Memento Mori

On Mortality and Meaning

Preamble

Shalom Friends,

I’m sorry I haven’t posted here in a few weeks. Daniella had her surgery (successful!) and I had a bad cold and life just kept coming. I’m going to try to get back on something resembling my regular publishing schedule. For a start here is a short thought I had in the days following the surgery. Reading it now for a final edit it occurs to me that this will likely be read as sad or self pitying by some readers. I want to pre-empt that by saying that for me this hyper awareness of death is a big part of what gives life positive and joyful meaning. It is in my mind when I am dancing with my children, or singing at the Shabbat table. As Yoni Netanyahu wrote in one of his famous letters, “Death does not frighten me. I do not fear it because I attribute little to a life without purpose.”

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Memento Mori: On Mortality and Meaning

The Roman philosophers adjured us to remember that we all must die. The ancient sundials bearing the phrase, ‘It’s later than you think,’ were meant to serve this purpose. There is also an entire genre of medieval art which took up the theme, and it continues until today, particularly on the internet and with the renewed interest in stoic philosophy. A similar idea in the Talmud encourages us to think of this world as, ‘a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule, so that you may enter the banqueting-hall.” (Avot 4:16)

Memento mori = Remember that you are mortal

There’s nothing like surgery to lay bare the ugly fact that we are mortal. The boundaries of our bodies are temporary, easily breached, and will someday return to the dust. Our consciousness can be cancelled temporarily with the plunge of a syringe, or permanently with the slip of a scalpel.

Thank God Daniella came through her relatively minor, non emergency surgery well a few weeks ago and has recovered well and gone back to work with only some ‘minor’ issues with stitches which have been sorted out with a trip to our local nurse’s station. But while she was in surgery I was struck with existential terror. Praying helped, but I still wound up pacing back and forth for much of the time she was under the knife.

It reminded me of the epiphany I had about two years ago, after our daughter was born. A handful of near death experiences and building a family of five wasn’t enough to get through my thick skull. Only the puncturing of my youthful illusion of invincibility by illness and pain over the last few years allowed me to have this thought. We all have a limited amount of life-blood in us. That being the case, I choose to pour mine out for my wife and kids, day by day, sleepless night by sleepless night, with daily effort which is good for my soul but not always for my body. This flesh is a vessel, and it's temporary. Eventually I will be gathered in to my forefathers. And on a day like today where I wake up with a cold, and achy joints from an autoimmune response I can feel brewing, I remind myself that pain too will end, that even if my life ends tomorrow as, who knows, any life might, I have done the most important things. I took care of my family and served my God as well as I could. That is my purpose, and I am confident that when I stand to be judged by my Creator, that will do.

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Dear Readers,

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Peace and Blessings,

-Eitan