Seven or eight years ago now, Mickey's niece Kelly got married, and we traveled to Los Angeles with teenaged Cody and Noah in tow for a big wedding. It was a great occasion, full of family and friends of the Chalfins and the groom's family and friends as well. I met a bunch of Mickey's legendary aunts and uncles that night. A highlight for Mickey and me both was seeing Julius Lucius "Lucky" Eccles, lifelong friend of Mickey's father, George, and as colorful and flamboyant a Chicago attorney as Central Casting could call up. He had flown in from Las Vegas for the wedding -- wouldn't miss it, even though his friend George was long gone by that time. Lucky was getting old, but he was in good form that night. He told us that he wanted to die on a craps table in front of a jury making love to a beautiful woman. He told us about -- or rather, performed, acted out -- the time that he called himself as a witness in a trial, cross-examined himself. He cupped his hand to his ear: "Eh, speak up, will you?" he demanded of his imaginary witness, then he turned the other direction and loudly answered his own question. Mickey and I were hysterical with laughter. A few years later Mick and I were in Chicago, and we visited Lucky in his high rise condo in the center of the city. He was frail by then, but still a great raconteur. He sent us home with a copy of a recent Chicago Magazine, his face on the cover.
Last night Mickey and I were sitting at our table after dinner, a couple of candles burning, talking about the meaning of life, as we often do. Mickey, determinedly rationalistic, has little truck with unseen worlds. He marvels at people who speak with surety about life after death, about communion with spirits, about worlds beyond the evident world. People need food and protection from the elements, he says. All the yearning for communion with the mysteries mystifies him. I am somewhere in the middle between his empiricism and the realm of people who speak knowingly about worlds beyond worlds. To me there are a lot of layers to life, and not all can easily be described. I gravitate towards the poetry of religious language, if not always to the literal meaning. I feel that yearning for points beyond. And sometimes I feel like I am there, or There, even if I can't draw you a map.
It was our typical far-ranging after-dinner chat, and somewhere in there we got to reminiscing about Kelly's wedding, about seeing Lucky Eccles. Lucky has since died, as have both of Kelly's parents, Mickey's brother and sister-in-law, and Mickey's other brother too. Kelly and Scott have two daughters now, and there is a brand-new baby in the family as well. The whole movie rolls forward. "Does it matter that you ever knew Lucky?" I asked Mickey, hoping, I suppose, to score a point of some kind.
"Well of course it does," he answers without hesitation. "He was so..." And we proceeded to tell each other the story of Lucky cross-examining himself, both howling again with the hilarity of it all. I pressed forward: "Is Lucky alive with us now?" Well, not physically, not really. No, not physically, but why not "really?"
A photograph of Ruth Murray gazes down at me as I sit here at my computer, her eyes looking kindly, with a bit of amusement, I suspect, right into mine. Claire Lobell lent me the photo a few weeks ago, saying, "It's time for Ruth to come visit you for awhile." I didn't know Ruth that well in "real" living life, not as well as I would have wished. I admired her from a bit of a distance, as one of that great breed of lifelong activists, still, in her eighties, struggling for affordable healthcare for our community. My damnable shyness kept me from calling her up and going over to her house to sit in her big aura as I probably should have. She was eighty-some years old by then -- I knew she wasn't going to live forever. But now I have her picture shining down in my direction. She is smiling at me with a look of enormous kindness, a knowing, understanding, loving look. In some way I am communing with her now as I didn't so much when she was "really" alive.
I didn't know when I started this column that it was going to devolve into a chat about life after death. After all, I am a "realist," closer in belief to my beloved husband than to those who speak with confidence about the spirit world and all. But it was the "spirit world" that I wanted to write about when I began to reminisce about meeting Lucky Eccles at a family wedding, the world of all of our spirits meeting and mingling. It was about the great importance of the spirits of those around us, the ways our souls, our energies, our auras, our presence -- use the poetry of your choice -- soak into each other and give our lives meaning.
It's Friday the 13th as I write. This morning the Roadhouse in Elk has just reopened after its midwinter siesta, and Mick and I are just now back from breakfast. Lynn was there, of course, and Teddie. Joan was at her table in the corner, just like we predicted she would be. As we walked up the front porch, Mickey pulled out his little mini-camera to bug her a bit, like he has done dozens of mornings past. All was as we love it. Look! There are Yarrow and Pele -- hey, Nikki is with them! Hugs and kisses all around, and we sit right down at their table. Teddie is bringing us soy lattes before we even ask. Stuart and Dulcie show up with Tiago in tow, and we pull up a second table. Aaah, bliss.
What I guess I wanted to write here was that we all matter to each other more than we probably know, in bigger ways than I usually remember, anyhow. Happy March, my dear community, and don't forget to vote.
© 2004 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 09/09/2004 (rge)