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"How You Live Your Days" Yizkor 5770 Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Temple Emanu-El of Tucson, AZ
Yizkor
is about remembering, and as we prepare to remember those people in our
lives and in our congregation’s life who have meant so much to us I want
to start with a bit of a diversion, and tell you the story of a woman named
Jeanne-Louise Calment. Madame
Calment lived in Arles, France, and had a pleasant, mostly unstressed life.
Although her beloved husband died from food poisoning in his forties,
and she never had children, she was a happy soul, and lived on for many
years in her comfortable apartment, healthy and energetic and well-liked. The
best part of Madame Calment’s story is that when she was quite elderly, in
her early 90’s, a nephew who was an attorney offered her a deal: he wanted
to live in central Arles, which had a severe shortage of nice apartments
available.
This lawyer nephew figured that Madame Calment, who had a lovely
place in just the right area, would pass away soon enough, and so he offered
her a contract for her apartment. He would pay her a nice monthly subsidy
for the rest of her life, and when she passed away she would leave him the
place in her will.
It was all drawn up carefully and legally and filed officially. The
nephew began paying the monthly fees to Jeanne-Louise Calment, and
anticipated moving into his new place within a few years.
After all, Madame Calment smoked, drank a couple of glasses of the
local wine each day, and ate two pounds of chocolate each week.
Soon he would have his dream apartment in downtown Arles. Only
it didn’t turn out that way. Because
Madame Calment lived on. And on.
And on.
She
did finally quit smoking—at the age of 118—but her doctor figured it was
not so much because of his medical advice as it was because her vision had
faded and she was too vain to ask people to give her a light. When
she finally passed away at the age of 122 on August 4, 1997, she was the
oldest person ever recorded in world history. Her
attorney nephew had passed away twenty years earlier, but Madame Calment
enjoyed the revenue from that agreement—paid by the attorney’s
family—for the rest of her long, long life. Madame
Calment’s name came up this year because in Los Angeles a woman passed
away named Gertrude Baines.
She was 115 years old—115!—and the oldest person in the world at
that time, so far as they can tell, and naturally people compared her to the
oldest person ever.
She didn’t quite make 122, but she was a marvel nonetheless. When
she died her physician noted, "I saw her two days ago, and she was just
doing fine.
She was in excellent shape. She was mentally alert. She smiled
frequently."
I wish you could say that about the rest of us… Baines
was born in Shellman, Ga., on April 6, 1894, when Grover Cleveland was in
the White House, radio communication was just being developed and television
was more than a half-century away.
She was 4 years old when the Spanish-American War broke out and 9
when the first World Series was played. She had already reached middle
age—about my age, 47 years old—by the time the U.S. entered World War II
in 1941. Throughout
it all, Baines said last year, it was a life she thoroughly enjoyed. "I'm
glad I'm here. I don't care if I live a hundred more," she said with a
hearty laugh after casting her vote for president last year. "I enjoy
nothing but eating and sleeping." This centenarian, who worked as a
maid at Ohio State University dormitories until her retirement, outlived all
of her family members. In
her final years, she passed her days watching her favorite TV program,
"The Jerry Springer Show," and consuming her favorite foods: fried
chicken and ice cream. The
title of world’s oldest person brought with it a spotlight of attention,
and Baines was asked frequently about the secret to a long life. She
shrugged off such questions, telling people to ask God instead. "She
told me that she owes her longevity to the Lord, that she never did drink,
she never did smoke and she never did fool around," her doctor said at
a party marking her 115th birthday. At
that 115th birthday party, Baines sat quietly, paying little
attention as she was presented with congratulatory notices from Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and others. But she laughed when told
the Los Angeles Dodgers had given her a cooler filled with hot dogs. What
is the secret to such longevity?
Perhaps Ms. Baines was correct—only God knows. As
you know, our congregation, Temple Emanu-El, is experiencing its 99th
Yom Kippur.
While we are very proud of that title, which makes us the birthplace
of Judaism in Arizona and the historic congregation in our state, and it
also makes us exactly the same age as our congregant, Elsa Leibovitz, it
doesn’t make us the oldest thing going.
We are celebrating our Centennial year in many ways, and as you have
heard we are creating a Linda Nadell Centennial Torah for our next century,
which we hope you will participate in actively, but if length of tenure is
the most important thing to you, well, there are other candidates for the
longevity record, both individuals and institutions.
And
generally speaking, there always will be.
No matter just how long you manage to keep going, someone else will
always have been around longer.
Perhaps
what really matters is not longevity.
We can certainly hope that this is true, for this year we have
experienced some very painful losses in our congregational family. Some died
in the fullness of years, having lived fully and completely, and departed
without regret.
Some—too many—of them died at the height of their powers, long
before their time.
But
what is striking to me is that when I sit with the families to remember
those who have died, when we share memories and laughter and tears, what
families and friends speak about is not the length of their lives at all.
It is the quality of their lives. You see, as it turns out, it’s not how long you live—it’s how you live. Simple
arithmetic helps demonstrate that fact.
There are, in a week, 168 hours—7 days times 24 hours.
Of that time, we spend about 63 hours a week, about 9 hours a day
sleeping or taking care of our basic bodily needs.
For those of us who are employed, we spend anywhere from 40 to 70
hours a week at work, plus the time we spend commuting to work and dealing
with work-related stuff.
That leaves somewhere between 30 and 60 hours a week for everything
else: errands, household chores, grocery shopping, eating, cleaning up from
eating, emailing, Facebook time, repairing things that break, getting our
cars serviced, paying bills, shlepping kids somewhere, going to doctor’s
appointments, sitting in Temple on Yom Kippur, and so on.
That sounds like a lot of time, 30-60 hours of discretionary
time—but the truth is that it goes pretty fast.
When you factor in all the things we need to do just to keep things
going, we aren’t left with very much time at all.
Perhaps,
on average, two hours a day of actual time we might spend however we wish.
It
is those two hours a day that, it turns out, matter the most.
That is the time we can choose to devote to our families.
That is the time we can dedicate to our friends.
That is the time we can explore our spiritual lives. About
two hours a day that really make a difference. When
I sit with families after a death is not the hours of work that people
remember, or the reliability with which mom or dad or sis or Zaidie did her
errands or his chores.
It is those couple of uninterrupted hours that he spent with those
people who loved him best, those dedicated moments when she showed her humor
and caring and dedication. It
was the way they lived, especially those small, focused amounts of time,
that everyone remembers. Because
it is not how long we live that matters, but the way we live. As
we approach our Yizkor memorial prayers on this Yom Kippur afternoon, I ask
you to take a few moments and remember just how your love ones, who have
died, lived their lives.
How they proved this simple fact.
How they showed you that they loved you.
How they demonstrated their caring. How
they lived. Because
in the way they lived, they taught you a great deal about how to live. May
we learn those lessons again now, and in the many days of our lives that are
yet to come.
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