It’s hard to believe that 30 days have passed. I just came back from an azkara for a friend who passed away at the age of 62. We sat in a circle. I, as a friend, the staff of the assisted living residence (“the hostel”) in Jerusalem where he had lived, and the residents. I choked away tears when I quoted the Talmud that stated that Hillel caused the poor to be incriminated. Poor people, when they come to Heaven, bring to their defense the argument that they didn’t learn Torah because they were suffering from poverty. The “prosecutor” in the heavenly tribunal then points to Hillel: “Who could be poorer than Hillel? Yet he learned Torah!”
“So it was with Harold,” I intoned. “Harold always smiled. What did he have to smile about? He had a traumatic childhood. He didn’t have steady work. Didn’t have money. Didn’t have a wife. Didn’t have children. Didn’t have health. Didn’t have relatives who really looked after him. What did he have? And yet he smiled. The biggest, warmest smile you’d ever see. So, what’s our excuse?”
* * *
Harold grew up in England. His parents were Holocaust survivors. When Harold was 12 years old, his father, who had been in Dachau during the war, went back to Germany to take care of reparation payment issues. He cracked psychologically. When he returned to England, the screaming began, first against his wife. Harold, very emotionally sensitive and frightened, came to his mother’s defense. That enraged Harold’s father even more, and he poured all his fury onto little Harold.
Harold became traumatized by his father’s crazed demeanor, his glassy eyes, his contorted face. He was wounded by the abuse hurled upon his quiet, passive mother. And when Harold was the object of his father’s fury, his mother did not come to his defense. Harold therefore felt abandoned by both his parents.
Harold’s psychological defense was to detach. He became a drifter, never davening in one shul but floating from minyan to minyan. Besides suffering from emotional trauma, I believe he also suffered from bipolar disorder. He was put on Lithium and other medications that kept him stable but slowly destroyed his kidneys. He also became obese and developed a heart condition.
A staff member of the residence where he lived called me a few years ago. “I have a very sweet fellow with us named Harold who has no place to go for Rosh Hashanah. We close the entire hostel and we can’t just leave him here. Would you be able to take him for two days?”
Against my better instincts, I said yes, and a few hours before the New Year was to commence, I heard a knocking at my door. When I opened it, I saw a fellow who looked like a cross between the Pillsbury doughboy and Santa Claus. With a huge grin that took me by surprise, he said, “Hi, are you Sam.? I am Harold. Were you expecting me?”
I was, but not the smile. I had never seen anything like it before. It seemed to come from his whole being, and it felt like the room was lit up by it.
I ushered Harold in and led him to his room. He then asked me if he could take a shower. The hostel closed early, and he had been roaming around before coming to me. He wanted to freshen up before the holiday. I gave him a towel and showed him to the shower room. A few minutes later I heard a huge and deafening crash. I rushed into the room and saw Harold slouching on the floor. I looked at the wall behind him. He had knocked the sink out of the wall! He had apparently lost his balance (I found out later it was because of his medications) and tried to catch the sink to cushion his fall. Maybe it helped cushion the impact, but the whole scene of a huge gash where the sink was once affixed was bizarre. I was not very pleased with all this, to put it mildly. I took in a guest with disabilities and my reward was extra aggravation and having to get a plumber come in after the chag.
That was my introduction to Harold.
* * *
Despite that fiasco, Harold started to come occasionally for Shabbos, and became a regular Rosh Hashanah guest. He was not your typical guest. Although very friendly, it took quite an effort to get him out of bed in the morning so that he would go to shul. I chalked that up to the medications that he was taking. I had to leave shul in the middle of Shacharis to get him out so that he would be in shul in time to hear the shofar being blown. Harold was getting slower and slower. Every few yards he would have to stop walking and catch his breath. But he always smiled.
One Saturday night, Baruch, an acquaintance who also knew Harold, called and asked if I would be willing to go with him to visit Harold at his hostel. I agreed, and when Baruch came over to my apartment, we drove together to visit Harold. The plan was to take Harold out for a pizza. I asked myself, why didn’t I ever think of doing that for Harold? Before we went to the pizza place, while we were sitting with Harold in the hostel, Baruch pulled out a bag of toiletries and handed it to him. “Harold, I brought you some toothpaste, a toothbrush, and deodorant so that you can have better hygiene.” Harold returned a sheepish smile and “promised” to make use of the gift. And then I asked myself a second time: I have known Harold for quite some time. I have spent holidays and Shabbosim with him. How come I never took the time to notice that Harold was lacking in his hygienic habits?
