“Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.”
Alfred North Whitehead
I come to London
For “kever avot”
It is Elul
The time for annual introspection
and moral accounting…
Customary to visit the graves of ancestors
Which coincides with nana’s Yahrzeit
And hence my visit to Edgwebury Sephardi cemetery
To see Nana and Dada…
As the years pile on
As the grave remains the same
I kneel
And pledge my eternal love for the only grandparents I knew
But the gift is really Eric
My dearest uncle
Whose tall frame graces the kitchen
At 5am, making coffee
Reminding me of Dada in the same spot
When I used to visit him
On Mallard Way in Kingsbury
As a teenager.
In the sixties.
We sit and sip coffee in the wee hours
And he describes his philosophy of life
(So similar to Dada’s)
On religion:
“family friends and discipline!”
the rest is superfluous!
Oh that word! My mother lived by it!
And Dada told me a similar epithet
I note how similar their views are
As I sit between the two generations
And find myself drawn ever closer to
This genetic imprint despite decades of rabbinic study
For which Dada had no patience!
“Alfred North Whitehead comes mind”
“and Spinoza” I tell Eric.
He asks whether I ever found Dada’s book
“God and His Manifold Manifestations”
“No” I reply
“But I bet I could rewrite it pretty accurately from my genes!” He laughs.
A disciplined man
He rises each morning to practice the viola
As always
At 80 something!
Like my mother and Becky
Who I visited yesterday at the Nightingale home
She whizzes around this sprawling place like she owns it!
Discipline and Family are his creed
He is in constant contact with all his children
Knows each one’s struggles
A patriarch in the truest best sense of the word.
Yes I come here
To see Eric
And his uncanny resemblance to Dada
And feel my deep connection to this man
And his ethics
A prince of a man
A role model for me
He gives me courage…
As I tell my children
“When I grow up…I want to be like uncle Eric!”
to this day.
Sitting with Eric
He mourns the loss of his wife
I think of those few hours I sit with him
His children piously leave to hear the Megillah
Who would have thought?
I cannot leave him alone
He is “sitting Shiva”
The traditional way of mourning by nailing our buttocks to a low chair
For a week or so
Paradoxically his mourning is punctuated by the Sabbath where mourning
Is prohibited no matter how close the loss
Then followed on its heels by Purim
the day of merriment and alcoholic stupor.
These two days rudely intrude on the dignity of his loss
And now we are together for a couple of hours
As he reviews the last years of Florence’s illness
The injustice of the British nursing home system
The institutionalization of the elderly
The pure human cruelty that took place there
His frustrations and revulsion at the care
His revolution
And the last days.
I remain inspired by this man
He teaches me how to live life
How to remain faithful without love reciprocated
How to play,
How to host guests
How to give to others without end
How to master an instrument
How to remain committed despite everything
How to laugh from the belly
Now, how to mourn.
I weep silently for his loss
I look forward hopefully for his indomitable spirit to resurface
To rebuild his life and his humor to resurface
To begin teaching and performing and examining students once more
To live life fully as he had done prior to his focus on Florence for so long.
His head hangs low in fatigue
He feels he has failed her
He could have done more
Despite her progressive disease
He is hard on himself
Always has been
Yet gracious and understanding to all others.
His spirit will return
I feel it
Even now
He greets visitors and worries about feeding them
Always about the other
He is hopelessly impossible to emulate
I always fall short.
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This is Julian Ungar-Sargon's personal website. It contains poems, essays, and podcasts for the spiritual seeker and interdisciplinary aficionado.
