On September 2, right after reciting Havdalah, I received a call informing me that New York State Assemblyman Mike Simanowitz had died after a battle with cancer. Mike was 46, a good man by every account. We weren’t friends, but I’d worked with and interacted with him enough to like him quite a lot and to feel deeply the news of his passing.
Eight days later, I received word that the writer Len Wein, the creator of Wolverine and other iconic comic book characters, had died of “unknown causes.” Len and I weren’t friends either, but we were far more than friendly. He was a dear friend of dear friends of mine and there’s a transitive property of friendship. Len and I worked together several times on behalf of those less fortunate. Weeks before he passed, he and I exchanged messages and I knew about his pending operation. Len was 69. I was sorry to see him go.
My age is smack in the middle of Mike’s and Len’s. I’ll be 57 in Adar, God willing.
In the midst of these notices, I also received news that a small tumor had been discovered on my bladder. There’s certainly worse news one can get, but it’s not something you hope for either. The pain I was experiencing, the blood, now had a diagnosis.
Nothing major, said my urologist. “I’ll go in there and flick it off.” He actually said those words. “Ten-minute procedure,” he surmised, “not including anesthesia. It’s no big deal. After I remove it, I’ll leave some medicine in there and that should be the end of it.”
Good bedside manner, you might say. Or maybe it really is no big deal.
Big deal or not, it caused me to reflect. No one told me to get my affairs in order, but the mind goes where the mind goes. The things that bothered me a week ago no longer mattered. Other things became priorities, such as making peace with people I was no longer speaking with. I called one, e-mailed another. Having a clean slate is important. Anticipating a shorter third act adds a time element to one’s perspective.
It wasn’t just people on the outs that I needed to reach. I also called friends. Most of them know how I feel about them, but articulating it never hurts.
Not to be maudlin, but the July 4, 1939 farewell speech by New York Yankees legend Lou Gehrig came to mind. Lou was 37 when, dying, he called himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Having the friends I have, the magnificent wife I have, the five unique children I have, the excellent parents I had, the career I’ve had, the good fortune I had of having asked Meir Kahane what I could do for Klal Yisrael and having received the answer “Put on tefillin and start learning”; the good fortune of a childhood teacher like Sensei Richard Lenchus and a writing mentor like Harlan Ellison; an opportunity to write for and assist the extraordinary Dov Hikind; to have married into the family of the incomparable Rav Eliezer Waldman; to have a rebbe like the Lubavitcher Rebbe…
Maybe luck is the wrong word. Blessed is better.
A tumor is just a tumor. It’s not a death sentence. And even a death sentence is not the end of the world, although it feels like that momentarily. And that’s a great thing, to see it coming, whether it’s coming or not, whether it’s years out or just months. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
The perception of a finite run changes one’s outlook, or at least it should. I am delighted that, if this had to happen, it happened in Elul. I have never had an Elul like this before. It’s special. By comparison, the rest were theory. The rest were opportunities to feel like I was standing before the Judge, to method act and find oneself in the part. This time I don’t believe I’m acting. I’m grateful for that.
My friend Rabbi Boruch Cohen of Michigan reminds me that the Judge is also our Father. That’s comforting, too.
The possibility of one’s life being shortened, God forbid, brings new questions. Who will be there for my 12 year old? My 9 year old? As I considered this, I recalled standing at the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s levayah two decades ago. I turned to my friend Moshe Morganstern, a Chabad chassid, and asked, “Now what?”
“A tzaddik doesn’t protect Klal Yisrael,” he said. “The Aibishter protects Klal Yisrael.”
Curious, I looked up the statistics. According to the most recent data, when including all stages of bladder cancer, the 5-year relative survival rate is about 77 percent and the 10-year rate is about 70 percent That’s not awful, especially when keeping in mind that these rates are based on people diagnosed and first treated more than 5 years ago. Things keep getting better, from a medical-technology point of view.
And no one said I have cancer. It’s just a little polyp, slightly more than a centimeter. The doctor will just flick it off. But the news was certainly enough to make me feel reflective and, oddly enough, rather fortunate.
So this Rosh Hashanah, I will count my blessings.