My eulogy for my dear sweet Uncle Charley

My dear sweet Uncle Charley died last week.  Here is the eulogy I gave at his funeral. 

As we come to lay to rest and give tribute to the last Levine brother of four, my dear sweet Uncle Charley, I cry tears of sadness for his tremendous loss and for the end of an era.  But I also cry tears of gratitude for a long rich and full life with many wonderful memories and legacies all four brothers have left behind. 

As a child, and up until as recent as our last Facetime call two weeks ago when my dear sweet Uncle Charley managed to give me a tiny smile that only I could recognize, he always made me feel good about myself.  He always made me feel so pretty and happy when I was with him.  I feel so fortunate to have many pictures of us together from the last 7 years since dad died, and you can see in my smile in the pictures how happy I always was when I was with him. 

My uncle Charley and my dad were always great buddies and in the seven years since dad's death my dear Uncle Charley kept dad alive for me.  He shared wonderful stories of their childhood.

  

I also heard about some of their escapades together, like the time they were American soldiers in Paris during World War II and they went to the Folies Bergere.  Maybe these are not things a daughter and niece should have heard.  :)

On my last summer visit, before the cancer monster reared its ugly head and begin its ravaging taking with it the body of the man I have loved my entire life, he praised me for my accomplishments, including the family I created.  He told me I should feel very proud.  What a wonderful stamp of approval for this very sad 60 year old woman, mother, grandmother, wife and his niece who began mourning his loss before he was even gone.

Like dad, he always looked for the good in things but his final journey left him bereft of the tools that used to serve him, particularly this ability to find something good from what was happening to him.  He knew he had to come to grips with the fact that he was going to have to leave the house and community he loved so much to go to spend his final days with his dear Nathan and Brenda.  And he said to me that he knew this journey was "going to something bad."

He knew this last shedding of his body was not going to be done with what served him so well his entire 93 years.  This time he was not going to be able to find the good in it.  So he knew he needed to be resigned to his sad reality and fate and he did that with such dignity and respect holding his head high, and in so doing giving to those of us who loved him so dearly and who he has left behind, yet another life lesson on how to live with resign and resolve even when, or especially when, things are difficult.  What beautiful lessons to leave behind!

He would say he could feel the changes in his body.  He was very self-aware and in that we are very similar.  He also told me he used to work things out in his sleep and wake up with answers.  Until he expressed that to me I hadn't realized that I did the same thing.  And seeing that it was a gift that he possessed made me realize what a great gift indeed it was for me, too. 

I asked him a month ago, before that cancer monster started to take his speech away, if he was getting answers in his sleep and once again, his response made me realize that something that he had been doing for so long no longer served him.

Over the years since dad died I tried to visit my Uncle Charley here in State College as often as possible.  Making the four-hour trip through this beautiful state that I called home until I went to college gave me much time to reflect on my own past and gave me plenty of time to think about what questions I wanted to ask him. 

I always asked him to share wisdom with me from his nine decades of life.   And on the last visit I asked him to give me a blessing and this is what he said, "Surround yourself with nice people and they will be nice to you."  When I asked what you do when they aren't nice to you?” he answered, "Stay away from them.  I always tried to stay away from people I don't trust."  Such simple wisdom, but how often do we live in this world heeding such sage advice?

When I asked him if he has any last wishes, he said, “I wish everyone to carry out the Levine tradition of being truthful, honest and respectful.”

When I asked him about marriage a big smile came to his face and he looked at my dear Aunt Sylvia, who has been sitting by his side for 68 years, just having had their anniversary, I was transported back to the 1940s when they met.  His youthful smile and love for her were as fresh as I imagine it was when they met all those years ago.  When I said that she is very devoted to him he responded, yes she is and that they had a very good marriage. 

Brenda, who is what I called his trusted guardian angel, sent me a heartbreaking picture last week of Sylvia and Charley holding hands that she captioned, "This is what 68 years of marriage look like."

Before his real decline started he said to me, "I pray to G-d every night to send His healing hand."

As my beloved Uncle Charley journeyed towards death I continued to hold him dear in my heart and soul and embraced the love that burst out of me every time I thought of him.  In his last days, I too prayed to G-d every night for G-d to send His healing hand.  I prayed that my dear cousin, Brenda and my twin Nathan, who graciously invited him along with dear Aunt Sylvia, into their house for this journey, the fortitude and strength to be G-d’s partner as they held Uncle Charley’s hand through his sacred final journey.

In my dear sweet Uncle Charley’s death, I will now take his lead and pray that same prayer every night.  May G-d send His healing hand so that my dear Uncle’s neshema, his soul, will have an Aliyah, an ascent.  And to us, his grieving family that he has left behind, I pray too, that we may see the healing hand of G-d in our lives in order to help us with the grieving process.

Uncle Charley, we are all following your lead with something else.  You always loved to do the mitzvah of walking your guests to the door or to their car as they would leave you.  So now, the people who love you, are doing the same and we are walking you to your final resting place here in this world as your neshema takes its ascent. 

It is customary when we hear of a death to utter these difficult words, so I say at this very sad time, Baruch Dayan Ha’emet, Blessed is the true judge.  

The Unfolding of Self-Awareness

In both my professional, as well as personal, life I have come to realize something that has become very important to me. It has to do with self-awareness, which is foundational in my work with educators.

As I have encouraged others to be self-reflective and self-aware I have come to realize that simplistically (it is anything but simple) people seem to approach self-awareness in one of two ways, and it basically has to do with how they live their lives.

I have observed that we tend to either attack life full on or we tend to gently embrace it.  In the first way we tend to muscle our way through things in contrast to the second when we enter and observe our situations then act. Yet, whichever way we go through life, it’s a push/pull.  I’m convinced that the more gentle and honest we are with ourselves in understanding which is our way, the more fulfilling the journey will be and the more rewarding the outcome will be as we grapple with the push/pull nature of this thing we call living.

In his book Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death Irvin Yalom says, "Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.  This is what makes us human.  But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality.  Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom and inevitably, diminish and die."

Ouch!  This blog post just took a morbid turn, but not really.   Yalom says the irony and paradox of staring into the reality that we all will die is that we become less concerned about dying.  We fret less when we address, acknowledge and embrace the truth that we will die.  It becomes less frightening when we look right at it.  What a great way to prevent anxiety!

So how about if we just let the self-awareness process have the opportunity to evolve and unfold within us?  It is delicate, yet, very powerful journey, which at times is very difficult and painful yet so worthwhile.  The longer we live, the more profound this becomes.   If we can be gentle with ourselves and allow our self-awareness to unfold in its own time and way, the richer and deeper our lives can become.

Who's in?