Home Alone, Yom Kippur, & Cancer
AI and the possible end of the human world has been in the news a lot this week. Also, the EPA throwing all caution to the wind on carbon emissions. We might just be doomed.
But in the meantime, the other day, on my way to a shiva minyan I was leading, I gave myself some extra time to stop and enjoy some nature.
It was a cool, absolutely gorgeous, picture-perfect day after a long hot summer. I got off the bus at 59th Street across from the no-longer Plaza Hotel and entered Central Park.
People were strolling, sitting on benches, a young musician was singing love songs. I found one of those funky, hand-carved wooden benches by the water with a little bow bridge in the distance as the sun got low in the sky.
As soon as I sat down, I noticed a heron just a few feet away standing stock-still, camouflaged in the bushes at the edge of the pond. It was watching me. I pointed it out to a man sitting nearby. He looked up, smiled a little, made a comment, and went back to his phone.
A young couple came by and I pointed it out to them. They got near, asked if it was the huge red fish I was pointing at or the bird. I said the bird (I couldn’t see the fish from where I was). I could hear an accent, realized they were tourists, and was curious where they were from. “Denmark.” “Ah, cool!”
Then they asked, pointing to the bridge in the distance, “Do you know if that’s the bridge from ‘Home Alone’?”
I know this is a common touristy thing to do now: come to New York looking for movie landmarks. People don’t just wander around, seeing where the path may lead them.
And I probably don’t appreciate enough the awe people have for New York City (though I have it, too, and feel very privileged to live here). But in that moment…when all I do is desperately look for nature among the often overwhelming concrete, I was taken-aback. I just shrugged and said I had no idea. I’ve never even seen Home Alone. Silly movie.
Maybe if we had more awe for nature and put away our phones, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in.
And why care this much about things that aren’t real?
In the past two weeks, I’ve done four funerals and a wedding. (I recently rewatched “Four Weddings and a Funeral” with my husband and couldn’t believe I ever thought it was funny, interesting, or romantic).
The funerals feel incredibly fitting for the time of year, when we find ourselves in the Ten Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These holidays are all about confronting our mortality. There’s nothing like a funeral to remind us that we’re mortal. It’s a time to reevaluate our lives, how we’re living, how we would like to live differently—and make a go at it one more time for the coming year, asking and offering forgiveness, casting off old habits that no longer serve us, making vows to change (or at least try).
I’m working with a man in his fifties who has pancreatic cancer, doing life review. I go to his house, we talk about what it’s been like for him since he was diagnosed in the early spring, about his life going back to childhood. I give him assignments.
For the first assignment, he wrote a letter to his parents and gave to them on Rosh Hashanah. He thanked them for the good ways they’d been parents to him growing up, the things he appreciated about them. It was meaningful and they were touched, he could tell.
This time, considering that it’s Yom Kippur on Monday, I thought it would be good for him to begin writing a Viduy, or deathbed confessional, to explore forgiveness, ways he feels he needs to forgive or be forgiven.
He’s in a kind of limbo, which he recognizes only as an exaggerated limbo that we all live in, yet we are (woefully?) unaware; there is a new, experimental treatment that could add years to his life, and seems to be working for him. After weeks in the hospital over the summer, he’s actually gone back to work part-time!
He has a delightfully dark sense of humor, just like me, so he’s wonderful to work with. We laugh about how shocked people are when he jokes about his death. This time he told me he’d come up with a list in his head: “Five Great Things About Having Cancer.” I took notes as he talked, and it turned out to be longer.
I’ll share it here:
People visit you; old relationships are rekindled and strengthened. People actually show up; there’s no more, “Oh, we should get together sometime.” Sometime becomes now.
People buy you stuff (He showed me a pile of nice blankets).
You can eat whatever you want; because he’s lost so much weight, they tell him to eat all the ice cream and cookies he wants. (We laughed.)
You meet new people, like in waiting rooms; nurses and patients; you have real conversations about real things. No small talk, genuine connection. His social life has actually improved.
Families behave better—even well! (We laughed.)
You get away with stuff; you have an excuse (I have cancer). (We laughed.)
You live more purposefully, more mindfully; you’re don’t live on autopilot.
This one I call a bonus for him; he’s being forced to study something he was always interested in and never took the time to do: microbiology.
As we enter Yom Kippur on Sunday night, I leave you with these questions, some of which I asked him:
How can you take these lessons from cancer—that hopefully you don’t have—into your own life?
What are your deepest regrets?
What is your deepest pain?
What do you need to forgive—yourself or others—for? What do you want to apologize for?
What are your deepest wishes for yourself, your loved ones, and the world, in the coming year?
What are your deepest yearnings?
What commitments will you take on that you hadn’t thought of before reading this for living differently going forward?
What do you want to enjoy eating this year? (I think that’s funny.)
Maybe you’ll be home alone this Yom Kippur.
Maybe you’ll be in community and wish you were home alone.
Either way, you can bring intention into the new year, and be present for the birds and the fishes—and the bridges to who knows where they might lead.
May we learn to live in awe and mindfully, survive AI, and get the climate under control.
A gut yor; a good year to us all.
