My niece, Sheri, put a photo album on Facebook today. It was put together by some family members featuring the life of her dad - my brother - Paul, who died almost a month ago. Among other things it reminds me of how fragile we all are. If life goes the way it should, we get stronger and stronger until we don't. At some point, the process reverses and we find ourselves dealing with some of the same issues we did when we were little ones.
I was reminded of this process while reading an article by my favorite Jewish, gay, atheist, author (13 books), neurologist (authority on the brain,) music lover, Oliver Sacks, shortly before he died last month. I've shared before how much I loved everything he wrote and how much he taught me about myself.
I hope you will find and read this very short (one page) article in the September 14th issue of The New Yorker because I cannot possibly do it justice. It is about some of life's most important issues - only in the guise of gefilte fish. The article is titled "Filter Fish."
He writes about his mother, who was a surgeon, taking off work early before the Sabbat to prepare gefilte fish. She started with live fish and her preparation was meticulous. As a child, Dr. Sachs loved gefilte fish. He says he had a "passion" for it.
But then his mother was gone and he thought he'd never have gefilte fish again.
Then in his 40s, he did. His housekeeper, an African-American church going Baptist - because she cared so much for him -learned to make the fish. Dr. Sacks and all his friends loved it. But when, after 17 years of working for him, she died, he mourned her deeply - and lost his taste for gefilte fish.
That is, until just a few months ago when Dr. Sachs was dying, he rediscovered his taste for the fish. With difficulty in swallowing, it was the only way he received protein.
It sustained him as a toddler. It sustained him as an 82 year old dying man. If this isn't a modern day parable about the cycle of life, I don't know what is.
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