Michiganders suffering from the GM-Chrysler-Lions-Wolverine blues desperately need help from anywhere we can get it.
The week that the University of Michigan Wolverines tries to break a five-game losing streak against the Ohio State Buckeyes is not the right week for the Boss to screw up states. It’s bad enough that the Wolverines have lost five Big Ten games in a row, most by big margins in the second half. It’s hurtful enough to Michigan that the Buckeyes won the Big Ten title by beating Penn State and then finding a way to beat Iowa in overtime after losing two games earlier in the year.
Is it not enough that Michigan’s official unemployment statistics are over 15% while the real (whisper) number including those who gave up and part-timers wanting full-time work is closer to 25%? How about this? Over 20% (2.2 million Michigan residents) are now receiving some form of government assistance (welfare, food stamps, Medicaid) according to the Department of Human Services (“A state in free fall grapples with change,” Stephen Henderson, Detroit Free Press, Nov. 15, 2009, 29A).
And now this: Bruce Springsteen, the legendary 60-year-old rock star, yells out to an adoring Michigan crowd at the Palace on Friday the 13th: “Hello OHIO!” and then continues to call the Auburn Hills faithful “Ohio” for the first 30 minutes until guitarist Steven Van Zandt whispers in his ear, “Hey boss, we’re not in Ohio anymore.” Ouch!
How many times has Bruce been here? I saw him three times myself, first in 1975 in the Detroit Palace, then in Ann Arbor in the 80s and then 2007 at the Auburn Hills Palace. Okay, maybe I’m being too sensitive. I know it’s only a simple mistake of mistaken state identities from a tired rock star, maybe in the beginning phase of Alzheimer’s or Dementia. But give me a break!
I mean, really, give us a break! Give everyone in this suffering state something to cheer about, maybe Ford Motor, maybe the MSU basketball Spartans, maybe the Red Wings with one last gasp for a championship. Michiganders suffering from the GM-Chrysler-Lions-Wolverine blues desperately need help from anywhere we can get it.
I am looking upward to the Wizard of M and that I mean Bo, yes Bo Schembechler. I still imagine his legendary words, now needed more than ever: “Dammit, we’re Michigan!”
Yes, one more time, with feeling: “We’re Michigan!”
Take that, Woody, wherever you are.
After a tear-filled Halloween weekend, Noah Biorkman’s parents, Diana and Scott, decided that instead of waiting for Noah to die without him celebrating Christmas, they would bring the holiday to him early in November. They would put up a Christmas tree and called the family to gather soon and asked their friends to send their son a Christmas card. A friend of theirs created a Facebook page called “Christmas Cards for Noah Biorkman,” with this description, “Christmas will come early for a five year old Michigan boy this year. Noah Biorkman is battling cancer and is not expected to live much longer. Noah's family is celebrating Christmas next weekend (November 13th and 14th) and Noah loves Christmas cards. Noah's mom is asking for Christmas cards.” Linda Lee from a local radio station, WYCD, put a link to Noah’s carepage site and was told by Scott and Diana that they wanted the world to know about pediatric cancer and specifically about Neuroblastoma cancer which had afflicted Noah.
The Tuesday after, Diana wrote of the “Inspiration of One Little Man,” that “Scott and I are shocked at the outpouring of love, prayers, support, and compassion that all of you have shown over the past four days alone.” They received 64 Christmas cards and one package and the Post Office supervisor, Sandy, told them the entire post office was stunned by the “compassion shown from people all over the country.”
Noah and Diana decorated the Christmas tree and put Santas in the windowsill and read every card together. Noah’s dad, Scott, lifted the boy up as high as he could to put a star on the top of the tree. The family was offered clowns, Santas, Christmas Carolers, and “even a snow delivery” to make sure that “Noah had a white Christmas” to which she replied, “I said that we are happy with cards!”
Diana wrote in her Carepages site that she and Scott were humbled that they were able to teach others about pediatric cancer through Noah’s story and thanked everyone for their support. “Knowing there isn't anything that you can do to save your child,” Diana wrote, “is the most difficult thing to live through. Giving him Christmas is a great gift that Scott and I can give Noah.”
