Saying Goodbye To a 'Sneak'
Guy
Rick Ackerman
September 27, 2004
My sincere thanks to the many
of you who sent condolences. My dad's funeral took place last
week at the Jersey Shore on a perfect Indian summer day. I've
appended a copy of the eulogy that I gave below. It would seem
that the worst that could be said of my father -- a point made
by several of his friends in their eulogies, though not by me
-- was that he was no Fred Astaire. But he was very definitely
what we referred to in college as a "sneak" guy. Sneak
guys never boast of their accomplishments - are unlikely, even,
to mention them. To know about a sneak guy's most impressive
deeds, one would need to hear of them from someone else's lips.
My dad could finish the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in well
under an hour, so I knew he was plenty smart. What I didn't know,
until it was mentioned in one of the eulogies, was that he graduated
first in his class at Hahnemann medical school and that he was
editor of the class yearbook.
My father suffered from Parkinson's, but the cause of his death,
at age 89, was congestive heart failure. The symptoms went undetected
by his physician until they came on traumatically just hours
before he passed away. Hurricane Ivan very probably played a
role. The storm didn't do much physical damage to my parents'
home in Boynton Beach, but it did knock out their power for a
week, leaving them without air conditioning during a three-day
stretch of hot, muggy days. Diligent as my mother was about providing
care for Dad, neither she nor I, nor my siblings thought to install
an emergency generator. It's something to consider if you have
elderly parents in places that can get oppressively hot, such
as Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida.
Parkinson's is a terrible disease. Unfortunately, most of us
are unlikely to reach the age of 90 without suffering from some
debilitating ailment. If I could choose, I'd like to keel over
dead on a tennis court after a hard-fought point. One of my father's
friends, a sneak guy in his own right who was drafted by the
Pittsburgh Steelers after graduating from Penn in the 1940s,
said he fancies getting shot by a jealous teenage husband. It
is the Lord who gets to pick the time, place and circumstances,
though, so few of us can hope to go out in such fine style.
R.I.P. Milton Ackerman
We pay our final respects today to a man with an exceptionally
kind and generous heart - to a dedicated and responsible father,
a loyal friend, and most of all, a thoughtful and loving husband.
It was one of the deep blessings of Dad's life to have enjoyed
so many close friendships with people who thought the world of
him - who loved him for those fine human qualities that he possessed
in such rare abundance and which we cherish so deeply in others.
One of those qualities, most surely, was a genuine and deep humility
that allowed him to live at peace with the world. He did not
anger easily, and even in those very rare moments when he may
have harbored a mildly intemperate thought, he would not have
allowed it to be felt by those around him.
It was only in coming face to face with his own mortality, and
in having to endure the many daily indignities of his increasing
frailty and physical helplessness, that he began, sometimes,
to let anger get the better of him.
Tended by Angels
The most unkindly cut of all was that, much of the time, in the
final months of his life, he was unable to recognize the sublime
mercy that tended to him in sickness and which today will see
him to his grave.
I say sublime because its transcendence was manifest to all those
who knew Milton and Ethel. From the day, about six years ago,
when he fractured his hip in an accident that no one recognized
at that time as an early symptom of Parkinson's malevolent temper,
Dad was in the care and custody of Angels.
Mom was never again to leave his side, even if this meant enduring
Florida's brutally hot summers without the support of her many
friends. Day in and day out, she provided every possible measure
of comfort and care to Dad, giving him love when he was unable
to return it, and even when he seemed to disdain it.
Speaking as someone who could not conceive of a happier or more
secure childhood than the one I enjoyed, I can say that experiencing
the majesty of my mother's love for my father provided the most
profound and inspiring moments of my life. It is through her
example that I have come to know of love's sustaining power and
magnificence.
There was yet another angel watching over Dad, an extraordinary
man named Valrick Gray, who tended to my father's every need
with a diligence that amply suited Dad's meticulous attention
to detail, his sense of propriety, and his growing physical needs.