It was sort of an epiphany for me. I took care of Harold but I didn’t care enough for Harold. He was a “project” for me, a sort of trophy by which I could feel good about myself, a way of earning brownie/mitzva points. But I never took the time to take careful notice of the human being who was staying with me.
Baruch did, and I was taken aback. It took one tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush to wake me up.
* * *
I started looking into Harold’s health history. I called the social worker assigned to his hostel, and she got me in touch with his nurse. The jolly old fellow, with his big smile, was in trouble. Although he was taken often to the local doctor covered by his Israeli health insurance, he wasn’t being given adequate treatment. Socialized medicine in Israel gives you no more than 15 minutes with the doctor, and there are tons of people waiting outside. He was being bounced from doctor to doctor, with tests and more tests, and getting nowhere. I got the name of a good private doctor, who gave him a thorough checkup. He sent Harold (and I) to a lung specialist, who prescribed an oxygen machine for him. There would be more doctor visits. But it was too little, too late. Harold started collapsing in the hostel, sometimes in the shower, sometimes in his bedroom and sometimes elsewhere. The ambulance was called more and more frequently.
They called me from the hostel one night and asked me to visit him in Hadassah Ein Karem. He was in the emergency ward, with tubes in his nostrils. They asked me to come back the next day as well, because he panicked when they tried to give him an MRI. As I wheeled Harold to the MRI room, he began smiling at the patients in the ward. He did not differentiate between Jew and Arab, and I saw a most marvelous thing. Some of the Arabs, with stone cold faces, when they saw Harold’s smile, underwent a total change in their composure. They smiled back: big beautiful smiles at the 62-year-old man with a big black yarmulke perched on his head. There was no resistance to Harold’s smile, none whatsoever.
A few weeks later, I got another call. Harold had slipped into a coma, a trance-like state. He was taken to Shaarei Zedek hospital. Tests could not determine the cause. It wasn’t a stroke. He lay there for three days. I visited him on the third day. The Ethiopian nurse led me to his bed. He was lying on his back, tubes in his nose, another intravenous tube providing his body with fluids. He was breathing rhythmically, mechanically: heavy breaths. His mouth was open. His eyes were open, staring like a zombie at the ceiling. The nurse told me that he did not respond to visitors or the medical staff.
I was shocked. I stood there, looking over him, and he continued his heavy breathing, oblivious to my presence. I looked at him again and began calling out his name: “Harold! Harold!” And then it happened. He suddenly turned his head to the right, looked at me, and gave me this big smile. It lasted for about three seconds. And then he was gone, gone back into his coma.
Harold did not deprive me of his last smile. That night, he passed away.
* * *
The next day I saw a tallis-wrapped body lying in the Shamgar funeral hall near Kiryat Belz. The whole staff of the hostel – the administrators, eim bayit (house mother), and social workers – were there to pay their last respects. I also saw some of his relatives for the first time. The speakers all shared two things – Harold’s smile and his trouble-laden life.
There was torrential rain outside. I lost the column of cars that took him to the Mount of Olives cemetery. By the time I got to Har Hazeisim, there was no one to be found. I didn’t even know where to look to find his grave.
What made Harold smile when he saw people? I am ashamed to say that I never bothered asking him the question. I was too busy enjoying it and never thought to analyze it. But a mutual friend told me his impression that Harold’s smile was a holdover from his childhood. Harold was indeed childlike, an adjective that connotes not immaturity but the endearing innocence of children. His smile came from a very pure place, and all the traumas and troubles and disappointments he went through never contaminated that part of his personality. Harold didn’t need a reason to smile and could not find excuses not to. It was just as natural for him to smile as it is for a flower to bloom. That’s just the way it was.
I hope I will internalize from Harold the power of a sincere smile. It has the ability to banish enmity, sadness, and loneliness. It makes the world a nicer place to live in. And you don’t have to have money, success, or even family to possess it. Furthermore, there isn’t a human being in the world, no matter how rich or important, who wouldn’t benefit from a smile. It is the easiest form of chesed, and it is readily available. Smiling changes not only the recipient but also the one who smiles. It changes the way we look at people. Even the no-nonsense sage Shammai advised: “Receive everyone with a cheerful face.” (Pirkei Avot 1:16)
Harold’s smile made people come out in the rain to pay their last respects, because there was nothing out there that could drench it – neither his troubled life nor the downpour.
I’m going to miss Harold.