The next day, Wednesday November 4th, brought 416 more cards from the Post Office and packages and cards from a local school. A camera crew from Detroit’s Channel 4 arrived at their door and produced a story about this Christmas miracle of love and compassion. Natalie Sentz was the reporter and agreed with Diana that Noah was “fifty years old trapped in a five-year-old body.” She reported that “the 5-year-old said an angel figurine ornament was his favorite because it reminded him of where he’ll soon be. ‘In heaven, and I’m going to be an angel,’ Noah said.” The reporter wrote, “Diana said she is asking that instead of sending gifts to Noah, send $1 in a card to the family and they will donate it to the University Of Michigan neuroblastoma research center and the Michigan Make A Wish Chapter.” (You can see the full story on www.clickondetroit.com and search for Noah Biorkman.)
At night, the family had a scare when Noah’s nose started bleeding heavily and after getting instructions from Dr. Pituch and doing what he said for the next hour, the bleeding finally stopped. They knew that the next day, Noah was to get his blood count checked and they prayed he wouldn’t need anymore blood. He was already getting 80mg of Methadone every six hours which somehow, Diana wrote, “allows him to walk and play.”
Diana and Scott felt that it was worth pumping up Noah with Methadone and steroids because every single day Noah got to live and each and every moment they got to spend with their little boy was an extraordinary gift.
But that night, Noah’s nose started bleeding again at midnight and his mom finally got it to stop but later that night, the bleeding didn’t stop. “When he woke up,” Diana wrote, “he had blood down the side of his face, a pool of blood was on his shoulder on his shirt, and blood was on the pillow and bed.” His grandmother, who handles Noah’s bleeding better than Diana, rode with him all the way to the clinic, with a washcloth over his nose, putting pressure to stop the blood from flowing.
At the clinic, his blood platelet count was 5 compared to a normal count of 150-300, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying his hospital room decorated for Christmas or his nurse’s Christmas stocking that she gave him or the Christmas celebration that the staff of doctors, nurses, and attendants got to share with him. He was tired but appreciative and looking forward to the Christmas cards and presents waiting for him at his home. Christmas will come early for a five year old Michigan boy this year. Noah Biorkman is battling cancer and is not expected to live much longer. Noah's family is celebrating Christmas next weekend (November 13th and 14th) and Noah loves Christmas cards. Noah's mom is asking for Christmas cards for her son.
Please take the time to send a card or letter to:Noah Biorkman
3480 Petoskey Way
Milford, MI 48380
(ADDRESS CHANGE! SEE ABOVE!)
(If you already sent your cards to the previous address that was listed (in South Lyon), Noah will still receive it. There is so much incoming mail that the family wants to even it out.) (read less)
When Noah got home, “the chaos of cards and packgages began,” according to his mom. 9 people helped read what amounted to more than 2600 Christmas cards and that was just on Thursday. The mailman said that in his 31 years working for the U.S. Post Office, he had never seen anything like this. The cards and packages and toys filled his mom’s entire living room. And on the “Christmas Cards for Noah” Facebook site, thousands of messages from people all over the world greeted Noah, wishing him a Merry Christmas.
I myself received notes on my blogsite from a woman in the Netherlands, a man from Maine, and Gillian Larson from last season’s Survivor series, wishing Noah best wishes for Christmas. On the Facebook site, as of November 7th in the afternoon, over 16,000 Christmas cards had been sent over the Internet to Noah. Within a twenty minute span in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, heartfelt and personal Christmas wishes arrived from Traverse City, Florida, Northern California, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Australia, Louisiana, Canada, and Serbia, just to name a few places.
The messages varied but the desire to make a little boy’s Christmas special didn’t. Andie Wyrick wrote, “LMERRY XMAS FROM SCOTLAND,HOPE SANTA IS GOOD TO YOU,YOU ARE IN OUR THOUGHTS,GOD BLESS XX”
Astonishingly, as of Monday, November 9th, Noah had received over 20,000 Christmas cards, 10,000 on Saturday alone, and received over 40,000 Christmas wishes on the Facebook site.
