My eulogy for my father
Jul. 2nd, 2011 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuHesped (Eulogy)
in memory of
Gerson Elliot Greene - גרשון אליה בן אברהם הלוי ורייזל
July 17, 1936 - June 30, 2011
The presence of so many of you here today is an honor to the memory of my father, and to the amazing life that we are celebrating and whose loss we are mourning.
The one word that everyone has used in talking with us about my father is “kind.” His kindness and respect touched everyone he met, and they reciprocated with friendship. My father never saw another human being as merely someone doing a job; he recognized the essential humanity of everyone he met. His was an “ich-du” persona. Even at the hospital, the janitor stopped to tell us how much he will miss my father.
Speaking of the hospital, I want to take a moment for hakarat ha-tov, thanking those who took such great care of my father, both as a patient and as a person. To Dr. Mehrotra; to his patient advocate Sandy; to Diane, Liz, Debbi, and the other nurses and caregivers at the oncology center at Long Island Jewish, our family is deeply grateful.
Throughout his illness, and in fact throughout his life, my father maintained an upbeat, positive attitude. Medical setbacks would be met with “One bad number is not a trend,” or “I’m going for a new treatment.” Always focusing on the treatment, not the disease; on the hope, not the despair.
Dad took pride in being a good provider for his wife, children, grandchildren, and generations yet to come. His love was expressed, in part, in knowing that he was taking care of all our needs. In our last conversation together, on Monday, he reviewed with me one last time the philosophy that guided his investments: “Buy and hold.” He was always looking forward to the future, and looking out for his descendants.
My father was very proud of us, his children; of our spouses; and especially of his grandchildren. My daughter Alissa said, “I’ll never forget how Poppy got a smile on his face whenever we were around.” My niece Abigail recalled yesterday that “Whenever I went to Poppy with a question, he answered my question,” and she remembers that “at cousin Brian's bar mitzvah, we had adjoining hotel rooms, and he cuddled with me and told me stories about the olden days.” Dad loved to tell his grandchildren stories from his life, like the time as a child that he almost set the house on fire building a color TV.
In some ways, my father saw life through a camera lens. He had a basement darkroom, and embraced new technology as a self-taught “early adopter” throughout his life. Most recently he assembled a RAID array so he could transfer all his years of video to the latest formats for editing. To him, capturing memories so that they could be passed forward was very important.
And for me, his enthusiasm for technology had a personal benefit. When we got one of the original IBM PCs in 1981, it was the first of many tech projects that Dad and I could work on together and bond over. He took pleasure in choosing the right balance of components for each computer that he would build.
Dad inherited from his mother a contrarian streak a mile wide, and a sureness that if you disagreed with him, it was only because he hadn’t explained it well enough yet. How many conversations started with his favorite phrase? “What you have to understand is...” But it was always because he really wanted you to understand, and I must admit that in many cases, he was right. And even when he couldn't convince me, his challenges got me to re-examine my position, often leading me to a stronger line of logic. This independence of thought stood him well in life.
Although you might not have seen it in his ritual practices, my father had a strong Jewish identity that informed his life in other important ways.
His life was grounded in the key Jewish attributes of derech eretz -- treating others with respect and kindness; of dan l’chaf z’chut -- giving others the benefit of the doubt (sometimes, perhaps, even too much); and perhaps most importantly, of shalom bayit -- establishing a home filled with unconditional love and mutual respect. And, just as we are commanded to imitate God’s attributes, my father was slow to anger.
My father was committed to building a strong Jewish community. For many years he served as chairman of the endowment committee at Hillcrest Jewish Center. When I was a boy, and a fire seriously damaged part of the synagogue, I remember going many mornings to the shul with my dad, who contributed his civil engineering expertise to working with the executive director, Mr. Parmet, overseeing the contractors performing the repairs. And he never sought public recognition or kavod for his work. He was one of those pillars of the community that people don’t realize how much they rely on, and how much they take his presence for granted, until it is yanked away.
My father loved to learn about and question Jewish thought, practice, and history. In recent years, Dad was always eager to share with me what he had learned at lectures at Hillcrest -- especially when it raised challenging questions, which we’d pursue in conversation over long Shabbat meals.
And my father was deeply religious in his beliefs. He believed that God had a plan for the Jewish people as a whole and, even more specifically, that God had a plan for his life, even when we didn’t know what it was. Dad would talk of the time he narrowly escaped a horrific car crash on the Grand Central Parkway, or how his cancer was originally discovered by chance after my cat scratched him, and he would say that God still had a mission for him in this world.
