Who’s living to long!

The young woman protests: The old live too long; they take too much; they deprive the young of life’s limited goods and services.

She is young, O Lord; has not yet the vision to see down the long road, or the wisdom to interpret what she sees.

She does not realize that no person comes into life with the proviso that they depart at a given time. On the contrary, nature endows us with the instinct for self-preservation; to hold on to life, doing whatever it take to prolong it.

If that means hospital beds, doctors, continuing care, who had the right to forbid it?

Living equates with consuming, needing; food, shelter, services. That equates to jobs and income for others; a contribution to society. Once dead the needs stop; contributions stop.

Today’s youth is tomorrow’s oldster. At what age will my young friend think she has lived long enough, and be willing to go?

O Lord, let not this young women begrudge us our years. Help her to see that, even to the last breath, the old contribute to life, and take nothing away.

For weeks, I’ve started to write the response to this invocation, but I keep returning to the premise that perhaps the “young woman” was me who thoughtlessly told my grandmother, “The old live too long; they take too much, they deprive the young of life’s limited goods and services.”

Eck!

I’ve become “today’s youth” who is rapidly turning into “tomorrow’s oldster,” and as such, clinging to the desire to appear spry enough to be a valued employee in a sea of younger, more desired workers. When a waiters calls my “madam,” I cringe. And my need “touch of my roots” is becoming a regular occurrence now that my lightly salt-and-peppered hair has turned into streaks of gray.

Even though Rich and I are frugal, and probably in no danger of ever becoming indigent, we worry constantly about whether our money will stretch enough to provide the food, shelter, services, and more importantly, healthcare we might need should we live into our eighties or with luck, nineties.

And ironically, few days pass when I don’t pine for my grandmother, yearning to speak with her, if only for a few minutes. But towards the end of her 90-years of life, when she’d grown frustrated with her failing eye sight, inability to write, and dwindling strength, I avoided calling her.

During this time, when we did talk, usually Sunday afternoons, she told me of her dreams, of winged angels. I told her to follow the angels, knowing they could free her from the anxiety of waking, and wondering what affliction would await her next.

And now, regrettably, I understand what she meant, when she wrote, “even to the last breath, the old contribute to live, and take nothing away.” I wish I’d told her just one more time how much she contributed to my life, and how little she asked for in return.

It is asked, What is man? One stops to consider. What is Man? And it comes to mind…

Man is a thousand-fold miracle of Creation. He is a driving force of energy. He knows of time and space; of earth and water and air. He builds and he destroys. Man is the mightiest of living creatures.

But one man alone is as nothing. He is not sufficient unto himself. He needs the helping hand, the support and companionship of his fellow beings. He needs to hear and see and feel the presence of another. He needs a sense of belonging one to another.

And that is what Emanuel Seniors [Temple Emanu El in Burbank, CA] provides. A place to come together and feel a kinship one with another. To link arms into a circle of friendship.

So we ask your blessing, O Lord, on our club; to help us thrive so we may fulfill our purpose; to bring people together with people.

My grandmother spent a lot of time pondering the essence of life. Even though she wasn’t deeply religious, and the Torah says little about the status or treatment of the embryo or fetus, she was adamantly opposed to abortion. Her premise was simple, “If you can’t create something all by yourself then you should be allowed to destroy it.”

She’d ask, “Can you make a seed grow?”

No doubt, I could plant a seed; ensure it was watered and fertilized, and received sunlight (except in the Pacific Northwest). But, no, I couldn’t make it grow. In the same vein, as she explained, I could take the steps to get pregnant, but I couldn’t definitively conceive and carry a child to term.

This premise may have induced her to write, “Man is a thousand-fold miracle of Creation.”

I think, however, her disapproval of abortion was more tied to a miscarriage she had prior to the birth of my mother. It was her first child, a boy. I don’t know at which point in her pregnancy she lost the baby; she never talked about it. However, it must have had an effect on her point-of-view on the fragility of life, and need for a “helping hand, the support, and companionship of his fellow beings.”

We are here again, O Lord, for an afternoon of sharing fellowship with our fellow members.

We are grateful that we have the use of this day for our pleasure, and for all those who have stayed away because of illness, please, O Lord, help them to a quick recovery.

This invocation, like the month of February, is short. It’s theme of health leads me to believe one of my grandparents may have been sick, perhaps with a cold, in the weeks prior. Or maybe my grandmother couldn’t come up with an engaging theme for this invocation.

For me, February 1^st hold significant importance. It’s the day Rich and I met face-to-face, after corresponding for a few weeks on Matchmaker.com, and then talking on the phone. Our first date was McMenamins Sherwood Pub. At the time, I lived in Sherwood, and Rich lived a few miles east in Tualatin.

It was love-at-first site.

The following Saturday, we went to the McMenamins Bagdad Theater & Pub where we saw “Meet the Parents,” followed by dinner in Portland’s Chinatown. We were one of the few people in the restaurant. I remember the floor was covered with confetti from the Chinese New Year’s celebration earlier in the day, and we shared several dishes, including flavorful chicken baked in a small ceramic pot with fun noodles.

For Rich and me, February 1^st will always hold special significance… and hopefully, health and happiness.

Since our last meeting, O Lord, we members have driven across a portion of Your land.

We have seen the objects of Your creation; and green valleys and jagged-topped hills; the shapely trees and lush grasses. The vast blue ocean.

And we found them to be good.

We saw too, the creative ingenuity of Man. The outcropping of communities against Your hills; the roads and highways; the fields, and orchards and vineyards.

And we found them to be good.

We are assembled, O Lord, have also labored and built and given. We have, each in our own way, left our marks of creativity upon this earth and our fellowman.

Let it be, O Lord, that you find them to be good.

I don’t know if my grandmother wrote and delivered these invocations on Friday nights before the entire congregation or only when the synagogue’s senior group met. Knowing my grandmother was an introvert, I question whether she actually read them out loud. Most likely, my grandfather, an extreme extrovert, was recruiter to recite the invocations.

In their later years, my grandparents purchased a small camper, which fit on a small truck. It had a dinette that turned into a bed, a small kitchen, and a cupboard that opened to reveal a port-a-potty. The small bed over the cab comfortably fit my barely five-foot grandmother, and my grandfather who was just five inches taller.

Their camper was probably about the size of this Six-Pac, and the truck was probably a little smaller.

They drove across the country in their cozy camper, stopping along the way to snap pictures and send postcards from their travels. My grandfather, along with being able to play piano by ear, also drew cartoons. He’d bring a handful of colored pencils and blank postcards on which he’d draw their adventures… their small camper fighting gale-force winds and vising national landmarks. I still have many of these humorous postcards.

It makes sense for my grandmother to have written in this invocation about driving across the land, seeing its beauty, and hoping the ingenuity of man is seen in the same light.