Jonah

Parenting is an endurance test, to be sure. But sometimes the shoe moves to the other foot, and children have to endure their parents. Such was the case in 1998, when I packed the car with suitcases and three children, and headed off to explore the roads and roadside attractions of Pennsylvania.

Ellen’s and my vacation times weren’t in sync back then, so I would take the kids on my own for what I’d thought would be a great vacation. Katie was ten at the time, Jonah eight, and Aiden four. The idea was to drive for a while into a nearby state, stop at restaurants and motels along the way, and find interesting places to visit. I prepared arduously for these trips, blissfully unaware of how tolerant my children would need to be in order to put up with my naive belief that we’d all love these adventures. What it ended up being was an interminable combination of mindless, limb-numbing hours in the car, too much fast food (not for me but for the kids!), mystery motel rooms which just as easily held magical mini-bars filled with chips and cookies as menacing families of cockroaches in the tub.

Our first road trip brought us into the State of Pennsylvania, to which we journeyed in search of trains and the Amish. It was in Strasburg, PA, that we found them both. While riding the 1800s-style Strasburg Railroad into the countryside of Lancaster County, we were all delighted to see Pennsylvania’s Amish folk carriaging back-and-forth alongside us. Of course, while the trains were a perfect preservation of the past, the Amish were as contemporary as they were ever going to get (which, for them, meant the 1720’s). My kids were fairly enthralled by all of this and, for a brief moment, it looked like I’d done okay on my trip planning.

Alas, the hours in the car, interrupted only briefly by uninspiring stops at McDonald’s and KFC, did not keep me high in the popularity polls. Katie’s leaving Claudia, the bunny she’d kept close by from the day she was born, in one of the motel beds did not improve things. We wouldn’t see Claudia again until she arrived home squeezed tightly into a shipping container courtesy of some kind motel staffperson who’d found the doll in the laundry. Needless to say, I don’t think Claudia joined us on future road trips. The kids, to their dismay, were not presented with a similar choice.

We brought two souvenirs home with us from our Pennsylvania road trip. The first was a train set. A starter set. Set us back three hundred bucks, it did. We had big plans. Wanted to build a whole city around it, just like the one we’d seen in Strasburg (yep, in the model railroad store). We set up our starter set exactly once. Next I saw it was years later, when Ellen was carrying it to the car to give away.

Billy, Katie, Aiden, Jonah
In case you don’t recognize us!
PA Road Trip, June 1998

Our second souvenir lasted a bit longer. It’s the one-and-only photograph from our entire Pennsylvania road trip. We had it taken at one of those photograph dress-up places. The four of us put on Western garb; I think we were bank robbers, probably train robbers. I’ve sometimes wondered about there being no other pictures from this trip. Apparently, Ellen was still the sole family photographer, a role she would begin to share with me the following summer when our road trip took us into upstate New York and Niagara Falls and where, for a very scary few minutes, we lost Aiden. But that’s a story for another time.

Billy

P.S. “Road Trip” is The Jonah Maccabee Foundation’s summer fundraiser for 2013. Remembering some of the fun Jonah had on these vacations, we’d like to help other kids to enjoy and to grow during their own childhood years. Please consider making your tax-deductible gift at jonahmac.org by Sunday, July 31. Okay, or any other time. Thank you.

I have a video Jonah made in which he (dramatically, and with a driving soundtrack, to boot) thanks a friend for teaching him how to fold t-shirts. We’ll not get into how he missed his parents’ instruction in that regard. The video ends with Jonah pointing to the mess in his t-shirt drawer and proclaiming, “This will end … <he pauses to consider what he’s saying> … next week. I will be putting your advice into effect come … <he again pauses> … whenever I get around to it.”

I’m not sure the t-shirt folding ever happened, but I know for a certainty that other folding did. Jonah was a big fan of origami and he was able to create some pretty fancy designs, including birds and elephants. I will treasure these forever.

Lots of stuff folds, of course. Flowers create exquisite designs when their petals fold. Mountains and valleys appear when earth folds. Sound is made as air folds. And solar power can be boosted when light folds.

Origami begins, simply and humbly, with a single piece of paper. Without scissors, tape or glue, astoundingly complicated designs “unfold.” What makes this such a fascinating art form is that no materials are added or subtracted. You end with what you began, only prettier.

At a macro level, all existence functions this way. Lavoisier’s 18th century discovery that matter is neither created nor destroyed suggests the universe isn’t so different from origami. Which means that you and I, in our eight or nine decades of life, also follow Lavoisier’s principle.

