Long-lost words a reminder of hope and nuance

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This article was published 03/06/2024 (843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lived lives

Winnipeg writer Deborah Schnitzer explores life lessons from women in their Third Act.

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The recovery of a lost document can be revelatory. Mine has been so.

In preparation for our second-born son’s wedding, my husband Mendel and I composed speeches full of wonder at our good fortune in being present, in becoming mishpocha (Yiddish for family by marriage) and in seeing younger love resonant. As Mendel so often spoke without filters — a predisposition received by some with good humour, by others with alarm — I strongly advised he let me look at his first draft as part of my campaign to preserve the “dignity” of the occasion, convinced my sense of dignity would not coincide with his.

Twelve years later, a lost document in hand, I recover meanings my initial misgivings obscured.

At the wedding, I took to the podium first and referenced our happiness, the dedication that distinguishes preparations undertaken as a means of blessing the couple and the occasion. For me, a house trimmed, a garden revived, two fridges bursting with delectables — time-honoured rituals embodying the best a welcoming heart can conceive.

Mendel followed. He reached into his new suit jacket for the speech only to discover it was not there. He laughed. The guests laughed. I watched. What would he do? Might he just deliver a few well-chosen and heartfelt comments and leave it at that?

Of course he simply could not. He would wing it. Cheerful, confident and transgressive, he spoke about his first meeting with his now daughter-in-law that had begun with a question about her fertility. He went on to describe not the groom, but his elder brother’s bris (circumcision), tricky because the baby was barely five pounds and the mohel (the rabbi who performs the bris) past 90; and his devotion to no-name brands that drove his children from the table when he was a stay-at-home dad.

He did add some further observations about his daughter-in-law, whom he regarded as a blessing, but he made no mention of the son who had just married her, an oversight that son never referenced because he understood his father was winging it, flying unfettered, and that his father adored him.

I have a photo of Mendel delivering the speech at the wedding. It isn’t of Mendel per se, but of his effect on his sons and daughter-in-law — the eldest holding his head in his hands, the groom and bride holding on to each other, all dissolving because this man they loved was outrageous and irrepressible.

Twelve years later, I find Mendel’s original speech within the long list of files hoarded on my computer, despite annual resolutions to cull records no longer required or consulted.

Mendel did reference our eldest son’s bris, our daughter-in-law’s fertility, his frugality regarding no-name brands, but he also noted his love for his youngest son and his respect for the man his boy had become.

I sent this recovered speech to my family. Mendel had been dead for seven years and finding his voice in this way deeply moved them.

Within this process, I discovered the speech’s first paragraph. I cannot remember how Mendel said it at the wedding itself. In the hard copy I printed from my computer he writes: “I’ve been preparing for this day for a long time without anyone knowing about it. I am convinced that I was born for the sole purpose of perpetuating the Schnitzer name, for I am the last male Schnitzer alive today from my father’s family.”

I had forgotten the way he wished to contextualize his remarks, how the past lived in his present in relation to his desire to leave a trace of the family that had been extinguished by the Third Reich.

There were those present who might have thought Mendel’s preoccupation with bris and fertility expressive of the reductionism of the male gaze, his patriarchal bent inappropriate, his references a hallmark of insensitivity.

But his foregrounding of the trauma carried by the people who remain invites us to move past knee-jerk reactions and consider the complexity of the contexts in which such people live, how they might have survived and how the potential miracle of ongoing life could preoccupy and inspire them.

Mendel reckoned with the reality of the catastrophe that determined his experience. His son’s wedding — the possibility of grandchildren who might live in a world where human history does not mindlessly repeat itself — expressed the light he lived with dignity and without apology.

My recovery of his speech kindled once more an appreciation for his sense of the dignity a wedding occasion might confer — his hope for the very future denied so many. Such hope, diminished in these harrowing times, depends upon our willingness to consider alternate points of view, not just to tolerate differences but to dedicate ourselves to understanding the complex realities these differences, often of necessity, encompass.