In October, my family and I experienced the entire journey from birth to death in less than a week. The long-awaited arrival of my great nephew infected us with tremendous joy as his tiny presence in our lives suddenly expanded our embrace and our hope for the future. All of us -from his great grandparents to his aunts and cousins – revel in every photo my niece and nephew send us, every story of his newest discovery of the world, every mention of his sweet name, which bears the legacy of a revered uncle who died too soon. He is stealing our hearts and replacing them with even bigger ones.
Just a few days after the boy’s bris – his Jewish ritual circumcision – my beloved aunt, the boy’s great-great aunt – died after a long, debilitating illness. She was one of the kindest, smartest people I knew, herself an addition many years ago to our expanding family when she married my uncle. Her absence from our lives at times feels like being in a windowless room, in which all movement leads to an eternity of dead ends; this even as her legacy graces us with a bit of immortality.
Our family’s rapid ride around the lifecycle circle has been surrealistic yet strangely comforting, because we’ve taken it together. Four generations showed up early one morning for the bris at a Manhattan synagogue. That same week, three generations showed up at a local cemetery in Albany one cold afternoon to honor and bury my aunt. Between the joy and the grief, we did what any large, boisterous family that generally gets along would do when together: we ate, cried and laughed through the cyclical certainty and absurdity of being human. We are far from perfect as a family, yet what holds and sustains me with gratitude is our ability to set aside our idiosyncrasies and differences to be present for each other.
When I was younger, I assumed that the friendships of the highest quality were those with the best social chemistry. The friend who was fun to be with or who was witty and talented was the one with whom you wanted to hang out. Over many decades, I learned the hard way that, while they are worthy additions to a friendship, fun and wit by themselves are pitifully inadequate. Better to choose a friend whose greatest quality is their willingness to be fully there for you when you need them.
I’ve also learned this lesson the hard way when dealing with family. True, we don’t choose our family members, at least not with the same flexibility as we do our friends. Yet in my work as a rabbi, I’ve watched with horror as people – with or without justification - cut off family members or disconnect from their families altogether. Luckily, I’ve never experienced such extreme behavior in my own family. However, I know too well the dull heartache of being ignored by family members who are family in name only: who for whatever reasons don’t call, don’t check in, don’t show up.
Yet having family who do show up makes all the difference. This holiday will be the next time that much of our family is together. We’ll eat too much food, hopefully have a chance to play with the new baby, and gossip across the generations. Some of us will flit from conversation to conversation, seeking to connect with everyone. Others of us will retire to a couch or a chair, tucking ourselves away from the family feast to focus, between mouthfuls, on one person or to catch a breath from too much socializing. We’ll mostly enjoy the warmth of each other’s company, ignoring any awkwardness or petty resentments in our family dynamics and generally avoiding political discussions. Though we might not be thinking about it as we munch on turkey and stuffing, we’ll in fact be doing all these things because we love each other.
It's sometimes difficult to think about Thanksgiving as an opportunity to show up and be present. As a federal holiday, it often gets treated like no more than a vacation from work and an opportunity to eat and watch football. It seems hardly conducive to contemplative reflection upon the weighty themes of gratitude and presence. Yet this is what Thanksgiving has the potential to be. I hope to share with my family members at least implicit gratitude for each other, for our new life, and for our well-honed mutual devotion. My parents bequeathed this sense of devotion to my generation and we’re trying to pass it down to the younger generation as well. The imperfect but passionate love we share is a thick glue mixed from common DNA, a long family history, and the need to cling to each other in our polarized society which can ruthlessly push people apart. We're stuck with each other, but more importantly, we’ve chosen to stick with each other.
And it’s this blessed stickiness that I’m most grateful for this Thanksgiving.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY. Check out his writings at danornstein.com
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