We change, but we stay the same. Our journey through life gives us folds, too. Wrinkles on our faces. Wrinkles on our souls. Same person, changed appearance and changed spirit. We fold, but that doesn’t mean we’re finished.

The Talmud relates a story of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananya and the daughter of the Roman Emperor, who asked him why God would place so much wisdom in such an ugly vessel. He instructed her to move her father’s finest wines into gold and silver vessels which, of course, spoiled the wine. When her father demanded an explanation, she told him what took place between her and Rabbi Yehoshua. The emperor summoned the rabbi and asked him, “Why did you tell her to do that?” Rabbi Yehoshua explained that he was simply answering her question. Just as wine is best preserved in humble vessels, so too is wisdom.

We may think our wrinkles, or other “imperfect” aspects of our bodies, detract from our value. But we mustn’t mistake the vessel for its contents. A person’s true worth resides within.

But it can take decades to acquire such wisdom. The book of Micah teaches us, “What is asked of you? To do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with God.” Our vessels are superbly equipped to accomplish these tasks.

It takes various amounts of time to fold that into our lives. Even knowing it, we delay (like Jonah and his t-shirts), leaving the drawer a mess. While folding t-shirts has limited (though certainly not insignificant) value, the origami of our lives can have purpose and value without end, creating exquisite art to be admired by us all.

Billy

This piece expands upon one that appeared in Makom, the newsletter of Woodlands Community Temple (Nov 2012). It also appeared in my “Figuring Things Out” blog (Nov 2012).

2013 happens to mark the tenth year since Jonah Dreskin became a Bar Mitzvah. His Torah reading was from Terumah (Exodus 25:8-22), which we read just a few weeks back in early February. Needless to say, Jonah the Bar Mitzvah has been on my mind.

They weren’t the most captivating verses of Torah — intricate details about constructing the desert Tabernacle. But there’s this one verse, “Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” This, of course, appealed to the young Bar Mitzvah’s clergy parents who had hoped their child would understand their hope that he himself would become a dwelling place for God’s presence on earth. But I wasn’t sure it caught much more than a yawn from Jonah. Nevertheless, when he wrote his D’var Torah (his Bar Mitzvah speech), he fairly ripped into God with accusations of abandoning Earth just when we could really use some help. At the time, I thought Jonah was writing this simply to stick it to his rabbi and cantor mom and dad. But now, as I read it ten years later, with the hindsight of knowing the kind of person Jonah had grown into in the six years that he lived beyond becoming a Bar Mitzvah, I realize that this kid really understood the mess our world was in and how important it was for good people to try and fix things.

In my Parent’s D’var Torah that morning, I reflected publicly on changes I’d been noticing in Jonah’s behavior: “Is that my Jonah helping his little brother? Is that my Jonah setting the table for dinner? Is that my Jonah distributing hot coffee and friendly conversation on the Midnight Run?” I spoke about how I’d need to get used to having a son who, more and more, sees himself as part of a larger world, as playing a principal role in the unfolding story of humankind. Frankly, if I’m totally honest, I don’t think that, at the time, I unquestioningly believed he was becoming the wonderful kid I had been talking about.

But it didn’t matter. Because he was. Those moments I had observed? They really did represent a sea-change that was taking place in him. Jonah really was becoming a nicer brother to Aiden. He really was helping out around the house. And he really was starting to care about the welfare of strangers.

In other words, he really was becoming a Bar Mitzvah. If ever there was a kid making that turn around the corner, leaving immature childhood behind, and moving forward into something deeper, something more substantial, it was Jonah Maccabee Dreskin. Over the next few years, he would quite literally blossom into an extraordinarily kind and generous brother, son, and young man.

For my birthday, two weeks after he became a Bar Mitzvah, Jonah presented me with a framed photograph of the two of us standing together at the Ark. It was an over-pixelated photo, partly the low-resolution of the shot and partly Jonah’s digital editing. I never let on that I hadn’t really liked the picture (I’m a clean edges kind of guy) but I dutifully hung it on my wall. Silly me, that I missed the love that had been inserted into that frame. This 13-year old kid was proud of standing up there with his old man rabbi, and he was proud of what he could do to change that picture (perhaps figuratively, as well as literally). In time, he would excel at digital manipulation. He would also excel at changing the picture of his own life. But love? He didn’t need any improvement in that department.

I did.

Ten years later, I now realize that it’s not just the Bar Mitzvah kid who’s on a journey to adulthood. A whole lot of us parents are too.

