Gary Goldhammer –author and storyteller.

I’VE ONLY REALLY FEARED FOR MY LIFE TWICE. 

The first time was when I was 25 years old, right before surgery to remove a tumor from my head. I remember being wheeled into the operating room, looking up at the fluorescent lights and wondering whether that was the last thing I’d ever see.

The second time was in 2020, now 54 and sick with Covid, counting my breaths in a makeshift medical tent and taking silent bets on which would be my last.

I made it (obviously) but the helplessness of those moments lingered. That feeling, the understanding of my own mortality, came in waves – sometimes a small swell, other times a tsunami that sent me reeling. As I reached my 50s it happened more often, the sets coming closer together, the weight and speed of the waves threatening to push me under.

And then it stopped. It stopped today, actually. Not the waves, but the way I chose to look at the water.

An old friend – which is pretty much all my friends now – reminded me that mortality is no longer a concern. There comes a point, he said, when you realize that your kids are doing just fine without you. They love you but they don’t need you anymore. You could now focus on yourself and what lies ahead.

That was it. The truth of all truths. Mortality was in my past, not my future. I would continue to live in my daughter, in her kids someday, in my family and friends. I didn’t have to fear death because I’ve already become immortal.

Now I know that life is something to lean into, not hold on to. If you stand in the water and stare at the oncoming waves, they will pound you and send you reeling. You’ll never get anywhere. But if you turn and flow with them, you’ll move forward. You’ll float. You’ll fly.

Beating mortality isn’t about staying alive, it’s about measuring your life in memories instead of years. It’s about new experiences, not nostalgia. It’s about accepting the fact that life isn’t special if it never ends. Life is special, is worth living, because it ends.

I wasn’t ready for immortality at 25. I wasn’t ready in 2020. But I’m ready now. As I sat with old friends, watching the waves roll in under my beloved Southern California sun, I knew that my mortality was behind me and an ocean of living awaited.

Time to dive in.

I’ve had two “Marys” in my life. Both aunts by marriage, both gregarious, outgoing, caring and considerate. Straight-shooters short on bullshit and long on listening. They could be lighthearted or they could be lightning, but they were always family first, family always.

I lost one Mary years ago. I lost the other this week. Both losses were too soon, both hurt and hit hard. But this more recent Mary, this Missouri Mary, this Mary who I saw infrequently and knew less about than I should have after 32 years – this Mary’s loss also made me smile.

Let me explain. You know that person at family gatherings who others tend to gravitate toward? The one you seek out as a safe harbor of sanity in a storm of nattering nonsense?

That was Mary for me. She was the one relative I most wanted to see every Christmas, the one who wore calm like a warm winter coat. Just being in her presence was enough to make you forget whatever was bothering you, because chances were whatever was bothering you wasn’t important.

So yes, I think about Mary and I smile. That’s what she would do, what she did do all those years with all that cancer. She went to St. Louis Cardinals games, she traveled the world, she went to concerts and participated in community events.

She lived, despite all protestations to the contrary.

Even in the end you couldn’t really see the sickness. That smile and those big, deep, piercing eyes with their “I’m gonna go ahead and keep on living for a while longer if that’s cool” attitude blinded us all.

The cancer took over but it didn’t win. Mary was above the disease, beyond it. That’s how you beat cancer – by continuing to live with gratitude and grace.

The holidays won’t be the same this year. They won’t ever be the same. And that’s okay, too. The rest of us, the ones left to mourn, also need to live with gratitude and grace.

My Marys would want nothing less.

Whenever someone asks me to explain the meaning of a Jewish holiday – any Jewish holiday – my answer is always the same:

“They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”

I usually just get a courtesy laugh, but for an attention-starved comedy hack like me, courtesy laughs are tantamount to a standing ovation at Radio City. The point is taken nevertheless: Jewish history is a time-worn tale of perseverance in the face of tragedy.

Sometimes I wonder how we survived (and many times we almost didn’t.) But when there is no light, you learn how to see in the dark. Jews are very good at finding their way out of darkness, at clinging to hope despite the odds.

And yet.

There are times when the darkness consumes you. When it blinds you. When the only light you see is from bombs exploding and fire raging and guns blazing.

When the darkness grips you with the force of 5,000 years of despair.

No one knows what will happen in the days and weeks ahead, save for the predictable political posturing, the protests and rallies, the discrimination and hate crimes. Some American Jews will be extremely vocal and passionate, and I respect that. Others, like me, will revert to our original assimilation programming and keep our heads down, avoid the topic and try to fit in.

