NOTE: The following eulogy I read at my mother's funeral 18 years ago. Ten minutes ago I rediscovered it, quite by accident. I offer it to you now in honor of all our mothers.

What can I say about my mother -- the one I called "mom" and "mommy" and "ma" and "Sylvie" -- the one through whom I was born, who fed me with her own blood before I entered the world?

There is something about the mother/son relationship that can never be explained -- a relationship that is way more about feeling than thinking -- and I thank my mother for awakening feeling in me, even when she was unaware of it in her self.

I have very good memories of my mother -- the woman you came here to honor today -- not so much for the things she did, but for the being she was, an advocate for love, appreciation, and simplicity.

I remember her singing in the sisterhood. I remember being proud of her for having the courage to go out on stage in front of all those people and actually belt out a song she wrote herself -- a way to make people feel better about themselves even for just a moment. I remember her painting and playing the piano and waiting for me to come home from school and completing all those New York Times crossword puzzles on lazy Sunday afternoons as if she was somehow deciphering the secret of life right there on the couch in our den, the dog at her feet and me, quiet nearby, somehow able to dream big because of it all.

I remember her veal parmegiana and the one canasta night each week with her friends -- some of whom are here today -- the husbands at work, the women at play, all talking and smoking at once and me, the son somehow able to sleep more deeply in the next room, knowing all those Jewish mothers were in the house, enjoying each other, no men around to criticize them.

I learned a lot from my mother though she would never think of herself as a teacher. Her life has infused me -- and it's all about love... and the ability to be alone... and serve without thought of return. Oh yes, and words!

Sometimes, she would fall asleep with the light on, next to my father, crossword puzzle and pencil in hand, and I would walk the hallway from my room to hers, grab her ankles and pull her down just enough so she wouldn't get a crick in her neck. Then I'd turn out the light, a role reversal of sorts, me the father, her the child.

I loved helping her with her puzzles, filling in a word she didn't know as she grew older, never once giving up her weekly ritual of going to the beauty parlor and getting her hair done, enough hairspray in it to withstand a tornado or two.

And yes, despite her gift of intuitive knowing, there was a lot my mother did not know and never understood -- why I grew my hair long, why I lived in a tent in the forest, why I became a vegetarian, or married a shiksa, or followed that young boy Guru from India.

On and on and on it goes... one generation differentiating itself from the other. And yet, throughout it all, I felt her mother love, the oasis we all want to come home to and drink from -- that safe haven mothers find so easy to offer their children.

In the face of eternity my mother has gone just a little bit sooner than the rest of us. All of us will follow suit. It is the way of life. We are born. We live. We die. It can be no other way. We will all have our moment with our Maker, as my mother has just had hers.

My wish for all of us remaining here is that the moment with our Maker happens now -- while we are alive. We do not have to physically die to experience our Maker. That power is here with us in this room. Today. Always is. Always was. Always will be.

The details of my mother's life -- and ours -- are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't really matter what we accomplish, but how -- and where we are coming from when we do anything at all.

That's the message I get from my mother. That and the sacredness of breath. What came so hard for her in these last days, all of us in this room still have, as well as a chance to savor it.

What's a six letter word for love? How about "Sylvia" for starters?

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)

All 7.6 billion people on planet Earth are composed of the same six elements: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorous. And all 7.6 billion people, no matter where they were born or what language they speak, are composed of 75% water, 23 pairs of chromosomes, and approximately 37.2 trillion cells.

That's the measurable stuff of which we are made. But there is also some unmeasurable stuff -- that which is not immediately visible, even under a microscope. And this unmeasurable stuff is a clue to why our species has been named "homo sapiens" -- the "wise ones."

Hmmm... wise ones... really? Given the sorry state of the world these days, the "wise ones" seems like a misnomer, but in reality, it is our true nature.

Human beings are more than just carriers of viruses, projections, and DNA. We are also carriers of wisdom -- the ability to perform an action with the highest degree of adequacy under any given circumstance. "Truth in action," you might say. What Solomon was famous for. And Socrates. And a whole lot of other sages since the beginning of time. But not only known sages. Nope. Unknown sages, too. And unknown regular people, as well. Like your grandmother, for example... or your grandfather... parents... teachers... friends... neighbors... coaches or, this just in -- YOU!

Sages, Masters, and Elders may be the most historically recognized "keepers of wisdom" on the planet, but they are not the only ones. The rest of us are also keepers of wisdom. The thing is -- we don't always know it. Our wisdom is often invisible to us. Unseen. Unacknowledged. And unexpressed. Not only do we see the glass as half empty, we often don't even see the glass.

Where is our wisdom hiding? More often than not, in our stories -- much like water is hiding in underground springs and gold is hiding in mines. But just because our wisdom is hiding, it doesn't mean it's non-existent. Everybody has wisdom inside them. Everybody has something meaningful to share, based on what they've learned from the own life experiences. And the simplest, most powerful way to communicate this knowing is story.

Story is how the wisdom of the ages has been transmitted since the beginning of time. This is how our ancestors shared the best of what they knew. This is how all spiritual traditions pass on their knowledge. And this is how the best communicators on the planet communicate what is truly worth communicating.

YOU just happen to be one of those people. Your hidden stories are treasures. There is great wisdom, meaning, and inspiration in them. They need to be told. Especially these days, when the daily narrative that rules our lives is often so dark and depressing.

Are you ready? Are you willing? (I know you're able).

PHOTO: Gift Habeshaw

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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)

Thinking about writing a book? Inspired to write a book? Feel called to write a book? Excellent. If so, take a look at the following quotes on writing from 44 accomplished writers who have been there and back and lived to tell the tale. Find a few quotes that really sing to you and contemplate them. Enjoy the journey! You can do this!

1. "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." -- Madeleine L'Engle

2. "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." -- Stephen King

3. "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." -- Toni Morrison

4. "One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple." -- Jack Kerouac

5. "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." -- Benjamin Franklin

6. "You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write." -- Saul Bellow

7. "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." -- Robert Frost

8. "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -- Thomas Mann

9. "Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window." -- William Faulkner

10. "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." -- Ray Bradbury

11. "Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced." -- Aldous Huxley

12. "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." -- H.D. Thoreau

13. "I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn." -- Anne Frank

14. "Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences." -- Sylvia Plath

15. "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

16. "Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." -- Franz Kafka

17. "I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

18. "You can make anything by writing." -- C.S. Lewis

19. "A word after a word after a word is power." -- Margaret Atwood

20. "Tears are words that need to be written." -- Paulo Coelho

21. "Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money." -- Virginia Woolf

22. "To survive, you must tell stories." -- Umberto Eco

23. "Always be a poet, even in prose." -- Charles Baudelaire

24. "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." -- Isaac Asimov

25. "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." -- Albert Camus

26. "I write to discover what I know." -- Flannery O'Connor

27. "Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish." -- Hermann Hesse

28. "Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing." -- Norman Mailer

29. "Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write." -- Rainer Maria Rilke

30. "As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand." -- Ernest Hemingway

31. "A good writer possesses not only his own spirit, but also the spirit of his friends." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

32. "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." -- Thomas Jefferson

33. "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative." -- Elmore Leonard

34. "Writers live twice." -- Natalie Goldberg

35. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme." -- Herman Melville

36. "Words are a lens to focus one's mind." -- Ayn Rand

37. "I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within." -- Gustave Flaubert

38. "Writing is its own reward." -- Henry Miller

39. "A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God." -- Sidney Sheldon

40. "I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged." -- Erica Jong

42. "Half my life is an act of revision." -- John Irving

43. "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." -- William Faulkner

44. "When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time."-- Lady Gaga

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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)