3-Hour Regimen
It took nearly three hours each morning to get my father from
bed to the breakfast table, and nearly as long to put him to
bed. But he did not come to breakfast unshaven and in a bathrobe;
rather, he was immaculately turned out, down to the mirror finish
on his shoes, the smudge-free lenses of his eyeglasses and his
perfectly parted head of hair.
Valrick came straight from heaven - a reward, I should think,
for the exemplary lives that my mother and father lived together.
I don't mean to imply that Dad had no flaws. But even they had
a virtuous, or at least excusable side. For instance, Allen and
I once nagged him to put pedal to the metal in the car we'd rented
for a family trip to the American Southwest. Would you believe
that your friend Milton, designated driver to the world, pushed
the speedometer past 90? But this was on a highway that stretched
across Death Valley - a place where one could fall asleep at
the wheel, run off the road doing 100 and still not hit anything.
Ingrid Bergman
It might also surprise you to learn that Dad had another woman
in his life. But it was Ingrid Bergman. And I think that the
purpose of this fantasy romance was simply to tell Mom that,
even if Ingrid Bergman had been Jewish, the actress still would
have been his second choice.
Those of you who were closest to Dad in his final months know
that the Parkinson's disease that ravaged his body and mind were
most unkind. During that time, conversation with him went from
difficult to impossible. It may comfort you to know, however,
that even with his wonderful mind well along the path to neurological
ruin, and with his ability to speak reduced to the tortuous stammering
of sentence fragments, he was still capable of those Milt-like
flashes of self-effacing wit that were always such a rare and
lovely part of his charm.
It was on a family visit to Florida a while back that he startled
and at the same time becalmed me with an unexpected remark that
many of you will recognize as the Old Milt. He had been taken
to Boca Community Hospital the day before with a quite serious
pneumonia. Marilyn, my sons and I had arrived that night to find
him frighteningly short of breath. We didn't know whether he
would make it through the night.
"Comfortable?"
He did, though, by the grace of G_d, and the next day, I went
to the hospital at sunrise to assist Valrick in changing the
bedding and in doing various other chores that were part of Val's
fastidious morning care regimen. The routine required quite a
bit of jostling around, some elbow-bending, a bit of knee scrunching
and ankle turning, as well as a hydraulic assist. Even with Val's
well-practiced efficiency, getting Dad onto fresh linens took
quite a bid of maneuvering.
He looked pretty frayed after all of this, and I asked him, Dad,
are you comfortable?" To which he replied, with courtly
exaggeration: "In a manner of speaking." Many of us
might have responded with a pained groan. But it was always Dad's
gift to be able to put people at ease in the way he did, no matter
what the circumstances. His remark was meant to reassure
me that, even if he was still panting for breath after the unavoidable
trauma of a linen-change, everything was okay.
A Hard One
More recently - less than week ago, in fact - the Old Milton
resurfaced briefly again to provide my sister Linda with the
same kind of comfort and reassurance. A day or two before he
went into the hospital for what would be his final stay, he was
in bad way, seemingly without the energy to speak, or even to
raise his eyes. Linda put a New York Times crossword puzzle in
his lap, trying to elicit a spark of life. Summoning all the
energy he could muster at that moment, he picked up the puzzle
and studied it for quite a long time - perhaps two minutes. Then,
shaking his head slowly, he said wryly, "This is a hard
one."
Those who were closest to Dad would know that he wasn't merely
trying to be funny. Rather, he was summoning the last, faint
sparks of his wonderful mind to the daunting task of letting
Linda know, in the five words or less that he was by then capable
of uttering, that he was still there -- that the spirit and soul
that yet inhabited his frail and nearly useless body were undiminished
in their gentle power to make us smile.
He was a true gentleman to the last, and his deep humility, his
sweet sense of humor and remarkable intellect will long
continue to touch us all. May G-d bless his soul - and may each
of us carry always in our hearts that part of Milton that made
his presence so kindly to this world.
***
The
Bear Is Back
I was completely out of touch with the markets last week, so
I won't attempt a big-picture summary -- other than to say that
the major downtrend we've been expecting for so long appears,
finally, to be under way. Now to my forecasts, recommendations
and analysis . . .
Rick Ackerman
321gold
Inc
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