Today I signed onto the Internet to discover that Senator Ted Kennedy had died. Those who know me well would say I’m not very politically inclined, and they’d be correct. However, Ted Kennedy’s death moved me. It seems his passing marks the end of an era. The Kennedy era. We could sing, “Where have all the Kennedy’s gone? Long time passing…” His death left me feeling quite nostalgic and melancholy.
His death also seems to mark the end of something else for me–maybe my youth. So many good ones have passed recently, notable people from my younger days: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Beatrice Arthur, Dom DeLuise, Ed McMahon, Walter Cronkite… I suppose this simply brings up my own mortality, my own sense of time passing and getting older.
Not that I’m that old, but 2010 will mark my 50th birthday. During the same year, my daughter will graduate from high school. Just two years later, my son will follow her off to college or a career in the dance world, God willing. Their lives will be starting, and my life will be half over.
Maybe that’s part of what I’m feeling. I look at Senator Kennedy’s life, the good and the bad, and I see how much he achieved. I see the mark people like Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite left on the world, although I realize they were very different people leading very different lives. Will I leave a mark? Will I leave a hole when I’m gone? Their death did. I feel it.
In Judaism we someone dies we say their memory “should be for blessing” or “be a blessing.” The blessing in these people’s memory should be that by their passing we become inspired to leave our own marks on the world. We should go out and do good, stand up for the things in which we believe, create art, speak our mind, be “all that we can be,” live up to our fullest potential, and then leave a hole when we are gone. We should live lives that have impact.
We never know how much time we have to achieve that goal–it could be one more day, one more year, or half a decade. Live a life of impact now. Make a difference to the current era…or start a new one.
