Dumb Struck

In it's 19th century usage, the word dumb didn't refer to a person's mental abilities (or lack thereof), but rather it was a synonym for 'mute', or 'unable to speak'.  One of the few surviving vestiges of this sense of the word is the expression 'dumb struck', a mildly offensive phrase (to people who can't speak) meaning to be struck speechless.

I woke up this morning (sounds like the start of a blues riff, right?), and found an e-mail waiting for me from one of my NY musician friends. It said that one of my first mentors in the music business, Gene Brusiloff, had been hospitalized by a serious heart attack. 

Gene had offered a wonderful example to me of how to comport myself... what to play... what NOT to play... and basically showed me how to be a mentch.  On the occasions that I sat next to him on the bandstand, I felt as though I'd gotten a free music theory lesson.  I was never officially one of his students, but anyone who knew him could say they learned many lessons from him. 

The e-mail frightened me, as this was at least his second major heart attack (the first one forced his retirement from performing), but he was still alive.

What's the old saying? "Where there's life... there's hope."

Off I went to work with memories of the gigs we had played together... each one a rare treat I was only now appreciating.

Then while I was at work I got a call telling me that two brother's with whom I am very close had lost their younger brother during the night.  He'd tucked his kids into bed, gone to sleep next to his wife and never woken up in the morning. 

Just like that. Game over.

The rest of the day was spent in a fog of driving to Jerusalem... watching the horror show of a family burying a young man who just yesterday had no clue he had arrived at the jumping-off point.

By the time I got home I needed a few minutes to myself.

I gave the kids their hello kisses and headed downstairs to check my e-mail and do some online reading before supper.

The subject line of the first e-mail I opened knocked the wind out of me. It read: "Sad News", and was from the same friend who had written to tell me about Gene's heart attack.

With trembling hands I clicked open the e-mail and numbly read about the senseless end of yet another life.  Senseless in the sense that I was somehow not privy to G-D's master plan... and that I suddenly felt like I've been playing a game whose rules I didn't fully understand.

I don't get it.  It seems as though I had just opened a fresh sleeve of cherry Pez. All this time I've been reaching into my pocket and eating great handfuls of those sweet candies... and now I am terrified that I really have no idea how many are left!  Are there any at all left down there among the pocket lint and change?  Maybe just a few?   Why wasn't I savoring every one???

How could I have been so short-sighted and childish?!

Treppenwitz has always been a comfortable refuge for me... a creative outlet, as well as a rain bucket where many special people shower me with their wit and wisdom. It was never intended to be a psychiatrist's couch, and I have tried very hard not to use it (or you) as a tool to exorcise my demons... and I don't intend to start now.

I may take a few days off.   I'm not in a very good place right now.

I am, to use a familiar expression, 'dumb struck'

I have nothing useful or witty to say... so I'll leave you with some thoughtful words from Jordan Hirsch... another of the musician friends I left behind when I moved to Israel:

"We have entered the part of our lives where we can no longer take our immortality for granted. We can be paralyzed by fear, or emboldened by the opportunity each day brings. Your words, and the love of friends near and far, present or softly treading in the background, are words not to live by, but to seize life by."