Kaddish at a baseball game

(Personal note: It has been nine years now since my father passed away. Therefore, I have decided to share with you the following personal story instead of the 'psych ward' blog):

My Dad loved baseball games. At the ballpark, we would sit together, eating our peanuts, discussing every nuance of possibility. "Baseball is like poetry," Dad would say, where innings become rhythms of pace and pause. Father and son, side by side, the diamond before us.

Dad would relish his one beer, after which a touch of foam inevitably appeared on his mustache. This always made me smile. Dad seemed to know everything before it happened: "Get ready for the hit and run!", or "Time to bring in the southpaw!" He rejected sitting too close to the field: "Higher seats give you better perspective, John." Dad was a kid again, all smiles, excited, revved up. How I loved being with him at those games.

Kaddish. Kaddish is what one says when a parent passes. It is the Jewish way. Saying the Kaddish prayer has the extraordinary ability to lift the soul of the deceased higher and higher. As such, the experience of Kaddish is transcendent, a connection to G-d, and for me, a connection to me dear father, Murray Guterson, who breathed his last on Friday night, October 4, 2013.

Saying the Kaddish prayer is also something of a marathon: three times a day (morning, afternoon, and night), at synagogue, for 11 straight months. It requires consistency, endurance, resilience. It takes a fastidious rearranging of work schedules and vacations. It takes honor and love.

And if you're late to synagogue, by chance , then you've missed that moment to say Kaddish. Opportunity lost. I confess to some restless nights, fearful that I would oversleep. For obsessives, a perfect setup. Dad, I will not let you down. You and Mom brought me into this physical world; you raised me, made me who I am. I'll be there.

And so, it was not by accident that at the end of my 11 months, when I came to my very last time of the year of Kaddish, that I went to a baseball game. Celebrate my Dad. Pirates vs. Cardinals. My 10 year old son and my son-in-law joined me, their presence as buffers for my emotions.

To say the Kaddish prayer one needs a minyan, a quorum of ten men over the age of 13. In the Torah world, we are not alone. So needing nine Jewish men to join me, Rabbi Silverman came to the rescue, as he had already organized a "Jewish college students night at the ballpark" for that very game.

Now, I can't tell you the names of any of those college students who left their seats in the bottom of the first inning to be part of the minyan. I knew none of those young men who spared 15 minutes to stand near a 60-year-old, white-bearded son as he paid homage to his deceased father. But there they were - some knew Hebrew, some did not, but that didn't matter. Simply being there was the key, the power of 10 men together.

For without all 10 of us, whether they understood fully or not, I would not have been able to say that very last Kaddish prayer, the culmination of 11 consistent months, of 990 minyans, of never missing once. And so, as the crowd roared in the background, those nine guys meant everything to me.

As I walked back to my seat, I realized how much my Dad would have loved the whole scene. I could feel him there with me, smiling, thanking me, loving me, and then urging me to get back to my seat soon, not to miss another pitch. Tears welled up inside me as I took that walk, another goodbye to my father.

As I approached my seat, there was a 10-year-old boy, wrapped up in the moment, the thrill of a ballgame, pistachios in hand.

He looked up at me with a big smile on his face, and said: "Hi, Dad!"

She was a 35 year old woman...

She was a 35 year old woman. Known to have what we call a 'borderline personality': quick mood shifts, stormy relationships, always the victim, self-harm (usually wrist cutting), yearning for attention, easily bored.

And - most notably - an intense fear of abandonment.

For this psychiatric admission, she had cut her wrists, largely for hopeful attention from her boyfriend when he left her.

These patients are generally the most difficult and challenging in a psychiatric hospital - because the psych ward becomes their stage and when they inflict self-harm, they know the staff will come to their rescue. No boredom here; lots of attention; no abandonment.

Do patients like this have any good in them? Well, of course. Everyone does. But our inherent goodness, our soul, gets glossed over - and we lose ourselves.

So.... stop and look at the good that you have; your inborn talents and gifts that are part of you - and then treat others , look at others, through that type of lens. Then reality and relationships take on a whole new meaning.

So I can't promise that this 35 year old got significantly better - but approaching patients by identifying their goodness, rather than their pathology, has a much better prognosis.

He was a 45 year old man

He was a 45 year old man. Threats of violence landed him in the psych ward against his will. Turned out he had been using cocaine. ‘Get me the hell out of this damn place’, he screamed at me.

Now cocaine can make one feel euphoric, energetic and focused, ready to live life to the hilt. But these effects don’t last forever - and can ultimately lead to paranoia, fits of anger, mood shifts, and even heart problems which could be lethal.

That’s what happened, tragically, to Len Bias, the University of Maryland basketball star who was the 2nd overall pick in the 1986 draft by the Boston Celtics. Two days after being chosen, he celebrated by snorting cocaine - and died of a cardiac arrhythmia, an amazing future never realized.

And so we did an EKG (heart monitor) of this 45 year old man’s heart - and discovered that he was on the verge of following in the footsteps of Len Bias.

But - because he was in a hospital, action was taken and a life saved.

The irony of all this was not lost on this once angry 45 year old , who now was singing praises: ‘thank G-d I was forced to come to the hospital!’.

If we look at our own lives, we will often see that what appears to be a negative on a Monday may well be the very springboard for a positive on a Tuesday. We just have to keep our eyes open.