Connections

The leaves are losing their connections to the trees they have nourished all spring and summer.  With the cold and short days some chemical magic happens and the leaves let go.  The connection between the trees and leaves, as mysterious as it is, can be measured and understood.  But the connections between people are far more mysterious. We don’t ask, how did this tree choose this leaf, or how did this leaf choose this tree.  As far as we know, there’s no choice involved.  And often it seems that there’s no choice in human connections either. Why do we love the people we love, and not others?

I started thinking about connections when we were in California, visiting family we live so far away from now, seeing Jay’s old high school pals at their reunion, and having lunch with our dear Chavurah in Palo Alto.  Those connections to family and friends are all stretched by distance now, but they’re still so strong.  There’s no getting reacquainted, we just step right back into those relationships. I was thinking about the strength of those connections, some obvious, some less so. But then a few days after we got home I learned that one of the dear friends we didn’t see in California had died the day after we arrived there, and my thinking about connections shifted to the bond that endures beyond shared lives, beyond imagined futures.

I loved Elliot Sopkin, of blessed memory.  We studied Talmud together at Beth Am.  It was a small class, and Rabbi Josh helped us see the connections between arguments in the Talmud that sometimes seemed extremely obscure, and issues we faced in our lives as parents, partners, and community members.  The discussions were often personal, questioning how we handled difficult challenges, how we corrected mistakes we had made, how we grew.  And the discussions were often very lively – there’s a surprising amount of sex in the Talmud.  In all of those discussions, Elliot led the way with humor and with honest grappling with issues in his own life.  I could say I loved him because he was wise and funny, because he was wonderful with words and ideas.  And all that contributed, but the essence was more mysterious.  I think of it as a kind of chemical bond.  Perhaps something to do with pheromones

That class, and especially Elliot, supported me through the hardest time of my life, from the time Joe was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in November of 2006 through his death in July of 2007.  I don’t remember when I finally met Cherie, Elliot’s amazing wife.  It may not have been until after Joe’s death.  But again, the connection was immediate – here was someone easy to love.  Later, when Jay met Elliot, Elliot gave him a very firm handshake, and Jay named him “the grip”.  Soon the Sopkins became Mr. and Mrs. Grip for us, and we shared many happy times together.

And now Elliot is gone.  He died on September 23, less than a month short of his 91st birthday.  That distinctive voice lives only in our memories now, and now it is Cherie learning to live with loss.

The forest is a great teacher about loss and renewal.  In the woods here, the forest floor is covered with leaves which have lost their connection to their trees, with acorns that have let go.  Fanny is deeply interested in the acorns.  The thumps of their falls have her pricking up her ears, and she plays a kind of acorn soccer, picking a fallen acorn up in her mouth, tossing it ahead on the road, and chasing it to do it over.  She likes to bring one home and to shred it on the mat just inside the door.  I am spending the season picking up acorn fragments.  But I love Fanny, and it’s a small thing to clean up when I can see how much fun she’s had making the mess.  Jay and I both connected with Fanny from our first meeting.  She’s easy to love. 

I’m intrigued by the connections we make and fail to make, but it doesn’t matter if I understand it or not.  I don’t think understanding it would make me able to love more people, or cause me to love fewer people or different people.  I’m content to let it be a mystery.  I know, from losing my sister, Shayne, from losing Joe, and losing my parents that the connection doesn’t end with death.  The leaves stay on the forest floor, and they will nurture the trees they were connected to in a different way.  Cherie and Elliot will always be connected, just now in a different way.