Amram Meiri died yesterday.

He wasn’t old. He wasn’t sick. He went to work in the morning, like usual, but wasn’t feeling quite right so he went home early.

His wife was out of the country visiting a sick relative.

He called a friend from work in the early afternoon but his friend wasn’t home and he didn’t leave a message. His friend’s son, who answered the  phone, later said nothing sounded out of the ordinary.

But Amram died an hour or so later.

Farmer

Husband

Father

Grandfather

Maintenance Man

Friend

He wasn’t an academic. He didn’t have a flashy job, car or personality. I’m guessing he didn’t have an impressive bank account either.

What did he have? He had a wife, three daughters and a son. He had grandchildren.

He had a calm, caring approach to life and to the people in his life.

As the maintenance man for our community of 1000 families, he was called upon to repair just about anything and, many times, interfaced with people when they weren’t at their best (hard to be cheerful about a broken hot water system in the winter). He not only fixed broken items but was mindful of his surroundings and the people in them – noticing if the family was also lacking proper winter blankets and quietly making sure that they were provided.

There were many hundreds of people at Amram’s funeral today, standing in the cold, listening to eulogies, one of which was from his son, filled with Amram’s honesty, his love of the Land of Israel, his love of his family, his deep friendships, his integrity and simple goodness.

You might’ve thought from the sheer number of people standing solemnly in front of the synagogue steps that it was the funeral of a great public personality. And, I guess, in a way, it was.

Amram’s greatness lay in his simple goodness. Public and private.

My thoughts turned to  my father, Amram, who died so many years ago. A couple of decades.

A complicated man – a public personality – outwardly charismatic – he was never able to free himself from the tangle of his childhood and difficult nuclear family to develop close, personal relationships or remove himself from the center of attention to truly give of himself to his family.

Always “on”. Always making an impression. At home he was a private, closed-off person; behind closed doors – physically and emotionally.

After he died, in all the many years since, and again today at Amram’s funeral, I thought of my father and thought, “I  never really knew you.”

I know Amram Meiri will forgive me for crying for  my father, Amram, at the funeral today.

Crying for never having been able to say, as Amram’s Meiri’s son said so touchingly, that I could feel my father’s presence while walking with my children in nature as he did with his father, in my relationships with my family and others in my life having learned to be in relationship from my father, in my love of Judaism learned at my father’s side.

But mostly crying for the tragedy of my father’s life being so impoverished in the very ways that Amram Meiri’s life was so rich.

Amram Meiri’s life was cut short by modern standards. He was in his 60’s. I don’t mean to minimize the loss to his family or his friends. I don’t mean to take away from the sadness of his not seeing his grandchildren grow up and marry or continuing to get pleasure from the Land of Israel he loved so much.

But Amram Meiri had a good life and leaves many people with memories and life lessons that they will always cherish.

I’m grateful that I woke up ten years ago, out of the trance of my own childhood and adolescent struggle on into young parenthood. Out of the need to fill the emotional void left by my dysfunctional nuclear family.

Grateful for the people and life events that sustained me through those challenges to rebirth into an aliveness children deserve to be born into…but, sadly, many aren’t.

I’ve come home to the core of the meaning of my life which lies in relationship… to my family, my friends, my students, the communities in which I live daily and the one in which I live in a larger sense.

I’ve come home to the understanding that relationship means giving. It’s being able to be full enough to be able to silence the ego’s voice to hear and be with the Other.

To bask in the pleasure of my granddaughters’ giggles, their quirkiness, my grandson’s amazing physicality without one eye on the clock. To listen to my children’s decision-making out loud, to act as a sounding board for their thoughts, without having to interject my own agenda.

And it means receiving, graciously, the blessings in every day, and the gifts that others share with me. Integrating and experiencing the truth that teachers are truly found everywhere.

In children. In aggressive Israeli drivers. In the insect world found in the garden. In the doctor’s waiting room. In those interminably long conversations with customer service.

In an unassuming neighbor.

And I mourn for my father’s unfinished life. He never had a chance.

Rabbi Amram Prero   1917-1993