Santa came on a fire truck to Noah's house on Friday night and went to Noah's room and helped him open cards and presents. But Santas from all over the world were spreading Christmas cheer to a little boy in a house in South Lyon, Michigan. There was no way not to feel the overwhelming spirit of love and compassion and cheer and the simple joy of helping someone who needed it.
As I sat at home, reading the Facebook cards, it was hard not to imagine the smiles on the faces of Noah and his parents and grandparents and entire family as they read, one by one, the incredible world-wide spread of joy that was reaching their home. I could imagine the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey felt the phenomenal spirit of all of those around him who loved him while he bathed in the exhilaration of life.
Noah and his mom and dad were feeling that love, in the early days of November as the temperature outside reached 68 degrees fahrenheit. Noah didn’t need a snow delivery or a trip to the mall.
Noah’s life might have been short but because of his parents and extended family and friends and all the thousands of newfound friends all over the world, his life has certainly been blessed.
Like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life, Noah will be earning his wings.
Who can explain/ Life and its brevity/ ‘Cause there is nothing here/ That I can understand/ You and I/ Have barely met/ And I just don’t want to let go of you yet--from “Hello, Goodbye,” by Michael W. Smith and Wayne Kirkpatrick
You’d never know it was Halloween in Phoenix. Instead of leaves all over lawns, there were palm trees and no chill in the air. The sky was clear, the sun vibrant, and at night, unless someone was wearing a costume or passing out candy, it felt like Labor Day or Memorial Day. I recollected the Halloween scene from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial when Elliot and Michael took E.T. trick-or-treating on a sunny California evening, except I was in a Phoenix hotel room in a city that felt a little like a deserted ghost town.
“Happy Halloween,” said Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the beginning of the World Series third game, live from Philadelphia and rain delayed. Halloween somehow didn’t feel right outside of Michigan. When I walked down 16th Street near Squaw Peak, so many of the stores were closed for good and there were many For Sale and For Lease signs, just like at home. Phoenix was hit almost as hard as Michigan in home foreclosure numbers and unemployment. But unlike the Detroit area, the economy for many years rose quickly with the rise of the housing market and mortgages. When it finally arrived, the extreme economic downturn felt more like home.
Today, the United States economy is trying to come out of its “Great Recession” and supposedly, according to economists and the media, the recession is over. When I discussed business conditions with some manufacturers and distributors at the Security Hardware Distributors Association in this 2009 annual board meeting, many of us weren’t sure it was over. For us, sales were still lousy as we compared stats from the downturn. Were sales and profits down 12%, 20%, or more? Had we seen the bottom yet or was it getting worse? When I heard from a major manufacturer that new construction was worse than ever, I began to revert to my old pessimistic self again.
It was easy to be pessimistic as I began to read the new book, Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Sorkin on my Amazon Kindle. The book begins in March of 2008 when Bear Stearns was taken over by JP Morgan Chase for $2 a share with the backing of the Federal Government and details the fall of Lehman Brothers and the government bailouts and the stimulus and everything else that has happened in the last 18 months.
My mind couldn’t help floating from one thing to another as I moved from pessimism to optimism, from GDP rising to 3.5% growth to the rise of swine flu in the United States, from the “learned optimism” that should keep us focused on happiness to the David Horowitz book, A Cracking of the Heart, I was reading about the life and death of his daughter, Sarah, who had suffered from Turner Syndrome.
As I was thinking about business conditions for the next year and watching the World Series, I got a wake-up-email after coming back to my hotel room from dinner. An update from Diana was sent after midnight (12:20 Michigan time) which was only 9:20 PM in Phoenix. I had wondered before if Noah was going to be well enough to wear his Spiderman suit for Halloween. But the update was about Noah surviving the intense pain and trying to relieve his agony and get him some sleep. Diana and the hospice nurse had to give heavy dosages each day of Methadone and stool softeners and steroids and add in his IV large dosages of Dilaudid. And yet still, the pain was horrendous and Noah screamed while Diana spoke with the doctor, “Make the pain go away! I hate stupid, frickin cancer!!!”
