TIME PASSAGES

The last year and a half, all 500 plus days, have been challenging to say the least. We are being tested on a daily basis and, unfortunately, we don’t have a course or text books to study. It’s trial by fire and we have surely been burned. On a recent typical day, I turned on NBC’a Today Show and learned about the death toll in Haiti as another hurricane swept through the land. Then it was the continuing forest fires in the west that have devastated California and surrounding environs that are pushing east, with smoke that is polluting the air. To add to the mounting problems, many people across the globe are afraid to get their COVID shots and new variants like Delta are spreading illness and saturating the wards of hospitals and exhausting our medical personnel to the breaking point. To add to the trauma, the country of Afghanistan has been overrun by the Taliban and citizens and workers stationed there are fleeing for their lives. And, by the way, Hurricane Henri was planning to pay us a visit in Connecticut, ready or not. No wonder it seemed safest to pull the covers up and stay in bed. Clearly the world is in a dangerous place and is not going to heal itself any time soon. Where is Annie and her sun will come up tomorrow promise? Can we hold on until December when the newest Annie, Celina Smith, will brighten the horizon with a live television broadcast on NBC? Personally, in the last week alone, I have experienced incredible sorrow and infinite joy. A beloved Aunt, Shirley, was struck and killed by a bus as she crossed a Florida street on the way home from a COVID test. She left a legacy of kindness and concern throughout her 94 years on this earth. Ironically she died one year to the day after her husband Mac, a man she devoted her life to caring for in his long years of illness. To balance the scales, my nephew Seth and wife Amy welcomed a new son, Alexander Lev, and celebrated his bris with a small family circle and shared the occasion on Zoom. The circle of life continues. Are there lessons to learn from these events? The major one is that life is precious and all too precarious. We cannot waste the moments that mark them. As the Jewish holidays approach, now is the time to ask for forgiveness and to grant forgiveness so that healing can begin. Life is too short, even for 94 years, to allow hatred or anger to color your soul. As the song in “Frozen" states so eloquently, let it go.