Now 60
do I have experience?
Authority?
to speak about ageing?
Watching the goings on at my Seder table
the oldest one present
I remain observing,
tired and jet lagged,
more souninterested
in the background jibber jabber
but also the Holy words of smart Torah
of the young ones.
No I am tired
even of the expected inspiration
which comes now
so rarely
and yearn for the quiet of the night
with George, coffee and a good cigar
speaking of aging and suffering and the Schechinah
and baffled why God would still wish this.
Only those who awake to cry and mourn for Her
Interest me now
For I too have joined the ranks of the weary and begin to
understand how She could possibly remain sane
After so many centuries of bloodshed and torture
And still believe in man.
Will I too wilt and lose memory like Dad?
and watch the slow decline with horror?
Oh the tragedy of it all
and I am part of the medical pharmaceutical industrial
machine that keeps them alive
participating in the grieving children of the stricken
with words of neurological wisdom.
So many ageing patients this trip
ill and stroked out
children looking for a sign a signal of possible return to
former glory
looking to me for what miracle?
I am so broken already by the sheer moral weight of
patient after patient
on ventilators in Herzog Hospital’s ward
a manifest desire
to fulfill some social and theological dictum called ‘sanctity
of life values’
But these comatose poor souls hang on
one by one
clinging to life
despite loss of
despite absence of
despite possible hope for return of…
But there is light…
the walks in the forest with my grandchildren
the talk and the infant banter
this wakes me up from the depression
and the sweet Jerusalem air
perfumed by the pine conespine
cones they pick up to paint for mother
as they ask me why trees bend down
and I tell them of young sapling trees like them
then taller parent trees- bending grandparent trees and
finally trees bent over with age which break and fall.
He stares at the tree stumps trying to figure out why?
“They break and are absorbed into the ground.”
I tell him
“Why are you not in the ground Dada?” he asks
I must look ancient to this 3 year old!
But the question allows me a space to see my aging
without terror
without a sense of loss
without a feeling of fatigue over the annual rituals.
The perfumed air at night as we go looking for the bright
desert moon
And dance on the street when we do
Gives me hope
That I will live on
In these tender lights
Dancing with me in a circle of three.
As I leave to return home
I do not know if and when
I do not know as I ask for a blessing from the patriarch
father
Whose tree is further bent over
and weep silently over the past
and the end of things
and the sheer tragedy of the forest’s secret
aged and knotted
before the soft pink skinned children
The Schechinah has such patience!
