Siblings

A speech from the joint unveiling memorial service for

Edith Prostkoff (Grandma) & Myron Reis (Uncle Mike)

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

I'm going to talk for a few minutes about Uncle Mike & Grandma not as individuals, but as siblings, and the significance of that particular relationship as it pertained to their lives, and ours.

One of the requisite characteristics to being a quality human being is knowing how to share.
It's one of the first lessons we're taught in school, and it is an instruction that it reiterated throughout our personal and professional lives.  Sharing.  And no relationship prepares us better or teaches us more about sharing than being a sibling.

Genetics aside, as siblings we share the resources in the house, the food on the table, bedrooms and bathrooms and even the remote control on the TV.  As we get older, if we're close enough in age, we start to share experiences beyond the home.  We may have the same teachers and maybe even the same friends.  What we learn from being a sibling, and all of this sharing, is that sometimes we're going to be expected to put another person in front of ourselves.  We're forced to recognize that we're not the only person who has a need.  There are other people in this world, and your sibling serves as a constant reminder of this.

We should take this responsibility not as a task, but as a gift.  If we're lucky, our sibling can be our confidant, our cohort and our example.  We can learn from our sibling's failures and successes as much as from our own.  Our brother or sister can be our friend because he or she is sharing our life, our situations, our parents' displeasures or respect…   With your sibling you can view your parents together as those taller, older alien beings who seem to have an entirely different sense of the world.  As you grow up, you and your siblings will form your own new realities together.

Even when siblings move away from each other the sharing need not end.  When our identities are more-or-less formed and we see ourselves as individuals, that's when we start to share the bigger things: ideas, perspectives, events and philosophies.  We share the pleasures and sorrows of life.  It can be tricky to stay connected when we're no longer playing the same games with the same rules.  Maybe we don't share geography, or even some of the same values.  This can create a dynamic situation, but it's still good because the sibling that knows you helps you to further define yourself.   In architecture and photography the negative space can be just as defining as the subject itself.

So… Grandma and Uncle Mike.  I honestly don't know much about what their life was like when they were children, but they always maintained their connection to each other, even when they realized they were their own people and they were leading very different lives.  At some point it didn't matter if they had kids or if they were observant in the same ways, or who had a house where because they always stayed connected through their common history and they held their mutual interest in family and each other. Their relationship was forged in steel and gold.

When Mike died a  year ago Grandma said "I lost my Baby Brother." The baby brother who wasn't a baby for over eighty years was perpetually her baby brother.  That was very telling to me.  I'm sure their relationship had its set of bumps, as all relationships do, but they were always able to go back and reapply that most important lesson from their childhood:  To Share.

Mike & Edith were citizens of the world in large part because of their connection to each other.  They both taught, they both gave back, and they were social.  They had friends and they made an impact on their communities.  They had the capacity to see beyond themselves and they recognized that we don't  have to be trapped inside our own egos all of the time.  And that's because they were siblings and the sibling relationship is unique in that way.  It always brings you back and for this reason it is special.  Sacred.  Like anything else it requires care and nurturing, but so long as we remember to share, even when we don't agree,  we're going to recognize that these differences actually help us too, just as they always have.

I think it's fitting that we're honoring Grandma and Mike in this memorial service together.  After everything they went through together from practically the same starting point to practically the same end, it's amazing to think that now they're their in their final resting place together. They're lives were a beautiful poem of intersecting stanzas, connected and disparate ideas, but with common imagery, memory and a base.  As we plot our own courses we'll continue to read the versus of their poem -- and share them with each other until we arrive at our own ending verse.

Life and Death and Life

My Great Uncle Myron Reis died this morning at about 3am.  He was both Great in the technical terminology of our relationship, being my maternal grandmother’s brother (accordingly I am termed a Grand Nephew), and he was Great as in fantastic, wondrous and eminent in my life.   My maternal grandfather died when I was three and Uncle Mike didn’t just fill the void, he more than overstuffed it with an unwavering positivity, intelligence, warmth and guidance, generosity and care. It has always been easy to start a statement with, “My Great Uncle Mike” and let the description straddle both purposes.

He nearly died six years ago and we all held our breath, but in the ensuing years he reminded us, by example, that life isn’t just to be treasured, it actually makes us richer the more we share it.  As he physically weakened and his world compressed he continued to expand himself by quietly sustaining the details: holding my Great Aunt Jane’s hand or stealing a kiss, watching deer prance through their upstate backyard, explaining the history of a restaurant, a play, a writer, an actor, a singer, a building, a town, a religion, all of New York City or even the world to come according to the New York Times’ Tuesday’s technology reviews…  He tired physically, but his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and happiness never abated.   Even at his most fatigued, he was always capable of a vibrant hug.  In short, he beamed life.

His last few weeks were rough and it’s easy to hold focus on what happened in the hospital, what didn’t happen in his recovery, what decisions would, should, or could have been made if the outcome was apparent from the forefront.  But in reality, as I learned it from Uncle Mike, none of that matters. 

All books have their last page.  All movies have a final credit.  All songs a last beat.  Even the brightest stars expire with a final burning ember.  Mike knew this, and he would be remiss if we concentrated on his final moments and forgot all the lessons learned in the preceding chapters of his life.  Lessons about craft and quality, personal fulfillment, the purpose of determination, and the meaning of success.  Piano lessons.  Writing lessons.  Art lessons.  Lessons about love.

Jane and the rest of us will ultimately move forward—Mike would insist upon this—but our current pause is assuredly accepted and appreciated.  It is entirely fair for us to fully miss this Great man and we will grieve for the loss of his future advice, the future enjoyment of meals, hospitality and rich conversation.  And, for certain, future stolen kisses.

I love you, my Great Uncle Mike.