It’s how you lived your life that counts, not how long you managed to shlepp through it.
By PAMELA PELEDFamily(photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
• By PAMELA PELED T oday was supposed to have been my 30th wedding an - niversary weekend.Martin and I got mar - ried on February 26. That was not the date we planned; we were set for a month later during Passover break, so that I wouldn’t need to take time off from the school where I taught. Then my young, never- smoked-anything-in-his-entire-life dad started to cough, and by the time the doctors got around to investigat - ing, his beautiful body was a mess of metastases.The oncologist told us to get mar - ried “tomorrow.”Martin and I got married in my parents’ living room during a me - ga-storm, Mart wrapped in his wed - ding-present tallit. Our honeymoon was a night in Tel Aviv; we raced home the next morning to be with my fa - ther as he started a hideous, hopeless round of chemotherapy.Our marriage started in rain but, in the words of the song: Mart, you smiled at me and really eased the pain.Somehow we negotiated my dad’s death together, and too soon after that we dealt with my mom’s losing battle with cancer; somehow we survived that together, too. And we had our children together, and brought them up together, and worked, and had fun together, and together we lived our lives. And then the pernicious disease banged us on the head again, and our almost 30 years ended back where we started – in hospital wards and cemeteries.But, oh! What an interlude we had in between, didn’t we, darling? What a wonderful interlude.And now, as I celebrate/don’t celebrate our anniversary weekend for both of us, I am getting ready for a real unadulterated joy: the wedding of one of our lovely daughters to an equally lovely young man. It’s a strange thing, Martin, to do this wedding without you – I keep looking for you, and asking you for advice.I have notes and lists on scraps of paper; you would have had everything filed alphabetically with color-coded schemes for ease of referencing. I keep the sums of money paid and owed in my head or jotted down on the back of an envelope; you would have had Excel spreadsheets and lists on Quicken. I need you to do this stuff for me, baby.I never bought a T-shirt without your input; at the fitting for the dress I’m going to wear, I kept needing your opinion on the length. Oh man... Oh man, oh man, oh bloody man.Yet, when I reflect on my almost 60 years on this earth – a privileged life of much joy and love and laughter, punctuated by cancer cutting down too many of us too soon – I see that this “carpe diem” theory that every - one spouts is only partially right. Yes, of course we must seize the day; never sweat the small stuff; eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Of course we must.But there is more to it than that.Sometimes we need to squeeze the day, and work hard to make it work.Looking back over my marriage, the things that spring out at me are the happy family Friday nights, the hagim, the friends gathered around a fire eating chestnuts, the pool parties in the sun. All these activities entailed planning, and shopping, and cooking and cleaning, and cooking some more – sometimes while breastfeeding and diapering and grading tests; some - times all of the above simultaneously.Often it would have been easier to call a “Free” on Friday night; not to celebrate Succot to the same extent; to invite friends and family the following year, when we’d have more time.But Martin always vetoed the idea of postponing a dinner, or canceling a coffee or a bridge game. “We’ll man - age,” he always said. “I’ll help you.”Today, I see that I would not have been grateful for 100 more hours of sleep during my marriage, or a thou - sand more rests on the couch – or even NIS 10,000 more in my bank account.The memories of good times together, and good times shared with others, is the only thing that actually counts.It’s not the sunset walks on the beach that you decide not to do because of the weather that remain, rather the sunset walks in the pouring rain that lift your spirits years and decades lat - er.It’s how you lived your life that counts, not how long you managed to schlepp through it.Every single thing we do becomes a memory – every outing to the park, every Valentine’s Day bunch of roses with funny cards from “secret admiers,” every birthday cake and anniversary poem.I have to feel somewhat wistful today, I think, as I imagine how we would have celebrated this milestone anniversary, as one of our children embarks on a hopefully long, health- filled marriage of her own. But this is my consolation: Each night as we dozed off to sleep, Mart, I used to tell you that it’s not that I love you; it’s that I am you.So I’ll be the one who remembers our time together for the two of us, and celebrates our daughter’s happiness for both of her parents. You’ll be there, too, in a way, darling, and the tallit you wore at our wedding will flutter over the huppa as our baby gets married by the same rabbi who pronounced us man and wife. There is lots to be grateful for.Here’s to health, and health, and health, and health ahead for all – health, and joy, and health.The writer lectures at IDC and Beit Berl; peledpam@gmail.com
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