Life is full of lessons. I learned this the hard way at the age of 14. My Dad, a respected and loved man, a pillar of our community, died suddenly at the age of 47 from his first heart attack. My childhood world of innocence came crashing down and nothing seemed to make sense. My mother was left a widow in her early 40s, with six children ranging in age from 8 to 20 years old. Why should this good man, beloved by all, be taken from his friends and family at a time when he was needed most? I was confused, angry and hurt. The security and serenity that marked my prior life was gone. It would have been easy to become bitter and lose myself in drugs or self absorption. But this is not what happened.
Two powerful forces came together to bring our family through this tragedy. There was a tremendous outpouring of love and support from our extended family and the small but cohesive local Jewish community. There were three main synagogues in Dayton, Ohio that cold January day in 1973 and three very different rabbis with unique approaches to Judaism. Each spoke at my father’s funeral, creating a united front that showed me and my 5 siblings that we would get through this together. The Jewish tradition has a very detailed and regimented way of dealing with death and this was very comforting to me. We sat shiva, the week of mourning, in our home, constantly attended by friends and family. We stayed home and had services in our home for that week and spent 30 days focusing on our loss by avoiding movies and parties and any boisterous activities. My two brothers and I went to the synagogue every day for one full year to lead services and chant the mourner’s Kaddish which praises God’s name in spite of our loss, championing the idea that life is precious and God is good.
Even as I sometimes disdained the words that thanked God for being so great, I was comforted knowing that I was doing something to honor my father’s memory just as he had done for his father all the way back to ancient times. Soon I was an integral part of the minyan, the group of 10 parishioners needed to make a quorum. We could not say the Kaddish and have it be valid if we fell short. Any kaddish left unsaid could never be recouped and I was determined to say each one. If we needed one or two to complete our group, I would be on the phone to some nearby helpers to pitch in. Soon I was comforting other mourners and explaining the order of the prayers and the special rules. This daily exercise made me feel part of the community, help me feel closer to my father and my brothers, and surprisingly it helped soothe my confused soul.
The second powerful force that brought our family through this heartbreak was my mother. Always the optimist, this disaster deeply tested her resolve and natural sunny approach to life. To her the cup of life was always half full, not half empty. She was devastated but refused to allow the dream that she and my father so lovingly built to be destroyed. Through the power of her will and the great expectations she had for each of us to not give in to this loss, she was determined to see our family continue to thrive. She had no time for self pity but had 6 children to raise. Her goal was “to make each of you independent of me”.
She succeeded. Five of us became physicians and one an engineer. We all married and had children of our own. My Mom died a few weeks ago in November, 2015, at the age of 86, blessed with 24 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren with 2 on the way. Her legacy remains to love life, love your family and spread that love around as much as you can.
Four of my sibs specialized (Psychiatry, Physiatry, Preventive Cardiology and Medical Research) but I chose to be a family doctor. I like keeping patients and families healthy and wanted to help families avoid the kind of tragedy that hit my family. I wanted to give my Dad’s death meaning and vowed that he would not have died in vain. I would dedicate my life to being the best family doctor that I could be and spare as many families as possible the suffering that my family had faced.
When my Father died I learned that life is not fair, that good people sometimes suffer needlessly. But, I also learned that when something awful happens to you, you can choose how you will respond. You can withdraw into defeat or you can rededicate yourself to make something good come out of it. With my Dad’s memory to inspire me and my Mom’s Churchillian tenacity to encourage me, I set out to learn how to heal people and hoped perhaps to heal myself.
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