Mazal tov, boy. I’m so proud of all you accomplished. You really did build a place for God to live. Right inside of you.

Love,
Dad

P.S. Please support The Jonah Maccabee Foundation. More information is available at our website and on our Facebook page.

I was reading an article about the first-responders in Newtown, CT, describing their experiences during the shooting and their lingering emotions six weeks later. As I worked my way through the interview, tears gushed down my face. At one point, I put my head down and just sobbed. I sympathized so deeply for all of them.

But there was something more. This is how things are for me now in a world without Jonah. Four years since his death, I continue to experience life differently than I did prior to March 2009. Back then, the tears came from that Kodak commercial of the father and his son watching a sunset, his child whispering, “Do it again, Daddy.” After all, I’ve been a father since Katie’s birth in 1988, and a sucker for kids and puppies ever since. Now there’s something else. I have this lingering sense of loss that, for the most part, resides quietly inside of me but, every now and then, insists on coming out and reminding me that Jonah’s no longer here, won’t ever be here, and I won’t ever stop missing him.

This isn’t to say that I’ve stopped living. That isn’t true at all. If you’ve spent any time with me, I hope you’ll agree. Life is still an amazing, purpose-filled and delight-producing experience. I certainly wish Jonah were here, but his absence doesn’t remove all of life’s goodnesses – only the ones connected to him.

And I think there’s a lesson here for us. While I certainly have a huge pain that I carry with me, I’m by no means the only one. So many of us are bruised, hurt, wounded by life. All of us face that profound, existential choice — whether or not to go on, whether or not to insist on living life fully and happily.

I’m actually kind of lucky. The source of my pain is also the source of my inspiration. Jonah lived his life with such exuberance. Each day was an opportunity to do something wonderful. My missing him may, on occasion, bring tears. But more often, it reminds me of how much beauty remains.

That helps me a lot.

And if you need it, I hope it can help you too.

Miss you, boy.

Dad

P.S. Please support The Jonah Maccabee Foundation. More information is available at our website and on our Facebook page.

If you knew one thing about Jonah Maccabee Dreskin, you knew he loved humor. He loved to read it, watch it, listen to it and, as often as possible, to create it himself.

Larry Gelbart, who wrote Tootsie, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and M*A*S*H, is reputed to have said, “One doesn’t have a sense of humor. It has you.” How true that was for Jonah. From his earliest years, he enjoyed a good laugh, and he couldn’t help but allow his every fiber to be drawn toward funny moments.

Jonah’s 1st sight-gag
May 1992

My earliest memories of him laughing include, at the ripe old age of two, when we were living in Cleveland and had this fantastic front yard. We’d set up a sprinkler on hot days and two-year-old Jonah, along with his big sister four-year-old Katie, would jump in and out of the shooting water streams. Jonah couldn’t get enough of it. The wetter he’d get, the happier he’d be. And when there was no sprinkler, we just poured buckets of water over him. Buckets and buckets on top of his head, as he screamed and giggled with unrestrained delight. If no one was available to pour the water, little Jonah would just pick it up and empty it on himself. Apparently Jonah had been watching his mom watering the flowers and he decided that he wanted to be watered too. So began Jonah’s earliest adventures with creating laughter and smiles.

When Jonah was four, he learned that clothing can get a rise out of people. Ellen and I had to really work at getting him to understand that his teacher really was expecting him to wear more than just his underpants to school. “Well, if you want to be rude about it,” he would respond, a relatively good-natured signal that he had given in, and off he’d go to finish getting dressed. The exchange of glances and smiles on our faces were the only indication that we’d enjoyed this early comedic interaction with our son.

Where dad used to listen to Bill Cosby records

I readily admit that I played my part in corrupting Jonah’s sense of propriety. Having grown up listening to the recordings of Bill Cosby, Tom Lehrer, Steve Martin, The Smothers Brothers, Firesign Theater and Allan Sherman, I only too gladly made sure that Hanukkah and birthday gifts included some of these great laughs. When the three kids joined me (in 2006) to visit my childhood home in Cincinnati and we entered my bedroom, Jonah immediately walked into the closet and sat on the floor remembering stories of how I used to climb in there to listen to my Bill Cosby records. Why did I do this? No idea. But Jonah’s reenactment brought another smile and a bit of gratitude for his gesture.

Later, there would be gifts of printed collections from The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, more opportunities to distract Jonah from dignified living — the sign of a dad just doing his job.

