October has been a frantic month for me, moving holiday to holiday, packing and unpacking and repacking, turning up on various evenings for virtuous events. Across my now decades-long history as an adult, I have struggled to keep above water during this annual period, to make heads and tails of all of the many commitments, while maintaining my cool and enjoying all of what the season has to offer. See, I thrive on stability and structure, and the fall holiday cycle tends to get the best of me - eventually, if I allow it. This year, I have done my best to remain level-headed, to anticipate what’s coming around again, and to show up and be present fully.
Emerging from Yom Kippur services last Saturday night, I was proud of how I’d performed, as a direct result of how I’d prepared. I was relieved to find a regular Saturday night and Sunday awaiting, to do nothing more than stay home, to kick back, and assign a gym visit as my primary concern while staring down yet another three-day workweek for me and my ilk. Monday came and went as I’d hoped, a calm day working from home, in which I fielded several calls with potential new companies for our investment group to entertain. I was poised to tell my wife over dinner that evening how I’d kept it together despite all else that surrounded and how I was rewarded with the quiet.
Just then, she emerged from the other room to inform me that she had some very bad news: Howie had died the day prior. As I was easing back into action, amid a deliberately slow Sunday, someone I had gotten to know quite well over past years was experiencing his final breaths. On the day that followed Yom Kippur, this man was taken. The heavenly gates had closed on Saturday at nightfall - the conclusion of our most intense holiday - only to reopen the following day, a regular day for many of us to look forward to and to depend upon.
I had just seen Howie a little while earlier, over Rosh Hashana weekend at my in-laws. When we were sitting down to eat lunch just after 1 pm, there was a knock at the door. We sensed what that meant. Howie walked in, as often he did in similar circumstances, a familiar guest during an unfamiliar window. A contemporary of my in-laws, Howie was invited to stay for lunch, as he had so many times in the past. On this day, he was just dropping by merely to establish a backup plan. See, he was supposed to eat at the Feders, but he had reason to believe that Sara Lee would be on hand there, too, and you know how Howie felt about Sara Lee, even back when she was married to Robert, Howie’s best friend, before Robert’s death so many years ago, and Howie wouldn’t dare stay at the Feders if it turned out that Sara Lee was invited company alongside him. So he wanted us to know that we might see him again a little later on, should he decide to extract himself from his set plans in favor of being somewhere else.
On that day, I recall I hugged Howie goodbye, but who can really be sure. It’s not something you remember all the details of, that encounter, which was typical until it was rendered atypical some days afterward. Howie left us for sure with a laugh, though, about the absurdity of this situation he’d devised. I regaled countless people in the hours and days that followed about Sara Lee and Robert, and Robert and Howie. Now, it’s just my in-laws, my wife, and me. A hole the size of Howie’s presence and personality lingers.
It wasn’t just with us that Howie behaved this way. He moved around the synagogue specifically and the community at large as if he were the mayor of all the proceedings, sure to speak for a few minutes each with everyone he set eyes on. For Howie, every day was July 4, including Rosh Hashana, and he was the parade captain. He was ever jovial, always proud to see you, no matter who you were to him. On the occasions that my wife and I would visit her parents, we’d seek out Howie at or after services to catch up with him ourselves. A friend to all, and to all a friend (even to Sara Lee).
As I expanded my professional role over recent years to go from portfolio support alone to business development in addition, Howie was someone who wanted to know every last detail about the latest and greatest. When I told Howie earlier this year that not just one, but two, of my deals had closed, he lit up like nobody else I’d shared that same information with. He understood the magnitude of that work perhaps even better than I could appreciate, having done the work. Howie cheered me on; he celebrated. If you had any sort of success to share, Howie looked to be a part of that infectious joy. He emitted naturally all of the energy I aspire to inject and to embed into the spaces I frequent or simply visit. To be a deliberate, dependable buddy.
On the first night of Sukkot, which begins at nightfall, we will gather for yet another festival in the long cycle. It’s customary on each night of this holiday to welcome a guest from Jewish history’s past, beginning with Abraham. I will suggest tonight at the close of our meal that we take a moment to make room also for Howie. Because if Howie were still with us here in person, he’d undoubtedly turn up at some point over the holiday to join us, surely with a story to tell - and other stories for him to hear and cherished people to hug and hold. Who knows when he’d turn up at our succah entrance, whether after services had let out or in the middle of a chicken soup course. Howie was always welcomed, never to be forgotten.