While Noah was in pain, his parents found more bumps growing on his body, one on top of his read right about his forehead and another one on the left side. They also found a mass sticking out from the right side of his abdomen. “All of these tumors,” wrote Diana, “are like smacks in the face every time that I see or feel them. The reality of Noah’s situation hits me every day in different ways. Dr. Mody feels that our time frame is very short and to do what we want to do with him NOW.”
Noah was thankfully able to celebrate Halloween by dressing up as Batman and passing out candy at his dad’s house. But Scott was distraught about Noah not being able to hang on for dear life and asked Noah if he could possibly do his best and “hold on” till Christmas.
In response, Diana who had been told that Noah was not going to make it till the end of the year, wrote, “I called my dad, bawling, and told him to get the family together and that we are going to have Christmas next week.” She put her father in charge of the food and she was going to decorate the tree and house and then tell Noah that for them, Christmas was already here. She told Noah that she talked to Santa and gave him his list of toys and then asked her friends and family to send him Christmas cards. I called Judy on the first day of November to see if she could find a card to send Noah the week after Halloween.
Who says that you can’t celebrate Christmas in November?
Diana also mentioned that a friend had sent her lyrics to a Michael W. Smith song which had the same title as a Beatles song but different lyrics. She wrote that the lyrics were “eerie how close these are for little man,” and that she wants to play it during the video at the funeral home after Noah passes.
Hello, Goodbye
Where’s the navigator of your destiny
Where is the dealer of this hand
Who can explain
Life and its brevity
‘Cause there is nothing here
That I can understand
You and I
Have barely met
And I just don’t want to let go of you yet
Chorus:
Noah, hello, good-bye
I’ll see you on the other side
Noah, sweet child of mine
I’ll see you on the other side
And so I hold your tiny hand in mine
For the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face
Heaven calls for you
Before it calls for me
When you get there save me a place
A place where I can share your smile
And I can hold you for more than just awhile
Noah, hello, good-bye
I’ll see you on the other side
Noah, sweet child of mine
I’ll see you on the other side
I sat in my Pointe Hilton hotel room, thinking of the courageous daughter of David Horowitz who had dedicated her short life to help others. I missed the voice and spirit of my wife, Judy, and couldn’t help thinking about my daughter, Marlee, who had trick-or-treated with her friends on a windy night in Michigan. And then I imagined a little boy, his face swollen with steroids, trying to enjoy the last Halloween of his short life.
I tried to fall asleep but couldn’t.
I kept the TV on in the background and let the white noise melt away my tears until I drifted off into the other side of consciousness.
Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx): What have we got for dinner?
Ship Steward: Anything you like, sir. You might have some tomato juice, orange juice, grape juice, pineapple juice...
Driftwood: Hey - turn off the juice before I get electrocuted. All right, let me have one of each. And, uh, two fried eggs, two poached eggs, two scrambled eggs, and two medium-boiled eggs.
Fiorello (Chico Marx) (requested through the door): And two hard-boiled eggs.
Driftwood: And two hard-boiled eggs.
Tomasso (Harpo Marx) (signaling another egg order with his horn honk): HONK!
Driftwood: Make that three hard-boiled eggs...and, uh, some roast beef: rare, medium, well-done, and overdone.
Fiorello (repeating his order): And two hard-boiled eggs.
Driftwood: And two hard-boiled eggs.
Tomasso: HONK (signaling an amended order)!
Driftwood: Make that three hard-boiled eggs....and, uh, eight pieces of French pastry.
Fiorello (repeating his order): And two hard-boiled eggs.
Driftwood: And two hard-boiled eggs.
Tomasso: HONK!
Driftwood: Make that three hard-boiled eggs.