One more memory from Jonah’s earliest years. Ellen and I have always adored the stories of Robert Munsch (if you haven’t read Love You Forever, don’t deprive yourself one more day). When we learned that Munsch had recorded a collection of his stories – silly tales which were always funny but sweet – we soon had all three kids falling asleep to them at bedtime.

Dane Cook t-shirt
Katrina Relief 2007

In time, Jonah found his own sources of humorous distraction. Ellen and I weren’t invited to listen to the elegant stylings of Dane Cook but we knew this guy, ineffective as he was at bringing parents and children together, was one of Jonah’s favorites. Monty Python, on the other hand, was freely shared. Our family spent many a Saturday night working our way through the entire Flying Circus collection. And the British improv show Whose Line Is it Anyway? was required viewing most evenings after dinner.

Speaking of improv, there was a year that we held Whose Line Is It Anyway? Purim at our synagogue. The idea was to divvy up the different parts of the Purim story and have them acted out through the improvisational games of the television show. While all the other teams prepared every word beforehand, making it appear to be improvisation but it wasn’t, only 17-year-old Jonah’s group actually performed improvisational comedy. And they were very funny!

I don’t know how Garfield became one of Jonah’s favorite cartoon strips, but he somehow ended up with 29 volumes of Jim Davis’ visual musings. He also owned the Garfield Merriam-Webster Dictionary which, more than any other educational resource, may have been responsible for Jonah’s evolving smarts as he mined its pages for cartoons stopping to learn an actual word every now and then.

And we mustn’t forget Curious George. This little creature came into Jonah’s life when he was just a year old, and while George didn’t go to college with Jonah, he did go to camp and just about everywhere else. I daresay, George may have been one of Jonah’s most important role models, which may explain how one little boy could get into so much trouble. Also, while he never had a yellow one, this may also tell us something about why Jonah had so many hats!

Other tomes on Jonah’s bookshelf included: 750 Ways to Annoy People (‘nuff said), The Darwin Awards (paying dubious homage to people who die because of the truly stupid things they’ve done), and Bad President (a rather uncomplimentary ode to George W. Bush).

Jonah’s favorite musical may very well have been Avenue Q, the funniest send-up of Sesame Street ever. His favorite TV shows (well, at one time at least) were Family Guy, Hey, Arnold! and Doug (the collected 1st season of which was given to him by Aiden).

Jonah’s favorite movies included Rush Hour (all of them), Blazing Saddles and Animal House, which gives you a pretty clear idea what was shaping this guy’s mind.

He kept a You Might Be a Redneck If… calendar in his room, as well as an Oscar Wilde action figure and a Dashboard Monk. An eclectic array, to be sure, but if it tickled his funny bone it was likely to come home with him like a stray puppy (which may also explain the shark in a bottle).

Dr. Wally, “Marvin’s Room”
Play Group Theatre, May 2007

Jonah learned that playing comedy is not nearly as easy as being comical yourself. Cast as “Dr. Wally” in Play Group Theatre’s 2007 production of Marvin’s Room, Jonah confronted his most challenging role, playing a somewhat inept and clumsy physician who makes the audience laugh while he engages in what’s certainly not a funny role of caring for a cancer victim. Knowing how much laughter Jonah was usually able to evoke, it was novel but not out of character to watch how hard he worked to try and tease the humor from his part.

Jonah tried his hand at writing comedy too. Unfortunately, at my expense. During his 10th grade Service of Confirmation, when each student addressed the congregation to share what they’ve come to value about being Jewish, my Jonah (who I knew valued his Judaism greatly but could never come at nearly any topic from an expected angle) began his presentation by describing an epic light-sabre battle taking place on the roof of the temple between me (the rabbi) and Adolf Hitler. Well, it was memorable. And I suppose great comedy has to begin somewhere.

In 2008, Woodlands Community Temple celebrated my Bar Mitzvah year (#13, that is) as their rabbi. Jonah was unable to be there, but he sent a few words to be read aloud before the gathered throngs. Here are a couple of choice morsels:

After 18 grueling years of service, you have convinced me that hair does not make the man. If it did, you would be much much smaller.

You are always a good listener and so many people trust you. No matter how bad a situation gets, you’ve always got a word or two of wisdom to brighten up the mood. Even when you’re angry, you rarely become irrational and you always handle the situation to the best of your ability. After being a witness to all of these great events in your career as Rabbi Dad, I have only to say, thanks for screwing it up for the rest of us Dreskins.

