My beloved Mother passed away earlier this summer. She was 99 years old and still indomitable …tough, sharp, gracious, and a lover of people and life, to the very end. Anybody who knew her would tell you that she could have used another 50 years of life on this planet. She had been through lots of tough times and events in her lifetime, but would never refer to them as bad. Rather, “challenging” would have been her word. Mom understood that the human condition depended in large part on human beings and how they behaved toward each other. She knew that times didn’t get better or worse, but that time was eternal and goodness and badness – beyond the occasional meteorological or seismic catastrophe – was defined by people. She knew this first hand, given her escape from Nazi Germany just before the outbreak of World War Two.

 

I suspect she never read Shakespeare beyond the basics in high school, but she possessed the wisdom contained in his verse. She knew what Cassius knew when he admonished Brutus: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings”. She believed that despite this limitation of human potential, we are not such underlings that we can't do anything about it. Rather, she believed strongly that we are little lower than the angels, not far beneath those stars and very capable of understanding and peaceful -- even loving -- relations. We shall miss her and her abundant love, warmth, courage and wisdom.