar … you get the
idea. The list is as saccharine as it is lengthy.
I always enjoyed Ben’s name. When he was little, people called him by the
diminutive “Benji.” There was always something so adult about “Benjamin” or
“Ben”. As a matter of fact, even as a young adult of twenty-two years, 6’ 2” in height and around
250 pounds, many still called him “Benji,”-as did I-but it became my habit to call him “son” or
as a variant "sonny boy."
One evening before bedtime, he mustn’t have been more than five years old, we discussed
"ornithology"[1], of all things:
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Sonny Boy,” I quickly responded.
“How come the birds don’t fall out of the sky?” he asked brilliantly, but not without a partly
suppressed yawn.
“D’ya feel the wind on your face when you're outside, son? I probed.
“It feels good Dad,” he answered, cheerfully following along.
“The wind, Son, is God’s breath that he blows, but we call it
the ‘wind.’
“Ooookay,” he responded, appearing somewhat quizzical, “but Daddy, remember the birds?” he
dutifully reminded me.
“Yes, Son, when God wants to, He blows his breath,” I said.
“Like this, Dad?” he queried, inflating his cheeks and blowing.
“Yes, Ben, just like that, but when God blows his breath, it
catches under the wings of the birds and lifts them up,” I
explained.
“Ooooh,” he perplexedly replied, scratching his head
but clearly intrigued by the answer.
Alan D. Busch
[1] The scientific study of birds; avian science.
I am 99% sure that this little piece will conclude the text of In Memory of Ben.
"Son"
My father calls me “son,” more often than he does by my name, and because
I am my father's son, I too adopted the same usage with respect to my boys. Kimberly, my
daughter, I call Kimuschkele, Kimmy, Kimmy Babe, Sweetheart, Sweety, Sugar … you get the
idea. The list is as saccharine as it is lengthy.
I always enjoyed Ben’s name. When he was little, people called him by the
diminutive “Benji.” There was always something so adult about “Benjamin” or
“Ben”. As a matter of fact, even as a young adult of twenty-two years, 6’ 2” in height and around
250 pounds, many still called him “Benji,”-as did I-but it became my habit to call him “son” or
as a variant "sonny boy."
One evening before bedtime, he mustn’t have been more than five years old, we discussed
"ornithology"[1], of all things:
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Sonny Boy,” I quickly responded.
“How come the birds don’t fall out of the sky?” he asked brilliantly, but not without a partly
suppressed yawn.
“D’ya feel the wind on your face when you're outside, son? I probed.
“It feels good Dad,” he answered, cheerfully following along.
“The wind, Son, is God’s breath that he blows, but we call it
the ‘wind.’
“Ooookay,” he responded, appearing somewhat quizzical, “but Daddy, remember the birds?” he
dutifully reminded me.
“Yes, Son, when God wants to, He blows his breath,” I said.
“Like this, Dad?” he queried, inflating his cheeks and blowing.
“Yes, Ben, just like that, but when God blows his breath, it
catches under the wings of the birds and lifts them up,” I
explained.
“Ooooh,” he perplexedly replied, scratching his head
but clearly intrigued by the answer.
Alan D. Busch
[1] The scientific study of birds; avian science.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Dear Readers,
This piece is newly revised from In Memory of Ben
“Ha gomel l’chayavim tovos …”
" Who has bestowed every goodness ..." taken from the blessing referred to as "Gomel" which one recites upon surviving a perilous situation)
My mood swings pendulously as we approach the season of
the Yomim Noraim.[1] Starting with the renewal of hope that
Rosh Ha Shanah[2] connotes and ending with the trepidation of
Yom Kippur,[3] I cannot but probe this time of year, the special
nature of which we devote to personal reflection, fasting and
prayer.
While true we do not know the names of those who will be
inscribed and sealed in the Sefer Chaim[4] when Yom
Kippur is over, the judgement of these existential matters belongs
exclusively to the Dayan Emes,[5] whose province lies beyond
that which Rabbi Louis calls “the inquisitive grasp of man.”