Sometimes, my kids worked as a team. Our home could be an outrageously funny place to spend some time, and I could just sit and watch my three kids be goofy for hours. Very little of it got documented but here’s one small snippet that survives on Facebook (from November 2007):

Katie: Why don’t you respond to my texting or facebooking?  It hurts my feelings.

Jonah: *Tosses Rabid Squirrel* Hold that for a second. *Runs away*

Katie: You are a sad, strange little man.

Jonah & Amanda B
NFTY-NAR, Feb 2008

One of my favorite Jonah-quotes appears beneath a photograph posted on Facebook. In it, Amanda Battaglia, one of Jonah’s closest friends from his NFTY days in high school, can be seen running across a room and jumping into Jonah’s arms. The caption she wrote expresses the feelings of many of the kids in NFTY who don’t get to see friends from other towns and states for long stretches of time: “I missed my big brother.” Jonah’s reply is deftly clever: “No, you hit him dead on.” That was the kid I’d hoped to watch, and to enjoy, for many decades to come.

Three weeks before Jonah died, I sent him (for his 19th birthday) a copy of Honi HaSakran, Curious George in Hebrew. I wrote the following inscription inside: “Dear JMac, as you embark upon this next segment of your life’s journey, carry within you all that has given you joy. This little monkey has held your hand an awfully long time. In any language, that gives voice to a whole world of goodnesses … those that have been and those that are yet to be. May they all bring you warmth of the spirit. With much love and admiration, Dad.”

Without a doubt, Jonah was one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. I’d like to think he got some of that from me. But that golden soul of his, the one that used silliness to help others find their smile, he discovered that part all by himself.

Billy

P.S. Please consider supporting The Jonah Maccabee Foundation. More information is available at our website and on our Facebook page.

When we ran the “Commencement Gifts” campaign to introduce The Jonah Maccabee Foundation, I reached out to Jonah’s UB freshman year friends inviting them to share stories of their six months at college with him. I received wonderful reminiscences of that brief but unforgettable period during which these young people were just learning to stretch their newly-liberated wings as they lived life away from home for the first time.

Mac and Charlotte
UB 2008-09

One of Jonah’s close friends was Charlotte Lopez. Before Jonah’s death, I’d only known of Charlotte as the one who referred to me as “Rabbi Kenny.” Having learned that Mac (which everyone called him at UB) actually had a first name, she’d asked him, “Does everyone in your family go by their middle name?” So she began referring to me by my middle name as well.

Charlotte had promised to send me a story. After years of switching majors, Charlotte had finally settled on, and is close to completing a degree in, English. So I figured a story from her was worth waiting for. A month after “Commencement Gifts” had ended, I received a message from Charlotte saying she’d finally thought of the story she wanted to share. She felt if was a perfect metaphor for Jonah Maccabee’s life. When I read it, I agreed.

Here’s Charlotte’s story:

When Mac and I were freshmen, he and our group of friends would drift aimlessly from place to place – into a lecture hall, then outside, someone’s dorm room, and then the dining hall, etc. Mac, like a few of our other friends, insisted on bringing something with him to each place. Some days it was a guitar, other days it was a necklace, or some strange trinket. His well-remembered messenger bag seemed to always carry interesting stories and playthings.

Solving the Cube
UB 2008-09

This particular day we were lounging in the empty lecture hall and he was playing with a Rubik’s Cube. He’d mess it up, solve it, mess it up, and solve it again. I was fascinated and asked him to teach me how to solve it. He insisted it would be a long and arduous process, that we would need to practice for at least twenty minutes a day for two weeks before I’d be able to solve it on my own. I thought he was exaggerating. I agreed anyway.

Day one was the toughest but Mac was so dedicated, passionately describing how a Rubik’s Cube should be looked at, using many analogies and long sentences to do so. He was an excellent teacher.

We practiced all the time! Every few days, he would teach me a new step in solving the riddle. He never belittled me or made me feel frustrated. He would even go out of his way to let me borrow his precious Cube for the day while he was in class, or meet me on campus in some obscure place to let me work for even just ten minutes. As Mac had promised, it was indeed difficult. Each day, I would have visions of learning the next step in solving the riddle. Mac was always sure to leave the Cube just as I had given it to him, so I could pick up where I’d left off. He was a natural, intuitive teacher explaining each principle, but never solving any piece of it for me. This was a month or two in the making!

The time arrived when there remained only one step for Mac to show me so I could solve the Rubik’s Cube on my own. Sadly, that was when he died. I never learned that last step.