You watching the playoffs? Crazy about the Dodgers. Oh yeah, saw that, totally agree – enough Taylor Swift already! Keep the cameras pointed at the field, right? No yeah I want that windbreaker too.

But first, I just want to say this.

I support the Jewish people and Israelis, but that doesn’t mean I support Netanyahu and his authoritarian policies. I’m hardly alone on that front.  

I support the Palestinian people and their right to live in peace, but unequivocally denounce Hamas and all terrorist organizations. They need to be erased from existence so that Palestinians and everyone throughout the region can thrive.  

This is going to get worse, a lot worse. I’m praying for all the families, for my family and friends living in Israel, for the planet not to devolve into World War III. I’m trying to cling to hope, but it’s getting harder to see a way forward.

I’m trying to find the light. I really am. But for the first time, the darkness is winning.

We see the rockets shooting across the sky, white streaks of light like so many falling stars.

We hear the sirens wail and watch the reporters scramble for cover. We see the streets explode and the buildings crumble. We absorb the chaos and say the prayers and promise to keep those who are suffering in our collective thoughts.

But we don’t feel anything, not really. Not from those images or experiences. They are abstractions – made for TV moments put on a loop.

Rockets and explosions are death in aggregate. They are anonymized data points on a chart, raw statistics to be compiled. They are the eye candy of the macabre.

This is the sad truth of our 21^st Century. Bombs and body parts are instantly streamed to the same devices we use to order a pizza or call an Uber. This inures us to violence and mutes our capacity to care, truly care, as much as any human with a beating heart should. There’s no mobile app for empathy.

But all that changes when you see a face.

What makes the current Israel-Gaza conflict different, at least in these early days, are the videos of civilians being dragged into vehicles and taken hostage. Dead bodies don’t scream; captured soldiers signed up knowing the risks.

But a mother with two crying babies? A grandma shoved in the back of a pickup truck? A family pulled from their home after watching their teenage daughter get murdered?

Yeah, that hits different.

Taking civilian hostages is the ultimate in cowardice, and also nothing new for Hamas. They already use Palestinian civilians as both shields and cannon fodder, so maybe Hamas figured that Israel wouldn’t risk killing its own people.

However, Israel has taken that risk before, notably during the Raid on Entebbe where three Israeli hostages died but the other 102 were rescued. I’m not saying that Israel is going to purposely jeopardize the safety of its citizens, but it’s not going to just let this one slide, either. Israel has a long memory.

How the Israeli government responds is nevertheless a discussion for another day. In this moment of shock and uncertainty, we need to focus on people and not politics. We need to remind ourselves, and the world, what war is.

A young couple abducted from a dance party.

A brother crying for his sister.

A woman bound and gagged and pulled by the hair.

It’s not easy to think about, but that’s the point. War is a person – if we let it become anything less, we lose.

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS OF APOLOGIZING AND ATONING FOR MY SINS ON YOM KIPPUR, I FINALLY GET IT.

Apologizing is easy. Being sorry is hard.

Apology requires little effort. An apology is almost always just words, and saying something is a lot easier than doing something.

We like apologies because they make us feel better. But they aren’t supposed to make us feel better, they are supposed to make the other person feel better – and make us all better as a result.

So I’ve been doing Yom Kippur wrong (my apologies.) From now on, I’m going to stop apologizing for forgetting to check in with friends and family, or for not paying more attention to others. I won’t apologize for working too much, for avoiding conflict, or for not getting enough exercise.

From now on, I’m just going to be sorry:

That I’m often too self-absorbed to look beyond my own “to do” list and ego…

That I drift off when I should be present; joke when I should be serious; turn away when I should step forward…

That I too often use work as an excuse to avoid companionship, and my deafness to avoid almost everything else…

That I can’t accept my body for what it is, and make excuses for not doing more to change it…

That I gave up on my dreams long before they gave up on me.

Being sorry will take a lot more effort. Breaking out of those behaviors and mindsets will be even harder.

I’m still going to try. I may succeed and I may not. Probably a little of both. But there’s one thing I absolutely won’t do.

I’m not going to apologize.

WE ARE HERE FOR A REASON.

The boy from the countryside didn’t know this yet when he and his mother, a fighter for the French resistance, were stopped near their village and warned about the German soldiers who were looking for a woman and her young son. A six-year-old boy with long hair.