Tomasso: HONK! (a shorter honk)
Driftwood: And one duck egg. Uh, have you got any stewed prunes?
Steward: Yes, sir.
Driftwood: Well, give 'em some black coffee, that'll sober 'em up!
(From Night at the Opera’s famous stateroom scene, 1935, MGM Studios)
You could say it’s a tradition for Jews to discuss, ad nauseum, “Where should we eat?” When Judy went with me for a Sunday morning MRI at Henry Ford Hospital to see if my acoustic neuroma on the left side of my brain was still 4 millimeters, I was more excited by the breakfast to follow. We had often gone together to have an omelette at the Henry Ford Cafeteria, which features choices of organic vegetables and cheese, all cooked right there in front of us, with whole grain toast, for $2.99.
We got to the cafeteria at 9:30 and found out they had closed the chef’s stations for Sunday mornings. What a disappointment!
So, where would we go for breakfast? Gest Omelettes? The Senate? Siegel’s Deli? Hercules? Leo’s? Panera? It took us five minutes of driving and then Judy said, let’s go to Seros. She likes the skillet and I like the lox platter and the omelette. Why not? We hadn’t been there since Aunt Sylvia, Al, Sharon, Mel, and Alan were in town.
I ordered the spinach and cheese omelette and Judy ordered the skillet. I had to drink a lot of water after the MRI to get the dye out of my veins but I needed some coffee also. We ordered and then my cousins, Maureen and Leon, walked in the door with another couple. A few minutes later, right after the coffee was served, my parents walked in the door and said they were meaning to call us but wasn’t this nice? What a surprise!
They sat at our table and we shmoozed about the MRI, the movie they saw yesterday that they wanted us to see, Have a Little Faith, Facebook, colonoscopies, my parents’ health, Judy’s sore shoulder, my cold that was getting better, their favorite Seros waitress, salami and eggs, the coffee, and A Serious Man, the movie they saw, featuring lots of trouble, rabbis, Yiddish, and a man who makes Larry David look like a Jew of infinite blessings.
Then, another family strolled in and sat at the table next to us and said to my mom, “Are you a Strasberger?” Well, we’re related, she said, and we found out that it was the mother of Jaymie who married Sean Strasberger, my mom’s great nephew, a few months ago. The mom and her sister, aunts, and then the grandfather, and then the uncle and soon, Jaymie arrived.
This Sunday at Seros reminded me of the stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera in which Groucho orders some food in his stateroom and then Chico and Harpo follow and then one ship employee after another after another enter the crowded room on the ship until there is complete pandemonium and thirteen people are squeezed into a small, stuffed stateroom.
We wondered, who else was going to arrive, some more cousins, maybe friends, maybe my aunt Lil? Anything was possible.
Seros is the restaurant that we joke about concerning the average age of the customer, which I would guess is usually about 73. If AARP wanted to do a publicity event in Michigan, Seros would be the place. Seros features lots of eggs, anyway you want them, poached, fried, hard-boiled, medium-boiled, and bagels, lox, and coffee. It also offers a scene filled with many “old cockers,” as we would say in the old country, and that I mean the north side of Livonia, circa 1972.
If I were to write a sentimental book about senior citizens’ thoughts about death and living, the title might be, Sundays at Seros. Yeah, it might not sell millions of copies like Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, but if I included color photos of all the food options and some candid mishegoss-filled quotes from its patrons, it might just be a best seller anyway.
“I beg your pardon/I never promised you a rose garden/Along with the sunshine/There's gotta be a little rain some time/
When you take you gotta give so live and let live/So smile for a while and let's be jolly/Love shouldn't be so melancholy/Come along and share the good times while we can" From Rose Garden, lyrics by Joe South, sung by Lynn Anderson
Waltz with Bashir is a haunting and deeply troubling film about memory and war. The Israeli artist, Ari Folman, wrote and directed the movie which is an attempt to make sense of his nightmare dreams and what he had forgotten about his role in the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese war and massacre of Palestinian civilians by the Christian Phalangist militia as payback for the murder of their leader, Bashir. When I watched the DVD, almost all of it a hallucinatory memory-excursion done as a cartoon, I was struck by the loss of his memory. Ari was able to completely suppress the horrors that he witnessed from his consciousness.