Nowadays, anytime I see a Rubik’s Cube I think of Mac. And when I get the chance to play around with one, I can almost always reach that final step. Some of my family and friends think it’s sad I never got to learn the final piece of the puzzle, but I think it’s a great ode to Mac that is forever being sung in my heart. When I get to that last little step I frown, I giggle, I become a little frustrated, I get sad, I get happy, and sometimes I get deep. That’s exactly how Mac made me feel. And that’s why it’s okay that I don’t know the last step in solving Mac’s Rubik’s Cube.

Charlotte’s story is truly an ode in praise of Jonah’s life. He was so full of interesting and captivating ways of being. He drew my attention even when he was just sitting still. His ideas were fresh, often insightful and, just as often, entertaining. At age nineteen, he was just getting started. In this experiment called college, he’d only begun to discover what he loved about himself and what he loved outside in a world that continually thrilled him. Having known him and loved him, I now find myself wondering what would have become of him. Where would life’s adventures have taken him? And like Charlotte’s unsolved Rubik’s Cube, it’s a piece of Jonah’s puzzle that will never be revealed.

Charlotte Lopez today

I’m grateful to Charlotte Lopez for sharing this story, It teaches so much about my son, and about the enchanting possibilities and the sobering realities that exist for us all. We’re invited to experience so much during our lives. There are countless moments that beckon to, and delight, us. Opportunities to live boldly, with all our heart and all our soul. But something else beckons and, though we may wish it, won’t be rebuffed. Life ends. It comes to an unremitting finish. For some, the end arrives after many, many years. For others, it unceremoniously arrives after almost no time at all. Regardless, things are left unfinished. None of us gets it all done. There’s always a piece of the puzzle that remains out of place.

I think Jonah would have loved comparing life, especially his, to an unsolved Rubik’s Cube. Whatever came next would never be known. To that, I think he would have smiled that great, big smile of his, and proclaimed to all the world, “I’m an enigma!” And he was. We loved him for that. Our days were all a little bit brighter because, for a brief, hurricane-like while, he came bounding into them.

Billy

P.S. Please consider supporting The Jonah Maccabee Foundation. More information is available at our website and on our Facebook page.

On June 10, 2012, an era came to an end for our family. Beginning eight years ago, in 2004, and continuing every half-year since, either Jonah or Aiden (and often both) has performed in a production at The Play Group Theatre in White Plains, NY. I’ve written extensively about Jonah’s shows there (see “Clown Mensch of White Plains,” parts one and two), but I’ve rarely commented on Aiden’s involvement. As it turns out, both of my boys were profoundly affected and shaped by their time at The Play Group Theatre, and Aiden, now graduated from high school and PGT, has chosen to pursue his drama interest professionally.

Aristotle wrote, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Whenever I sit in the auditorium at PGT, I can’t help but adore what Aiden’s doing onstage and, at the same time, feel Jonah’s presence deep inside. So whenever words are recited or sung, I can’t help but sense the Jonah-connections.

Aiden performed in two shows during this last season. A Sondheim musical and a Shakespeare comedy. A pretty perfect cap to his incredible eight years there. True to form, there were moments that plopped Jonah right down next to me, reminders of how much I miss him and how much I continue to learn from his absence.

Stephen Sondheim’s and James Lapine’s Into the Woods brings together a number of fairy-tale characters on a shared journey beyond happy endings. The show illustrates how many of us get to live beautiful stories, sometimes for a good long while. But being human, life becomes both emotionally and physically complicated, and those become part of our stories too.

In “Lament,” the Witch sings of her daughter’s having just been killed by a Giant. For so many years, the Witch had locked her child away to protect her from a dangerous world. But parents can only succeed at doing that for a brief time. Eventually, our children leave home because they’re supposed to. At one point or another, we no longer take them to school; they ride the bus. At one point or another, they go away for a vacation, or camp, or a school trip, without us. And then, at one point or another, college (or some other post-high school adventure) comes along, and our kids begin the process that will carry them into their independent-of-us, rest-of-their lives. Sometimes, they don’t make it. An illness, an accident. And their story ends. All the possibilities, all the brightness – finished. And it can happen to anyone. It happens a lot. “This is the world I meant,” the Witch sings. “Couldn’t you listen? Couldn’t you stay content, safe behind walls?”