Today, that mission, in its aspects both revealed and hidden, is completed. My father, my teacher, spent his life among us well, and has earned his reward.
in memory of
Gerson Elliot Greene - גרשון אליה בן אברהם הלוי ורייזל
July 17, 1936 - June 30, 2011
The presence of so many of you here today is an honor to the memory of my father, and to the amazing life that we are celebrating and whose loss we are mourning.
The one word that everyone has used in talking with us about my father is “kind.” His kindness and respect touched everyone he met, and they reciprocated with friendship. My father never saw another human being as merely someone doing a job; he recognized the essential humanity of everyone he met. His was an “ich-du” persona. Even at the hospital, the janitor stopped to tell us how much he will miss my father.
Speaking of the hospital, I want to take a moment for hakarat ha-tov, thanking those who took such great care of my father, both as a patient and as a person. To Dr. Mehrotra; to his patient advocate Sandy; to Diane, Liz, Debbi, and the other nurses and caregivers at the oncology center at Long Island Jewish, our family is deeply grateful.
Throughout his illness, and in fact throughout his life, my father maintained an upbeat, positive attitude. Medical setbacks would be met with “One bad number is not a trend,” or “I’m going for a new treatment.” Always focusing on the treatment, not the disease; on the hope, not the despair.
Dad took pride in being a good provider for his wife, children, grandchildren, and generations yet to come. His love was expressed, in part, in knowing that he was taking care of all our needs. In our last conversation together, on Monday, he reviewed with me one last time the philosophy that guided his investments: “Buy and hold.” He was always looking forward to the future, and looking out for his descendants.
My father was very proud of us, his children; of our spouses; and especially of his grandchildren. My daughter Alissa said, “I’ll never forget how Poppy got a smile on his face whenever we were around.” My niece Abigail recalled yesterday that “Whenever I went to Poppy with a question, he answered my question,” and she remembers that “at cousin Brian's bar mitzvah, we had adjoining hotel rooms, and he cuddled with me and told me stories about the olden days.” Dad loved to tell his grandchildren stories from his life, like the time as a child that he almost set the house on fire building a color TV.
In some ways, my father saw life through a camera lens. He had a basement darkroom, and embraced new technology as a self-taught “early adopter” throughout his life. Most recently he assembled a RAID array so he could transfer all his years of video to the latest formats for editing. To him, capturing memories so that they could be passed forward was very important.
And for me, his enthusiasm for technology had a personal benefit. When we got one of the original IBM PCs in 1981, it was the first of many tech projects that Dad and I could work on together and bond over. He took pleasure in choosing the right balance of components for each computer that he would build.
Dad inherited from his mother a contrarian streak a mile wide, and a sureness that if you disagreed with him, it was only because he hadn’t explained it well enough yet. How many conversations started with his favorite phrase? “What you have to understand is...” But it was always because he really wanted you to understand, and I must admit that in many cases, he was right. And even when he couldn't convince me, his challenges got me to re-examine my position, often leading me to a stronger line of logic. This independence of thought stood him well in life.
Although you might not have seen it in his ritual practices, my father had a strong Jewish identity that informed his life in other important ways.
His life was grounded in the key Jewish attributes of derech eretz -- treating others with respect and kindness; of dan l’chaf z’chut -- giving others the benefit of the doubt (sometimes, perhaps, even too much); and perhaps most importantly, of shalom bayit -- establishing a home filled with unconditional love and mutual respect. And, just as we are commanded to imitate God’s attributes, my father was slow to anger.
My father was committed to building a strong Jewish community. For many years he served as chairman of the endowment committee at Hillcrest Jewish Center. When I was a boy, and a fire seriously damaged part of the synagogue, I remember going many mornings to the shul with my dad, who contributed his civil engineering expertise to working with the executive director, Mr. Parmet, overseeing the contractors performing the repairs. And he never sought public recognition or kavod for his work. He was one of those pillars of the community that people don’t realize how much they rely on, and how much they take his presence for granted, until it is yanked away.
My father loved to learn about and question Jewish thought, practice, and history. In recent years, Dad was always eager to share with me what he had learned at lectures at Hillcrest -- especially when it raised challenging questions, which we’d pursue in conversation over long Shabbat meals.
And my father was deeply religious in his beliefs. He believed that God had a plan for the Jewish people as a whole and, even more specifically, that God had a plan for his life, even when we didn’t know what it was. Dad would talk of the time he narrowly escaped a horrific car crash on the Grand Central Parkway, or how his cancer was originally discovered by chance after my cat scratched him, and he would say that God still had a mission for him in this world.
Today, that mission, in its aspects both revealed and hidden, is completed. My father, my teacher, spent his life among us well, and has earned his reward.