Hesped from Lisa Silberman Brenner

In a family of writers, please forgive me, but I am going to speak in clichés. While I was grateful for those final days in which I could sit and hold his hand, I found I had little to say. I think this was because my relationship with my father was always so easy. We were kindred spirits. He was my support, my guide, my mentor, my therapist, my teacher, my father. In those moments of recognition, I knew he loved me and he knew I loved him.
The cliché is that my father was my hero. I couldn’t imagine anyone not liking my father. He was kind, friendly, and caring. To me he was a combination of gentle yet strong—easy-going yet passionate. It is, actually, the passionate side of my father that I would like to speak about because I believe that his passions are what kept him going throughout these many years of illness, allowing him to survive over a decade beyond the statistics.
The first is of course, his love and passion for my mother. Not everyone finds true love and happiness in a partner. And while my father’s life was cut short, and I feel that he lived a full life because he found such love and happiness. And luckily he started early! My parents fell in love at 14—and I’ve seen the prom pictures to prove it—and they were married at 21.
Through their many years together, my parents got to experience another one of his passions—traveling. Not only did my parents see the world together—filling their house with photographs and art work—but they kept on traveling even when my father was quite ill. At times like this, I would feel like I was the parent as my crazy mom and dad were off to China or India in between chemo treatments. But then I would realize, as I’ve said, that this was my father embracing his passion for life.
The next two passions I’d like to mention are ones that he and I shared together. The first of these is teaching. I went into teaching because of my father. I remember at an early age going with him to the university, the awe I would hear from his students and those who worked with him as they spoke about him. I attribute my growth as a teacher to him: even throughout his illness he was there to guide me, to offer suggestions, ideas, and feedback. No matter how sick he got, he never stopped teaching and writing—editing his last book in his final days, something from which that I take great inspiration.
The second passion that he and I shared was gardening. I remember as a child, a lush bed of flowers slopping down our backyard hill, followed by vegetables and herbs. He taught me the names of different plants, he taught me about color and arrangements, and I’ve always been amazed how something so simple can bring such beauty and pleasure. As an adult, I relished the times we would go to the garden shop, even when he was walking with the aid of a cane, to pick out a new pot or a plant. Just as the perennials that we’ve planted will grow back year after year, I know that as the seasons come and go he will be with me, as I dig my hands in the warm earth, and bring color and joy to the world as he did.
But there is one more passion that I must speak about, one that I also believe kept him alive these many years, and that is his love for his grandchildren. When my father was first diagnosed, I had only been married for a couple of years, and much to my mother’s frustration, I wavered as to right time to have children. However, as soon as I hear the news, I had no doubts, and I prayed with all my heart that my father would live long enough to see me give birth to a child. Several months and chemotherapy treatments later, I discovered I was pregnant. The last thing my father saw before going in for lung surgery was an image from sonogram of the twins. When Noam and Jonah were born, their names reflected our prayers for healing and strength. Noam’s middle name is Reuvain, Daniel’s uncle who had died of cancer only a month or so before. Reuvain was the kind of person who had chemotherapy treatment in the morning and then literally lifted Daniel onto his shoulders and danced during our wedding that evening. We hoped that Noam would bring Reuvain’s spirit of joy to our family, even in the face of illness. Jonah’s middle name is Raphael, which means God heals, and we hoped that Jonah’s life would bring healing to my father. Both of these hopes and prayers came true. While there was no magical cure for my father’s illness, he lived on to see four more grandchildren come into this world: Ya’akov, Adira, Meir, and Chana. What a gift it has been to have had him in their lives these many years. To play scrabble with them, teach them golf, discuss a sports game, pick tomatoes in his garden, hold his hand and jump the waves at the Jersey shore. Every holiday, birthday, school play, every day really became a blessing.
So, although my father did not live to a ripe old age, I feel that he lived a full life, one that I greatly admire and memories of which I will always cherish. I love you dearly Abba, and I will miss you more than I can express.