And then she points out the most difficult lesson for us parents: “Children can only grow from something you love, to something you lose!” In its best expression, this is what makes parents into “empty nesters.” Children, grown and matured, begin new lives for themselves, with new partners and children of their own to love – elsewhere. We phone, we visit, but their lives are away from us. It’s as things should be, and we learn to appreciate that. But sometimes we lose our children to illness and to death. They go elsewhere, and we have to learn to live with that. And to appreciate what we had. And also to appreciate what still remains – memories, love, and those things we do to try and build something good, something positive, on top of all we’ve lost.

Aiden, “Into the Woods”
May 2012

Toward the end of the show, Aiden, playing the role of the Mysterious Man, counsels his son about running away from the mess his life has become (something the Mysterious Man knows much about, having done so for nearly a lifetime … something I also know about, having experienced a pain that no one would wish to own). But the Mysterious Man points out, “Trouble is, son, the farther you run the more you feel undefined for what you have left undone and, more, what you have left behind.” So we continue to show up. Show up for life. To make our contribution. To take our fill. And to honor our dead by not allowing our love for them to disappear.

The Mysterious Man’s son is shocked to be speaking with his father who he had watched die. “I thought you were dead,” the son asks. “Not completely,” comes the response. This may be the most difficult question of all. Not merely in terms of the afterlife, but in how we live after the life of someone we love has fled. For three years, I have been the curator of Jonah’s memories, writing down stories, archiving photographs and carefully preserving memorabilia. Starting this past April, our family established The Jonah Maccabee Foundation. Its mission is to assist young people in growing good lives for themselves. Suddenly, I’m not just looking back at Jonah but I’m carrying his memory forward. And his memory is carrying me, as that irrepressible spirit of his seems to defy even death by helping me to reach out and do something good with all of this. Maybe we don’t have to completely die.

Even closer to the show’s end, Cinderella comforts Little Red Riding Hood, who has experienced violent deception and loss in her young life. “Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood.” Of course, I think only of Jonah, who has indeed left us far too soon. Part of me feels forever lost inside those woods, fearful of continuing the journey without him. Cinderella tempers the harsh lesson by offering these words of comfort, “But no one is alone.” And she’s right. I’ve learned throughout this sad course of events that in the worst of it, humanity is a pretty caring crowd. There’s always someone to offer a leg up, or a warming embrace. We may have to climb out of our basement depressions to see them, but good people are rarely far away.

In Aiden’s final PGT production, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he plays Lysander, one of four lovers whose story wends a most confusing path through a different woods, and whose ending finds all things set right. I’m tempted to dismiss this as another fairy-tale, but who’s to say what’s possible and what’s not? We all lose some (even much) of what is dear to us. But we don’t lose it all. The great challenge in life is to find a happy ending despite abundant detours and traumas along the way. We’re all in the woods where, yes, there is much to fear but much beauty as well.

The fairy king, Oberon, completes Shakespeare’s fantasy with these words. “Now, until the break of day, through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, which by us shall blessed be, and the issue there create ever shall be fortunate. So shall all the couples three ever true in loving be, and the blots of Nature’s hand shall not in their issue stand. Never mole, hare lip, nor scar, nor mark prodigious, such as are despised in nativity, shall upon their children be. With this field-dew consecrate, every fairy take his gait, and each several chamber bless, through this palace, with sweet peace. And the owner of it blest ever shall in safety rest.”

I have lost my middle child just as his life was emerging into shimmering adulthood. Now, my youngest, his friends beside him, has stepped forward to teach me that life has not come to an end. Nor has beauty. Nor has love. And while, in time, there will be more sadnesses (for we are fragile beings), there is no reason we shouldn’t feel that our house is watched over and blessed by the most generous of angels. Jonah was a sight and a joy to behold, and now his physical essence is gone. But the beauty and the laughter he once unstintingly shared, these remain with us forever. As do Aiden, Katie, Ellen, Charlie, my friends, my colleagues, my communities, and a phenomenally exquisite planet upon which to experience it all.

Billy

P.S. Please consider supporting The Jonah Maccabee Foundation. More information is available at our website and on our Facebook page.

I was asked to write a series of essays for the Union for Reform Judaism’s “10 Minutes of Torah.” This is the last of the nine. I’d wanted to write about Jonah in each one of them, but of course I couldn’t. So I saved him for this final piece.

In this week’s double portion, Behar-Bekhukotai (Lev. 25:1 – 27:34), we read (among many other topics) of the mitzvah to observe the yovel, the fiftieth “jubilee” year. From the second half of Lev. 25:10: “It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to your holding and each of you shall return to your family.”

