THE PATHOS IN THE PICTURES

When I was a young rabbi, I counted among my dearest friends an elderly man . . . warm, generous, pious, a loving husband, father, grandfather, respected – even venerated – by the community. He has long since passed on.

He and I would frequently have lunch. Occasionally, he would offer me a book on a philosophical or historical topic that he would encourage me to read.

Once, traveling to New York, I grabbed one of them and in an idle moment started to read. Two seconds later, an envelope dropped from between the pages. Unsealed and unaddressed. Right or wrong, I looked. A handful of Playboy photos dropped out, each with lurid comments scribbled in his unmistakable handwriting.

A gasp of disbelief.

Shortly thereafter, a frantic voice, desperate for composure, appeared on my voicemail: “Marc, there might have been an envelope in the book I loaned you. Please just disregard it. Someone left it in my office, and I must have shoved it in the book while I wasn’t thinking.”

I returned his call: ”Not to worry,” I had the presence of mind, not piety, to say. “I saw the envelope and didn’t open it because it was yours. I’ll seal it up and return it to you.”

“A sheynem dank (many thanks),” he said to me, almost whispering. “He might be looking for it.”

Until he died, he never spoke to me quite the same as before. Still with warmth, still sharing a book or quote, but always with a barely audible edge of self-consciousness and shame.

From time to time, the Rolodex of my memory spins and stops unanticipated at that episode. I have always found it easier to crystallize the emotions that I do not feel for him, those that prevent from me from standing in judgment. No, I say to myself, he was not a pervert. Not a hypocrite. Not a lecher. Not a cheat. Not a dirty old man. I resist thinking any of those, regardless of what other people might have seen in him. Labels come more easily to most of us than understanding does.

It is infinitely harder for me to articulate what he was. Perhaps the best description is the simplest: Underneath it all, he was just so very sad. Simply a sad man, well cloaked in prosperity, yet so very sad. His memory does not evoke consternation, but empathy for my own fears of old-man-ness – unrequited yearning for bygone youth, bittersweet remembrances, and salad days. The pathos in the pictures tells me that he contended then, as I do now, with a life drawn only in one direction, so afraid of the loss of vigor and the promise of a world brimming with possibilities, so scared of becoming dependent, a burden.

Tell me that I am naïve, or projecting my own neuroses, or rationalizing the hypocrisy of a friend. But, I know that those pictures speak of a sadness he shared with every one of us who aches for just one more yesterday: excitement that once coursed through our veins, bowties and corsages to the prom, iridescent dreams of young love. Oh, for one more moment of teenage innocence. She would squeeze your hand and you hers, and all in the world was right.

What other chances for comfort and love and prosperity might there have been in the freshness of youth, had only this-or-that opportunity been seized, or had poor judgment or a misstep not led to a lesser place? Enough Googling – I say to myself – of classmates who became professors and authors and playwrights and business magnates.

I am blessed with a loving wife, whom I cherish, with whom, please God, I will grow old. Kids and grandkids, too, the quintessence of my being. My elderly friend was blessed with them, too. Still, who could not dream of the deliciousness left behind in the salad days? The success, the riches, even sometimes – let us confess – the pictorials in Playboy? All craving for just one more serving of vivid youth.

I pray that in heaven above, God has finally granted my friend a place of peace. As for me, let my epitaph speak Wordsworth’s final intimation:

To me the meanest flower that blows
Can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.