Benny & Sydney

I’m having one of those days today; you know the kind of day when nothing feels just right? That’s today for me, two days ago my great uncle Ben died, he was 93 and had been dealing with Alzheimer’s for a long time before this. In the last few weeks his condition rapidly deteriorated and we were all hoping for an easy passing. God granted that small comfort to all of us when two days ago with his family around him he passed. Often it was what I had been praying for of the last week when I asked for his full Hebrew name and I’m very grateful that it happened so quietly.

When I heard about it I didn’t really give it much thought, after all I’ve barely seen him in the last ten years. Its felt like he was gone for a long time. But that feeling and the reality behind it are two totally different things, sitting in shul, being with my family, sitting shiva, talking about him, its makes it real. For my mom it was especially hard, her fathers, my grandfather Sydney was Ben’s youngest brother and he died almost twenty years ago. I was four going on five when it happened, he had fought a long hard battle with cancer and in mid February he finally succumbed. Now I’m twenty four going on twenty five. I’ve listened to people tell me how much like my grandfather I am for my whole life. When he died I was to younger to really get it, I barely have any real memories of him, most of what I remember are other peoples stories.

So yesterday and today and many more days perhaps I think I’ll mourn for my grandfather as much as for anyone else. I think about what it might have been like growing up with a grandfather, all that we could have shared together. I’ll always wonder about those possibilities. And so I and my family were looking for a grave, in a cemetery covered in snow in twenty degree weather yesterday. Yesterday was as much about my grandfather as it was about anyone or anything else for me. The fact that so many of us felt it was so important to find, if only for a moment speaks more for the man who was my grandfather more then anything I can write. I can think of no greater tribute to a man I barely got to meet but whose memory I will always carry with me for all the days of my life.