However, we pray our tefilos, tzedaka and tshuva[6] are of
sufficient merit to avert the evil decree and spare us the pain
of personal tragedy.
How should we explain what are “near misses” with death?
Can we explain them rationally or should we define them
as miracles and be done with it? If as miracles, they are
different than the miraculous inversions of nature found in the
Torah or the innumerable miracles we encounter daily:
sunrise, the birth of a child, night from day-all of which we
like to call the wonders of “nature”. What about blind luck, the
roll of the dice or random chaos?
Should everyone believe that The One Above governs the
world? Perhaps but with this essential caveat: faith does
not guarantee against tragedy, but what it does do well is to
strengthen us when we are most in need of assistance,
comfort, and protection from apostasy. As frustrating as it
is, bad things befall all kinds of people. The nature of
human powerlessness only begins to make sense when we
acknowledge that He alone governs the world in ways we
neither understand nor like at times.
I picked up the phone.
“Mr. Busch?” a woman’s voice asked.
I began to tremble. A stranger spoke. I listened.
“My name is Anne and I just left your daughter Kimberly,” she
said calmly.
“Is she alright, is she hurt, tell me where you are,” I
demanded.
“Mr. Busch, she is fine. Really! We’re about eighty miles south
of Chicago by Pontiac . Kimberly was involved in an accident, but
she is unhurt, not a scratch.”
“Kimmy, in an accident. Oy Got! Unhurt! Thank God!”
“No, really. She’s fine. I’ve left the scene, but I promised her I’d
call you as soon as the police arrived and felt confident she
was okay.”
“Well, wha … what happened?”
Anne witnessed a collision on the interstate. Pulling over to
assist its victims, she came across my daughter Kimberly who
had lost control of her steering wheel when an eighteen-
wheeler she was attempting to pass forced her onto the
shoulder from the passing lane. Crossing the grassy median,
Kimberly struck a van headed in the opposite direction.
By this point in the story, my heart was racing so much I
could barely contain myself. Flashbacks of Ben’s last day
rushed into my head.
“Listen Anne, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You don’t
know how much this means to me. Really and truly.”
“Oh, you’re welcome Mr. Busch. I’m just glad she’s okay.”
I hung up the telephone so hurriedly that I forgot to write
down her name and number.
I called Kimberly’s mother. With as much calm as I was
able to feign, I cut to the end of the story. “Kimberly is safe
and unhurt,” I assured her. “I’m leaving to get her right now.” I
said, racing away to bring my daughter home. Along the way, I
called the number Kimberly’s angel had given me of the
state trooper who was at the scene. Exceedingly kind, she
reassured me that Kimberly was safe and had emerged
without a scratch. Within an hour, having exceeded the speed
limit for which, if stopped, I had prepared an explanation, I
found Kimberly waiting for me in front of the service station
that had towed her car. Before heading home, I gaped
incredulously at her car for a few minutes. My first and only
response was to thank Him for bestowing this great kindness
upon me. We drove home.
Why was Kimberly saved? It remains the unanswerable
question. The following Friday, I invited her and her boyfriend
over for dinner Erev Shabbat. Zac was there too as was my
fiancé. The table, beautifully set, awaited us: its candles
aglow. It is my custom to light a ner nechuma for my son Ben
every Friday night before Shabbes begins … sort of bridging
the distance between us. We sat.
“Kimuschkele,” my voice crackling as I try to get the words of a
short speech out.
“Yes BBDO,” she responded half grinningly, half tearfully.
(BBDO=Big Bad Daddyo)
“This Shabbat is extra special,” I said, addressing everyone but
looking at my daughter.
“We say ‘Hodu la Adoshem ki tov, ki le’olam chasdo’[7] because
tonight of all nights, I am especially thankful to have you by
my side.” A slight tremble animated my right hand. I let a
moment pass, not a peep was uttered. Ben’s lamp seemed to
flicker more brightly, illuminating the serpentine path of a
single drop of wine running down my hand.
“Vayahe erev, vayahe voker ..."* I sanctified the wine.
