How You Live Your Days
Yizkor 5783
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha
Yizkor is about remembering, and as we prepare to remember those people in our lives and in our congregation’s life who have meant so much to us I want to start with a bit of a diversion, and tell you the story of a woman named Jeanne-Louise Calment. Her story came up in our Numbers Project Class a couple of weeks go, when we were discussing the fact that Moses died at the age of 120. You will see why.
Madame Calment lived in Arles, France, and had a pleasant, mostly unstressed life. Although her beloved husband died from food poisoning in his forties, and she never had children, she was a happy soul, and lived on for many years in her comfortable apartment, healthy and energetic and well-liked.
The best part of Madame Calment’s story is that when she was quite elderly, in her early 90s, a nephew who was an attorney offered her a deal: he wanted to live in central Arles, which had a severe shortage of nice apartments available. This lawyer nephew figured that Madame Calment, who had a lovely place in just the right area, would pass away soon enough, and so he offered her a contract for her apartment. He would pay her a nice monthly subsidy for the rest of her life, and when she passed away she would leave him the place in her will. It was all drawn up carefully and legally and filed officially.
The nephew began paying the monthly fees to Madame Jeanne-Louise Calment, and anticipated moving into his new place within a few years. After all, Madame Calment was in her 90s, smoked, drank a couple of glasses of the local wine each day, and ate two pounds of chocolate each week. Soon he would have his dream apartment in downtown Arles.
Only it didn’t turn out that way. Because Madame Calment lived on. And on. And on.
She did finally quit smoking—at the age of 118—but her doctor figured it was not so much because of his medical advice as it was because her vision had faded and she was too vain to ask people to give her a light.
When she finally passed away at the age of 122 on August 4, 1997, she was the oldest person ever recorded in world history.
Her attorney nephew had passed away twenty years earlier, but Madame Calment enjoyed the revenue from that agreement—paid by the attorney’s family—for the rest of her long, long life.
Madame Calment’s name came up a few years ago in Los Angeles when a woman passed away named Gertrude Baines. She was 115 years old—115!—and the oldest person in the world at that time, so far as they can tell, and naturally people compared her to the oldest person ever. She didn’t quite make 122, but she was a marvel nonetheless.
When she died her physician noted, "I saw her two days ago, and she was just doing fine. She was in excellent shape. She was mentally alert. She smiled frequently." I wish you could say that about the rest of us…
Baines was born in Shellman, Ga., on April 6, 1894, when Grover Cleveland was in the White House, radio communication was still being developed and television was more than a half-century away. She was 4 years old when the Spanish-American War broke out and 9 when the first World Series was played. She had already reached middle age by the time the U.S. entered World War II in 1941.
Throughout it all, Baines said last year, it was a life she thoroughly enjoyed.
"I'm glad I'm here. I don't care if I live a hundred more," she said with a hearty laugh after casting her vote for president. "I enjoy nothing but eating and sleeping." This centenarian, who worked as a maid at the Ohio State University dormitories until her retirement, outlived all of her family members.
In her final years, she passed her days watching reruns of her favorite TV program, "The Jerry Springer Show," and consuming her favorite foods: fried chicken and ice cream.
The title of world’s oldest living person brought with it a spotlight of attention, and Baines was asked frequently about the secret to a long life. She shrugged off such questions, telling people to ask God instead.
"She told me that she owes her longevity to the Lord, that she never did drink, she never did smoke and she never did fool around," her doctor said at a party marking her 115th birthday.
At that 115th birthday party, Baines sat quietly, paying little attention as she was presented with congratulatory notices from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and others. But she laughed when told the Los Angeles Dodgers had given her a cooler filled with hot dogs.
What is the secret to such longevity? Perhaps Ms. Baines was correct—only God knows.
It’s true, you know: no matter just how long you manage to keep going, someone else will always have been around longer. Or almost always, anyway.
Perhaps what really matters is not longevity. We can certainly hope that this is true, for this year we have experienced painful losses in our congregational family. Some died in the fullness of years, having lived fully and completely, and departed without regret. Some died at the height of their powers, before their time.
But what is striking to me is that when I sit with the families to remember those who have died, when we share memories and laughter and tears, what families and friends speak about is not the length of their lives at all. It is the quality of their lives.
You see, as it turns out, it’s not how long you live—it is how you live.
Simple arithmetic demonstrates that fact. There are, in a week, 168 hours—7 days times 24 hours. Of that time, we spend about 63 hours a week, 9 hours a day sleeping or taking care of our basic bodily needs. For those of us who are employed, we spend anywhere from 40 to 70 hours a week at work, plus the time we spend commuting to work and dealing with work-related stuff. That leaves somewhere between 30 and 60 hours a week for everything else: errands, household chores, grocery shopping, eating, cleaning up from eating, emailing, Facebook, reading or watching the news, stupid TikTok videos, repairing things that break, getting our cars serviced, paying bills, shlepping kids somewhere, going to doctor’s appointments, sitting in shul on Yom Kippur, and so on. That sounds like a lot of time, 30-60 hours of discretionary time—but the truth is that it goes pretty fast. When you factor in all the things we need to do just to keep things going, we aren’t left with very much time at all.
Perhaps, on average, two hours a day of actual time we might spend however we wish.
It is those two hours a day, it turns out, that matter the most. That is the time we can choose to devote to our families. That is the time we can dedicate to our friends. That is the time we can explore our spiritual lives.
About two hours a day that really make a difference.
When I sit with families after a death is not the hours of work that people remember, or the reliability with which mom or dad or sis or Zaidie did errands or chores. It is those couple of uninterrupted hours that he spent with those people who loved him best, those dedicated moments when she showed her humor and caring and dedication.
It was the way they lived, especially those small, focused amounts of time, that everyone remembers.
Because it is not how long we live that matters, but the way we live. It is not our occupation or pastimes or money that count most to those we love: it is the stories we create with them, the way we show our love to them.
As we approach our Yizkor memorial prayers on this Yom Kippur afternoon, I ask you to take a few moments and remember just how your loved ones, who have died, lived their lives. How they proved this simple fact. How they showed you that they loved you. How they demonstrated their caring.
How they lived.
Because in the way they lived, they taught you a great deal about how to live.
May we remember those lessons again now, and in the many days of our lives that are yet to come.