The time I spent with Morrie, my old professor, had tapped my brakes on much of that. After watching him die, and seeing what mattered to him at the end, I cut back. I limited my schedule.
But I still kept my hands on my own wheel. I didn’t turn things over to fate or faith. I recoiled from people who put their daily affairs in divine hands, saying, “If God wants it, it will happen.” I kept silent when people said all that mattered was their personal relationship with Jesus. Such surrender seemed silly to me. I felt like I knew better. But privately, I couldn’t say I felt any happier than they did.
So I noted how, for all the milligrams of medication he required, the Reb never popped a pill for his peace of mind. He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by “Why am I here?” He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honor the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with “Thank you, Lord, for returning my soul to me.”
When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.
Can I ask you something?
“Yes,” he said.
What makes a man happy?
“Well…” He rolled his eyes around the hospital room. “This may not be the best setting for that question.”
Yeah, you’re right.
“On the other hand…” He took a deep breath. “On the other hand, here in this building, we must face the real issues. Some people will get better. Some will not. So it may be a good place to define what that word means.”
Happiness?
“That’s right. The things society tells us we must have to be happy-a new this or that, a bigger house, a better job. I know the falsity of it. I have counseled many people who have all these things, and I can tell you they are not happy because of them.
“The number of marriages that have disintegrated when they had all the stuff in the world. The families who fought and argued all the time, when they had money and health. Having more does not keep you from wanting more. And if you always want more-to be richer, more beautiful, more well known-you are missing the bigger picture, and I can tell you from experience, happiness will never come.”
You’re not going to tell me to stop and smell the roses, are you?
He chuckled. “Roses would smell better than this place.”
Suddenly, out in the hall, I heard an infant scream, followed by a quick “shhh!” presumably from its mother. The Reb heard it, too.
“Now, that child,” he said, “reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched, right? Like this?”
He made a fist.
“Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say, ‘The whole world is mine.’
“But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson.”
What lesson? I asked.
He stretched open his empty fingers.
“We can take nothing with us.”
For a moment we both stared at his hand. It was trembling.
“Ach, you see this?” he said.
Yeah.
“I can’t make it stop.”
He dropped the hand to his chest. I heard a cart being wheeled down the hall. He spoke so wisely, with such passion, that for a moment I’d forgotten where we were.
“Anyhow,” he said, his voice trailing off.
I hated seeing him in that bed. I wanted him home, with the messy desk and the mismatched clothes. I forced a smile.
So, have we solved the secret of happiness?
“I believe so,” he said.
Are you going to tell me?
“Yes. Ready?”
Ready.
“Be satisfied.”
That’s it?
“Be grateful.”
That’s it?
“For what you have. For the love you receive. And for what God has given you.”
That’s it?
He looked me in the eye. Then he sighed deeply.
“That’s it.”
The End of Summer
When I left the hospital that day, I got a phone call from the Reb’s youngest daughter, Gilah. She was about my age; I had known her during our school years, and we’d kept up loosely. She was funny, warm, opinionated, and deeply loving to her father.
“So, did he tell you?” she said, glumly.
What?
“The tumor.”
What?
“It’s in his lung.”
Cancer?
“He didn’t say anything?”
I looked at the phone.
He’d never said a word.
AUTUMN
Church
In downtown Detroit, there is a church on Trumbull Avenue, across from an empty field. It is a huge, Gothic structure made of red brick and limestone, and it looks as if it blew in from another century. Pointy spires. Arched doorways. Stained glass windows, including one in which the apostle Paul asks, “What must I do to be saved?”
The building itself dates back to 1881, when the neighborhood was full of mansions and wealthy Presbyterians. They built the church to hold twelve hundred members, the largest such congregation in the Midwest. Now the mansions are gone, so are the Presbyterians, and in this poor, barren neighborhood, the church