HIs mother turned her bike around and rode away from the Nazis. She took her son to a barber for a haircut that saved their lives and allowed her to continue fighting against the Nazi occupation. This simple act, this impulsive decision, almost certainly allowed the boy’s father to continue his work as a spy for the Allies. It was a haircut that may have helped win the war.

I only know about these events, and many others, because that boy from the countryside told me while sitting around his dining table, after all of us ate too much French cheese and meats and bread. He told me while we drank Oban and looked across his property into Germany, free people enjoying a cool summer evening because of sacrifices known and unknown.

I listened because he was part of my wife’s family, a proud Frenchman and enlightened historian. I listened because I loved his deep voice, his expressive cheeks, and his hearty laugh that shook the foundations of his home.

We are here for a reason — some of us to be the story, some of us to be the storytellers. And for some, like the boy from the countryside, to be both.

I’m sharing this now because that boy from the countryside, the one who became the man from Blies-Ébersing, died last week. So now it’s our job to make sure he and his stories aren’t forgotten. And if I might add a postscript, to call out those who would erase the past and replace it with something aberrant.

History isn’t supposed to make us feel better about what we’ve done; it’s supposed to make us better despite what we’ve done. We must keep the past alive and intact, tell the stories, bear witness, and hold ourselves and the future accountable.

We are here for a reason — not to change history, but to see that it changes us.

I USED TO DREAD.

Didn’t matter what the horizon bore. Could be a holiday, an anniversary, an important business call or a random Tuesday night Angels game in April. I would find something to dread, to wish wouldn’t happen, to pray would go away.

The “after” was always fine, but I never took solace in after. The after was erased as soon as it arrived, as if every moment was another exercise in foreboding.

Until I figured out why.

For years – all of them between age eight and age 49 – I took solace in my dad no longer being with us. I told myself that losing all memory of him was a gift, a shield against loss. After all, you can’t miss someone you never knew. I was spared years of pain and just, well, moved on.

Only I wasn’t spared. I moved on in my life but not away from the past.

Dread replaced loss – it occupied that space in my head where acceptance should have been. Somewhere in the rewiring of my eight-year-old brain the ability to learn from the past became a constant fear of the future.

Then in late 2016, my mom died. And something amazing happened.

I remembered her.

Not just the recent history, but every damn thing. I saw it all, could almost reach out and touch the years as if they were branches on a tree. I climbed, and climbed, and remembered more than I thought possible.

And unlike that eight-year-old boy, I was able to grieve. The shield against loss was gone, cracked into countless insignificant shards.

Loss has its place. It’s necessary, I know now. The human experience is nothing without darkness – because if we don’t know the dark, we’ll never recognize the light.

So I won’t dread this Mother’s Day. I won’t dread Father’s Day next month. I won’t celebrate, either. I still can’t do that. But now I will do something even better.

I will remember.

FIRST YOU HAVE A RESUME.

You build it, hone it, compile it like a greatest hits album. A one-page masterpiece of adjectives and bullet points.

Later you create a bio, a superlative narrative of your experience, skills, and passions. The resume is a black-and-white television, but a bio is an 85-inch 4K entertainment system with Dolby surround sound.

Goodbye “jobs,” hello career.

And then, one day, you realize none of it matters anymore.

That it never did.

Because work was never about the jobs, the resume, the promotions. It wasn’t about your LinkedIn profile or how much wine you drank in Cannes. It wasn’t even about the money, the perks, or the awards.

It was about the people. It was always about the people.

I’ve forgotten most of my jobs and titles, forgotten more work than I remember. I’m not sure how I got this far without someone figuring out I was making this stuff up as I went along.

But I remember the late nights with Tracy and Larry, putting together yet another Disney scope for some something or other. I remember sitting around my kitchen table with Greg and Linda, talking about our new partnership and building a business. I remember being in a conference room with David and Dina telling me about Edelman and feeling like I just got drafted to play for the Yankees.

I remember Gail and Cricket, Siobhan and Gerry. I remember Bleeker and Rick and Lela, Matt and Torre, Chad and Beno. I remember playing guitar on stage in Athens at WPP Stream, countless dinners in New York with colleagues turned friends, so many drinks in so many cities when no one talked about work because even then, especially then, we somehow knew that the work would never last but the people would last forever.

The people are what you never forget.

I don’t have a career made of work; I have a career made of relationships. My career is about the people I’ve met and who shaped who I am today. Who I’m still becoming.

Build your resume. Craft that bio. Make a career. Do what you love – but most of all, do it with people who will be there when everything else goes away.