For two years (this one and the sh’mitah/sabbatical year which occurs previously in the 49th year), the land is to lie fallow. Nothing is to be planted, and God promises the Israelites that enough food will grow for them to eat and stay healthy until the harvest returns after their resumption of planting in the 51st year. And, as the text demands, every Israelite is to return to the original tribal land that was parceled out during Joshua’s conquest of Canaan.

Commenting on this passage, Rabbi Yitzkhak Nafkha (3rd century CE) looked at Psalms 103:20 (“Bless the Eternal, O God’s angels, mighty creatures who do God’s bidding, ever obedient to God’s word.”) and wrote, “This is referring to those who observe the [mitzvah of letting the land lie fallow]. Why are they called ‘mighty creatures’? Because while it’s common for a person to fulfill a commandment for one day, for one Shabbat, or even for one month, can one do so for an entire year? This person sees his field and trees ownerless, his fences broken and fruits eaten, yet controls himself and does not speak. Our rabbis taught, ‘Who is strong? One who controls passion.’ Can there be a mightier creature than a person like this?” (Midrash Tanhuma on Parshat Vayikra)

3rd Grade
June 1999

Around Hanukkah of 1998, a young Joshua Davidson (now senior rabbi at Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester in Chappaqua, NY) presented my 8-year-old son Jonah with a trumpet. It had been Josh’s from his childhood and I can recall him playing it in high school. Josh felt that Jonah was the right person to receive the trumpet for a number of excellent reasons. First, Jonah had been learning from Josh how to play the shofar, and it’s a very short journey from shofar-player to trumpet-player. Second, Jonah and Josh shared the same initials, “J.M.D.” which were embossed on the outside of the trumpet case. 8-year-old Jonah’s response, as always throughout his life, was unrestrained. He thought it was incredibly cool to have received the instrument, especially with his initials included. He also felt it looked “a little old,” which it was, even if Josh really wasn’t (yet). But the real stumbling block for him concerned the mouthpiece, the metal attachment that’s blown through to initiate the trumpet’s sound. Jonah could never imagine using someone else’s mouthpiece because, as he insisted, “It must be covered with millions of disgusting germs!” Not wanting to undermine the possibility of a future virtuoso world-tour, I assured him we could sanitize the mouthpiece so that he could play it without fear of contamination. Which we did and, for a good number of years, were privileged to enjoy watching our son play in school concerts and hearing him sound the shofar when Ellen and I led Rosh Hashanah family services.

Three years ago, Jonah Maccabee Dreskin died at the age of 19. As you can imagine, letting him go has been the most difficult and painful experience of my life. Jonah was bigger than life. He was a clown with a huge heart, who never missed an opportunity to goof off but never did so at another person’s expense. He was always available to a friend in need and never once complained when his mom asked him to vacuum the house or set the table. He called me “old man,” enjoyed punching my arm (hard), and would remind me to behave because he’d be picking my nursing home.

When Jonah died, my family and I were thrown into a period of distress during which the land lay fallow. For a while, nothing was planted and nothing grew. We woke up each day, dressed ourselves and fed ourselves, but did little more. We met the day, but produced nothing. We lived off what was already there. We had to survive this vast emptiness which had been cast across the landscape of our hearts, and we could only try to accept on faith that a day would arrive when we would be able to resume our plantings, enabling new crops, new projects, new love, to once again begin to grow.

We were anything but alone in our fallowness. First, how many caring friends and extended family members reached out to us, held us, fed us, and watched after us, until we were ready to resume our lives? Second, how many men, women (and children!) have gone through similar experiences, losing someone they love and waiting out the period of grieving (some for months, some for years) until returning to the fields and starting to plant anew?

I don’t know if Rabbi Yitzkhak Nafkha was thinking of anything more than farming when he commented on the challenge of the 1-3 year observance of sh’mitah and yovel. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he sensed this parallel too. After all, is there anyone who gets through life without having to face the death of someone they love? It may come later than sooner, which is preferable of course, but eventually death comes. And each of us must manage the deep emotional loss, and navigate the sometimes tortuous journey through grief and back to wellness.

Faith in the return of economic well-being, or faith in the return of optimism, hopefulness and joy, can be elusive. For a time, we may have be the one to hold others as they journey through their own barren lands and are unable to regain a sense of life’s bounty for themselves. And for a time, we may lose sight of it ourselves when, perhaps, the most we can do is sense that others are watching over us until we’re ready.

In the jubilee year, jubilation may not be the first thing on our mind. It’s important to remember that, while it may take some time, each of us can (and likely will) return home, and that trumpet will be sounded anew and the land will once again send forth its goodness.

Billy

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