(*the beginning of the Friday night erev Shabbat Kiddush; literally
'And there was evening and there was morning')
[1] the Days of Awe
[2] the New Year; literally the Head of the Year
[3] the Day of Atonement
[4] the Book of Life
[5] the True Judge
[6] prayers, righteousness and repentance
[7] Give thanks to God because His kindness is eternal.
Alan D. Busch
copyright @2007
This piece is newly revised from In Memory of Ben
“Ha gomel l’chayavim tovos …”
" Who has bestowed every goodness ..." taken from the blessing referred to as "Gomel" which one recites upon surviving a perilous situation)
My mood swings pendulously as we approach the season of
the Yomim Noraim.[1] Starting with the renewal of hope that
Rosh Ha Shanah[2] connotes and ending with the trepidation of
Yom Kippur,[3] I cannot but probe this time of year, the special
nature of which we devote to personal reflection, fasting and
prayer.
While true we do not know the names of those who will be
inscribed and sealed in the Sefer Chaim[4] when Yom
Kippur is over, the judgement of these existential matters belongs
exclusively to the Dayan Emes,[5] whose province lies beyond
that which Rabbi Louis calls “the inquisitive grasp of man.”
However, we pray our tefilos, tzedaka and tshuva[6] are of
sufficient merit to avert the evil decree and spare us the pain
of personal tragedy.
How should we explain what are “near misses” with death?
Can we explain them rationally or should we define them
as miracles and be done with it? If as miracles, they are
different than the miraculous inversions of nature found in the
Torah or the innumerable miracles we encounter daily:
sunrise, the birth of a child, night from day-all of which we
like to call the wonders of “nature”. What about blind luck, the
roll of the dice or random chaos?
Should everyone believe that The One Above governs the
world? Perhaps but with this essential caveat: faith does
not guarantee against tragedy, but what it does do well is to
strengthen us when we are most in need of assistance,
comfort, and protection from apostasy. As frustrating as it
is, bad things befall all kinds of people. The nature of
human powerlessness only begins to make sense when we
acknowledge that He alone governs the world in ways we
neither understand nor like at times.
I picked up the phone.
“Mr. Busch?” a woman’s voice asked.
I began to tremble. A stranger spoke. I listened.
“My name is Anne and I just left your daughter Kimberly,” she
said calmly.
“Is she alright, is she hurt, tell me where you are,” I
demanded.
“Mr. Busch, she is fine. Really! We’re about eighty miles south
of Chicago by Pontiac . Kimberly was involved in an accident, but
she is unhurt, not a scratch.”
“Kimmy, in an accident. Oy Got! Unhurt! Thank God!”
“No, really. She’s fine. I’ve left the scene, but I promised her I’d
call you as soon as the police arrived and felt confident she
was okay.”
“Well, wha … what happened?”
Anne witnessed a collision on the interstate. Pulling over to
assist its victims, she came across my daughter Kimberly who
had lost control of her steering wheel when an eighteen-
wheeler she was attempting to pass forced her onto the
shoulder from the passing lane. Crossing the grassy median,
Kimberly struck a van headed in the opposite direction.
By this point in the story, my heart was racing so much I
could barely contain myself. Flashbacks of Ben’s last day
rushed into my head.
“Listen Anne, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You don’t
know how much this means to me. Really and truly.”
“Oh, you’re welcome Mr. Busch. I’m just glad she’s okay.”
I hung up the telephone so hurriedly that I forgot to write
down her name and number.
I called Kimberly’s mother. With as much calm as I was
able to feign, I cut to the end of the story. “Kimberly is safe
and unhurt,” I assured her. “I’m leaving to get her right now.” I
said, racing away to bring my daughter home. Along the way, I
called the number Kimberly’s angel had given me of the
state trooper who was at the scene. Exceedingly kind, she
reassured me that Kimberly was safe and had emerged
without a scratch. Within an hour, having exceeded the speed
limit for which, if stopped, I had prepared an explanation, I
found Kimberly waiting for me in front of the service station
that had towed her car. Before heading home, I gaped
incredulously at her car for a few minutes. My first and only
response was to thank Him for bestowing this great kindness
upon me. We drove home.
