The Meaning of Chai

Before Starbucks came along and had everyone pronouncing the "ch" in chai the easy way (as in choo choo), chai, to me, meant life, not tea. A chet and a yud, two Hebrew letters that also happen to be numbers that add up to eighteen. Which means the number "18," to us Jews, is lucky.

It seems odd to talk about life and luck on the anniversary of my father's passing, especially when optimism has been crushed a bit too often this year. The stairway to heaven has been crowded in the past few months with rock stars -- both famous and not so much -- who died suddenly and inexplicably and way too young. Eighteen years ago, when my father succumbed to pancreatic cancer, his death was nowhere near as sudden as doctors had initially predicted; it was not inexplicable, though it was certainly tough to swallow; and he was not, at least according to actuarial tables, particularly young, though had it not been for a nasty tumor, he could easily have stuck around for years.

Today, as I wonder where eighteen years have disappeared to and I tell myself there must be something significant in this "chai" anniversary, my habitual search for meaning in, well, just about everything, is at full boil. I wonder, as I often do, what my Dad would say.

Dad (okay, I admit it, Daddy) was smart and thoughtful and loving and exceedingly patient -- except when the "Appetizer" store on Avenue J was really packed on Sunday mornings and it took forever to get our turn at the counter so we could order our freshly sliced lox. He had zero tolerance for bullshit, and there was a lot of stuff that fell into that category. Like petty arguments and nastiness and the irrepressible urge to sweat the small stuff and, yes, old ladies demanding an eighth of a quarter of a pound of lox, not an ounce more or less. He taught me a lot about what's important in life and what is simply a waste of time. Important: honesty, generosity, unconditional love for your children, and never taking the last piece of bread from the basket. Waste of time: gratuitous criticism, worrying about what you cannot fix, talking about things you cannot change, doing the New York Times crossword puzzle in pencil. Sometimes I forget -- or ignore -- what he taught me, but I always do the puzzle in pen.

When my father was diagnosed, my third child was less than three months old. I was devastated, so much so that I wondered how I would ever fully enjoy this child when her arrival coincided with such great loss. When bar mitzvah season approached, a few years later, for my older two, I wondered how I would fully enjoy those milestones in my father's absence. As it turns out, my joy in all my children and their accomplishments and their very existence has been unadulterated and untainted, even without Daddy there. I feel the loss, always, and wish it could be different, but, as he would be the first to tell me, stop the bullshit. Why waste too much energy on the things I cannot change. So I move forward, and I revel in all the joy still to come, even though I don't get to share it with him, in person, or see the sparkle in his green eyes or feel the warmth of his beautiful smile.

So, in honor of my father, gone eighteen years, l'chaim. To life and to all the good things, and to moving forward when, some days, unspeakable tragedy or just a basic bad mood makes it tempting for all of us to go nowhere and pull the covers back over our heads. My father, faced with a prognosis of three months, fought like hell and stayed with us for almost two more years. Not for him, the path of least resistance, because he knew how precious life was. Chai. Not the tea.