Greeting 5785
I know there are plenty like me, those whose birth years are so easy to remember because they are identical to the Hebrew year. So, no secret, as 5785 rolls around, I have just, just!, become 85.
And you think the Hebrew years roll quickly by? What do you think I’m thinking? How did this happen to me? I hear about someone who’s 72 or even 78, and I think, they are really old. And then I remember how old I am and it’s truly unbelievable. Trust me, younger friends, it happens very fast. And when you’re old, even your kids are old. And there it is, life as an evaporation, a quick instantaneous moment in time.
I wonder, do I come from good stock? Is that what brought me so far? I guess, like most of us, I come from mixed stock, unless I start looking too deeply. Both my grandmothers died very young. Rifka, my paternal grandmother, died before I was even born. Hence I inherited, with modification, her name. But that’s convoluted. Rifka started with a resh, as does my secular name. But my Hebrew name is Shoshana. How is that connected to Rifka anyway? Jews are pretty adept at those kinds of maneuvers. For some reason, my parents wanted a Shoshana, so they figured out a way to brand me as such. But neither grandmother, neither Bubba nor Savta, lived to a very old age. So good stock doesn’t come from them.
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My mother died at 85. She died on our granddaughter Adiel’s fifth birthday, as she was getting ready to blow out the candles, aglow on the dining room table in Herzliya. Literally at the big blowout moment, the phone rang. Silly me, I thought it was someone calling to wish our girl a happy birthday. No, not at all. It was the nursing home in Kfar Saba calling, and upon hearing my abysmal accented Hebrew asked if I could understand her, then said that my mother had just died. Would that my mother have lived to chuckle at the story. Imagine being pulled from the grips of death because my Hebrew was so bad! If only life was that simple.
No, life doesn’t work that way. Those candles never got blown out. And someone had to speak to Dad and tell him of his new status, widower, at age 92. He always expected to die before she did. After all, he was seven years her senior so that was the proper order. He thought she’d be making him soup on his deathbed. The Master of the Universe seemed to have other plans.
Mom actually wasn’t on the deathbed schedule. If she hadn’t broken her hip, I know she would have danced at many upcoming weddings. But she, like her father before her, did break her hip, and it was fatal. No wonder I too worry about breaking my hip.
But the good genes, the best ones, were Dad’s. He lived another six years after Mom died, and they actually were very good years. He was never incapacitated. He was, as I always describe him, robust. He walked miles every day, resisted the elevator like it was the plague, and retained his interest in everything going on in the world, especially his beloved basketball games, which were, seasonally, blasting away on the TV. Aside from some hearing loss, which I’ve inherited from him, he was perfectly healthy, the proud owner of a full set of his own teeth and, believe it or not, no need at all for glasses. He was quite a specimen, despite a diet packed with organ meats and fried foods and many decades of cigar smoking, which seemed to have ruined most of his clothing but apparently not his lungs. He stopped smoking when he neared 90, but certainly I don’t think the cigars did him any harm. Nor did the nearly a century of chopped liver oozing with schmaltz.
Dad finally went to join Mom a few days shy of his 98th birthday. They are at peace in Herzliya’s old cemetery, unaware of the pain and suffering that has been going on in their beloved town in recent months. Of course, it’s much more than Herzliya, but they rest near the sacred ground where many young soldiers lie in fresh graves, in a military wing, as in all of Israel’s cemeteries. It has recently become more crowded and the ground has absorbed the tears and cries of the parents and grandparents of many brave young heroes. Far too many. Israel has been enduring shattering and painful times this year, 5784. My parents lie oblivious to the terrible pain on the blood-soaked earth. At the dawning of the new year, is it not time for the winds of war to cease, the hostages to return home, and the cemeteries to be places of peace again, places for the aged to rest their weary souls and the young to be just visitors?
Dear friends, fellow Jews, we have struggled this year to overcome horrible obstacles to our search for joy and life. It is time, now and forever more, for shalom to reenter our lives. We will pray in unison that the new babes in our families grow up without the threat of war, and that their parents enjoy their children without the anguish of seeing them go to battle, and that those who walk among us will share the blessings of shalom.
Wishing you all a Shana Tova!
Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of eight. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com
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