Why was Kimberly saved? It remains the unanswerable
question. The following Friday, I invited her and her boyfriend
over for dinner Erev Shabbat. Zac was there too as was my
fiancé. The table, beautifully set, awaited us: its candles
aglow. It is my custom to light a ner nechuma for my son Ben
every Friday night before Shabbes begins … sort of bridging
the distance between us. We sat.
“Kimuschkele,” my voice crackling as I try to get the words of a
short speech out.
“Yes BBDO,” she responded half grinningly, half tearfully.
(BBDO=Big Bad Daddyo)
“This Shabbat is extra special,” I said, addressing everyone but
looking at my daughter.
“We say ‘Hodu la Adoshem ki tov, ki le’olam chasdo’[7] because
tonight of all nights, I am especially thankful to have you by
my side.” A slight tremble animated my right hand. I let a
moment pass, not a peep was uttered. Ben’s lamp seemed to
flicker more brightly, illuminating the serpentine path of a
single drop of wine running down my hand.
“Vayahe erev, vayahe voker ..."* I sanctified the wine.
(*the beginning of the Friday night erev Shabbat Kiddush; literally
'And there was evening and there was morning')
[1] the Days of Awe
[2] the New Year; literally the Head of the Year
[3] the Day of Atonement
[4] the Book of Life
[5] the True Judge
[6] prayers, righteousness and repentance
[7] Give thanks to God because His kindness is eternal.
Alan D. Busch
copyright @2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Dear Readers,
Here is my 100th post in Ben's memory. They are two newly revised chapters taken from my
book In Memory of Ben, entitled: The Invitation and Shomer.
L'Chaim!
The Invitation
Bereaved parents find personalized ways to incorporate
the past lives of their children into their own lives. No one
forgets about his child; the difference is in how they
remember. Remember that sappy bumper sticker “Have you
hugged your child today? Well, have you?"
Coping with the permanent absence of death is
prerequisite in order for parents to be able to continue living
their lives. That does not prevent us, however, from wanting our children
to be there with us even though we know they cannot.
I found a way that Ben could be with us on the occasion of
my second marriage. The answer was right there on the
synagogue wall and was as simple as turning on a light bulb.
Dear Ben,
Are you free April 2nd?
If you haven't already heard, we are planning a simcha[1] on
Sunday, April 2 of this year! And I have been spending quite a
lot of time thinking about how I'd forward an invitation to you.
Although tedious, it is easy to draw up the guest list, have the
invitations designed and printed, address them and off they
go. Just wait around for the responses. It’s that simple. What isn’t
so simple is to figure out an appropriate way you
can be with us too. Just last week, I consulted with Rabbi
Louis on this question, and he made quite a few good
suggestions, but I am still looking for a way to materialize
your essence in a way that reflects who you are.
Ar first, it seemed a daunting problem. Then
it struck me. Its simplicity had eluded me. Perhaps you will
remember how I taught you that the lines of life are mostly
colored in with a gray crayon. Most of what exists as truly
black and white is in that crayon box. Darkness is nothing
more than the absence of light and, if therefore we illumine
the darkness, so much of its burdensomeness is lifted
from our shoulders.
No simcha is absolutely free of tearful remembrance.
We Jews always blend our joy into a tincture, an admixture of
joy sobered by sorrowful memories. Our rejoicing is never
whole lest we recall the destruction of the Batei Ha Mikdash[2]
which we do by breaking the glass though it is, as you know,
always followed by a hearty Mazel Tov![3] Jews are people of
historical memory. Always remembering our darker days, we
look to the next sunrise!
Love,
Dad
p.s. Oh right! My idea? I’ll leave your yahrzeit light on.
Shomer[4]
The date was 11/23/00.
Kindness is not necessarily selfless. When performed
without expectation of payment or recognition, it signifies: “I
am doing this because it is the only decent and helpful thing I
know to do.” Best characterized as a Kiddush Ha Shem,[5] it
contains the ultimate component of friendship of both God
and man … selflessness. I have such a friend, selfless and
God-fearing.
