Honoring Your Parents

by Rabbi Eli Hecht

It has been said, "You appreciate your health when you start to lose it." This message came home to me recently in full force. Our family's home is a fourth generation, raised in Brooklyn, New York. As we, the children, and grandchildren, grew up we moved to different states and countries. I have a brother in Connecticut, another in France, and three of us in California. My sisters are living in different areas of New York and one lives in Michigan. What brings the family together are the simchas - joys. At times, unfortunately, it is sadness or sickness.

In Yiddish there is an expression "A mentch tracht, un Got lacht - man thinks and G-d laughs." We have all kinds of plans but G-d's plans are the ones that really come to fruition. Man can plan and plan but it is G-d who has the final word at the end.

This brings to light the latest drama of my growing, but aging family.
My father, who is in his mid-eighties, lives in Brooklyn. He decided to spend the winter months in Florida and the warmer months in New York. "I am now a snow bird" he told me. Older New Yorkers usually escape the freezing winters of the east and go for a warm respite in Miami Beach.
By doing so they stay healthy and live a longer life. Indeed it's been reported that the elderly now live longer than ever because they move to a warmer climate and stay away from the cold.

One day I received a phone call from one of my sisters: "I am in Miami.
The weather is beautiful but Dad is very sick and I am off to the hospital." There he was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia and a compromised immune system. He was admitted to the hospital and a crisis began. He wanted to go home and the doctors wanted him in their care. My father said that hospitals are for the dying and the sick people and he would want no part of this! Little did he realize that he was a true candidate for the hospital!

After forcing him to be admitted to the hospital, he slowly but surely began the long journey to recovery. When I received the call in California I knew I was sorely needed. I dropped everything and went to spend a marathon of days in the hospital. Each day was a challenge.
Would he get better? How long would it take for him to recover? How about his sodium and his blood count? Plus an array of other medical concerns.

After six horrendous days I realized that he had turned the tide when he said, "The food is lousy, it's time to go home. Shabbat (the Sabbath) is coming and I need to be with my people."

We spoke with the physicians and head staff at the hospital and they agreed that we could see how my father fared at "home" in his rental condo. He wanted to be able to join his friends - the other snow birds from New York.

I took my father home and spent a great weekend with him; no doctors and nurses, just father and son bonding time. I served him breakfast, lunch, and supper. I washed his laundry, gave him his medicine, called his doctors, coordinated his sleeping times and we went for a walk. We even found time to watch a wrestling match. And what a bonding we had. After such a medical storm I was really able to appreciate the calm.

This made me think about the following: Why is it when it comes to sickness we have the time for our parents but when they are healthy we are too busy to see them? Whatever happened to honouring our father and mother when they are well?

Strange, I thought to myself, but the only real time we stop everything for our parents is when there is a crisis. This realization made me decide that I am going to change my lifestyle. I'll pencil in my calendar and schedule a time to spend with my aging father now, when he is well and happy. I will make the time because that is when a father and son can really do things and enjoy each other's company.

I share this lesson with you because we are living in a time when there is a growing senior population and we need to make time in our busy schedules for our parents while we can enjoy each other's company.

So let's start to care while we are young and healthy, by doing so we will keep the elderly going and happy. My father is getting older, but not old.

Society needs to change its habits. In the workplace there are days allocated for paid sick leave, maternity leave, vacation, and jury duty.
I think with all the squabbling taking place between the presidential candidates there should be a platform for paid leave when honouring one's parents! In the Bible (and so far, every U.S. president has been sworn in with his hand on the Bible) it says (Ex. 20:12): "Honour your father and mother and your days will be long upon the land which the Lord G-d has given you."

One of the classes that I give on a weekly basis at Chabad of South Bay in Lomita, California, is to seniors. They tell me, "You are as old as you make yourself." Teaching these seniors, most of them in their 70s and 80s, is one of the things that keeps me going! I would like to encourage every one of all ages to make an effort to spend time with seniors. And even more importantly, pick up the phone, jump in the car or hop on a plane and visit your elderly relatives. You will be happy you did.

Rabbi Eli Hecht is vice-president of the Rabbinical Alliance of
America. He is the director of Chabad of South Bay in Lomita which
houses a synagogue, day school, nursery school and chaplaincy
programs.