I’m deeply grateful to my friend, Sid Ansbacher, for restoring this memory of my brother, Steve, and my friend, Fred Rogers. I hadn’t read this or thought of it for years until Sid recently shared it with a friend on Facebook. It is from the fall of 1998, when Steve was diagnosed with lung cancer that would take his life …
There’s nothing like a funeral to remind you of your own morality. Especially when you’re 73 and the person’s whose funeral you’re attending is younger. So today, as I sat in the pew at Temple Israel listening to Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman talking about a man I’d ironically never met (though I knew his wife), that’s where my mind drifted. I …
Every two weeks since June, someone in my family, someone I went to grade school or high school with or — as happened this week — a friend I respected, has died. It’s almost enough to get depressed about. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened. But it has given me considerable pause to think about death and dying. What really DOES matter …