It happened on Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2000
when Ben's mom and I-together with several of our closest
friends-met with the funeral director to finalize the awful
arrangements to lay our son in his final resting place. That
morning was indeed awful, but the worst part was the
purchase of the casket.
It is unlike anything else you have ever had to purchase.
We chose the one we thought was characterized by the
dignity of its simplicity. Made from what I think was pine,
lacquered and adorned with a Magen David,[6] it reflected who
Ben himself had been, neither plain nor ostentatious. When I
saw the same casket at a friend’s recent funeral, it brought me
back to the day when the staff at the funeral home walked us
though its casket showroom as delicately as possible. I
wondered then as I still do now how emotionally staggering it
must be to sell a child's casket to bereaved parents. One of the
several caskets on display was nothing more than a
plain box neither stained nor lacquered. One grade lower than
the one we chose, it reminded me of the caskets the town
undertaker crafted in the old westerns we watched as
children. Ben’s mom and I looked at each. Not quite enough
we agreed for our beloved Benjamin!
Thanksgiving 2000 did not happen for my family as it had
in previous years when on Wednesday, the day before the eve
of Thanksgiving, our world, as we had known it, suddenly
ended catastrophically. In its place, a debilitating day, laden
with urgent tasks that I feared we’d not finish in time before
Friday morning. Our many friends lent their helping hands in
the time of our greatest need. Sandy, a lady from my
synagogue, prepared meals lasting several days. Kathy, a close
friend from Toronto, flew in the morning of Thanksgiving
Day. How fortunate was I to have Kathy’s emotional support
for the first ten days following Ben's death!
We were frenzied. My feelings of surreal suspension lasted
until the moment I heard the first shovelful of earth hit the
casket. Thanksgiving was a day during which the community
of our friends experienced an ingathering of souls; when
everyone huddled together in an effort to mend the irreparable
tear in the fabric of our lives and heal the wound we had all
sustained just hours before-a time when the angelic reflections
of our souls shone brilliantly.
A shomer had sat next to Ben through the night reading
from the Sefer Tehilim[7]. This shomer had been a friend to
Ben, who knew where he had lived, having conversed with
him, seen him at my side, in whom one discerned a fierce
loyalty to family and friends. In sum, simply this: my son was
the kind of person for whom one prays his soul has an
aliyah.[8] I found comfort knowing that the utterances of the
shomer reached the divine ear as he sat with Ben the entire
night. I have such a friend.
Thank you, Harv!
Alan D. Busch
[1] a joyous occasion
[2] the two ancient temples of historical Judaism
[3] congratulations; literally ‘good luck’
[4] Watchman, guard
[5] Sanctification of The Name (of God)
[6] Star of David; literally “Shield” of David
[7] The Book of Psalms
[8] literally, an ascent to a higher level.
Here is my 100th post in Ben's memory. They are two newly revised chapters taken from my
book In Memory of Ben, entitled: The Invitation and Shomer.
L'Chaim!
The Invitation
Bereaved parents find personalized ways to incorporate
the past lives of their children into their own lives. No one
forgets about his child; the difference is in how they
remember. Remember that sappy bumper sticker “Have you
hugged your child today? Well, have you?"
Coping with the permanent absence of death is
prerequisite in order for parents to be able to continue living
their lives. That does not prevent us, however, from wanting our children
to be there with us even though we know they cannot.
I found a way that Ben could be with us on the occasion of
my second marriage. The answer was right there on the
synagogue wall and was as simple as turning on a light bulb.
Dear Ben,
Are you free April 2nd?
If you haven't already heard, we are planning a simcha[1] on
Sunday, April 2 of this year! And I have been spending quite a
lot of time thinking about how I'd forward an invitation to you.
Although tedious, it is easy to draw up the guest list, have the
invitations designed and printed, address them and off they
go. Just wait around for the responses. It’s that simple. What isn’t
so simple is to figure out an appropriate way you
can be with us too. Just last week, I consulted with Rabbi
Louis on this question, and he made quite a few good
suggestions, but I am still looking for a way to materialize
your essence in a way that reflects who you are.
Ar first, it seemed a daunting problem. Then
it struck me. Its simplicity had eluded me. Perhaps you will
remember how I taught you that the lines of life are mostly
colored in with a gray crayon. Most of what exists as truly
black and white is in that crayon box. Darkness is nothing
more than the absence of light and, if therefore we illumine
the darkness, so much of its burdensomeness is lifted
from our shoulders.
No simcha is absolutely free of tearful remembrance.
We Jews always blend our joy into a tincture, an admixture of
joy sobered by sorrowful memories. Our rejoicing is never
whole lest we recall the destruction of the Batei Ha Mikdash[2]
which we do by breaking the glass though it is, as you know,
always followed by a hearty Mazel Tov![3] Jews are people of
historical memory. Always remembering our darker days, we
look to the next sunrise!
Love,
Dad
p.s. Oh right! My idea? I’ll leave your yahrzeit light on.
Shomer[4]
The date was 11/23/00.
Kindness is not necessarily selfless. When performed
without expectation of payment or recognition, it signifies: “I
am doing this because it is the only decent and helpful thing I
know to do.” Best characterized as a Kiddush Ha Shem,[5] it
contains the ultimate component of friendship of both God
and man … selflessness. I have such a friend, selfless and
God-fearing.
It happened on Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2000
when Ben's mom and I-together with several of our closest
friends-met with the funeral director to finalize the awful
arrangements to lay our son in his final resting place. That
morning was indeed awful, but the worst part was the
purchase of the casket.
It is unlike anything else you have ever had to purchase.
We chose the one we thought was characterized by the
dignity of its simplicity. Made from what I think was pine,
lacquered and adorned with a Magen David,[6] it reflected who
Ben himself had been, neither plain nor ostentatious. When I
saw the same casket at a friend’s recent funeral, it brought me
back to the day when the staff at the funeral home walked us
though its casket showroom as delicately as possible. I
wondered then as I still do now how emotionally staggering it
must be to sell a child's casket to bereaved parents. One of the
several caskets on display was nothing more than a
plain box neither stained nor lacquered. One grade lower than
the one we chose, it reminded me of the caskets the town
undertaker crafted in the old westerns we watched as
children. Ben’s mom and I looked at each. Not quite enough
we agreed for our beloved Benjamin!
Thanksgiving 2000 did not happen for my family as it had
in previous years when on Wednesday, the day before the eve
of Thanksgiving, our world, as we had known it, suddenly
ended catastrophically. In its place, a debilitating day, laden
with urgent tasks that I feared we’d not finish in time before
Friday morning. Our many friends lent their helping hands in
the time of our greatest need. Sandy, a lady from my
synagogue, prepared meals lasting several days. Kathy, a close
friend from Toronto, flew in the morning of Thanksgiving
Day. How fortunate was I to have Kathy’s emotional support
for the first ten days following Ben's death!
We were frenzied. My feelings of surreal suspension lasted
until the moment I heard the first shovelful of earth hit the
casket. Thanksgiving was a day during which the community
of our friends experienced an ingathering of souls; when
everyone huddled together in an effort to mend the irreparable
tear in the fabric of our lives and heal the wound we had all
sustained just hours before-a time when the angelic reflections
of our souls shone brilliantly.
A shomer had sat next to Ben through the night reading
from the Sefer Tehilim[7]. This shomer had been a friend to
Ben, who knew where he had lived, having conversed with
him, seen him at my side, in whom one discerned a fierce
loyalty to family and friends. In sum, simply this: my son was
the kind of person for whom one prays his soul has an
aliyah.[8] I found comfort knowing that the utterances of the
shomer reached the divine ear as he sat with Ben the entire
night. I have such a friend.
Thank you, Harv!
Alan D. Busch
[1] a joyous occasion
[2] the two ancient temples of historical Judaism
[3] congratulations; literally ‘good luck’
[4] Watchman, guard
[5] Sanctification of The Name (of God)
[6] Star of David; literally “Shield” of David
[7] The Book of Psalms
[8] literally, an ascent to a higher level.
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