Like Ari, I can barely remember that much besides a handful of memories, some photos and one Beta video tape of my brother, Kenny, who died in 1982, and I remember even less of my Aunt Shirley from California, who died almost 3 years earlier on October 18, 1979.
One of her two sons, Or-Li, wrote that he normally panics around the anniversary of her death, unable to “stop the flood of horrific memories,” but decided this year, on the 30th anniversary of her death, to instead recall “good memories of the real person my mother was.”
Thanks to Or-Li, I have been playing the images he remembers in my head. His memories include her repainting a wooden picnic table and “how she would polish the glass tops of the coffee tables in the living room while she listened to the soundtrack of West Side Story.” She loved musicals, he wrote, like Applause, which she saw in London with Lauren Bacall, “a very glamorous movie star.” She took her other son, Alan, my sister, Leslie (who just turned 50), and Or-Li to the movie, Jesus Christ Superstar, on a new big screen theatre. “It was magnificent!” Or-Li wrote.
Shirley introduced Or-Li to Shaw’s Pygmalion and Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, and took him to see Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. She was a contestant on the T.V. game show, “Split Second,” a vague memory of mine as well. She loved their antique player piano, “pumping the pedals to play the music rolls and singing along with them.” She loved books; she was nice to her parents-in-law and to our Zadeh Nuchum, who lived with Shirley’s family for awhile.
One day, she kicked Alan’s portable record player and broke her toe, which she laughed about for years. And when her family moved to Tellem Drive, a large group of ladies, former neighbors from Grenola Street, brought housewarming gifts to surprise her. She played Clobyosh and Pinochle and ate corned beef sandwiches at Zucky’s Deli in Santa Monica and loved to eat hamburgers, fries, and Coke at her local Chinese restaurant, House of Lee.
Shirley painted the master bedroom in her new house pink while the ceiling and deep shag carpeting was pure white. The dial phone in the bed room was pink, even its long connecting cord. But according to Or-Li, Shirley loved red, bringing a big red thermos to the beach while packing food and beach towels in a red plaid bag. And her station wagon was red with wood paneling.
Or-Li wrote, “I remember how she or my dad made coffee in the mornings in a stove top percolator with a glass knob on top. I loved watching and hearing the coffee percolating. I still make coffee in a percolator with a glass knob on top.”
I can imagine my aunt, the baby of the Goldman family, my mom’s dear friend who helped her meet my dad, polishing the glass top coffee table in my daydreams, waiting for the coffee to percolate. I can imagine her listening to one of her favorite songs, “Rose Garden” by Lynn Anderson, and waltzing in her pink bedroom, holding her pink telephone, talking to my mom or her other sisters or brothers, laughing the way I remember her. I remember her laugh and her smile more than anything, her face a haunting memory that wakes me from a 30-year-sleep. I imagine her waltzing with the pink cord, singing along with Lynn: “I never promised you a rose garden. There’s gotta be a little rain sometime but smile for awhile and let’s be jolly. Love shouldn’t be so melancholy. Come along and share the good times while we can.”
So in this 30th year anniversary of Shirley’s passing from this life, we should try to not be melancholy and think about the good times we shared with her and the sunshine she gave. As Shirley would have said, she never promised her family and friends a rose garden. We felt the aching sting of heartbreak in October, 1979, and it’s taken 30 years for the pinpricks of pain to wear off a little.
I can imagine my aunt waltzing into my daydreams, singing, “When you take you gotta give so live and let live…”
The transformation Diana and Scott will face is the hardest one imaginable. They will need to have more than a little faith.
Mitch Albom’s new book, Have a Little Faith, is all about transformation. Mitch is transformed by his old rabbi’s request to do his eulogy. Henry Covington is transformed after his descent into the hell of drugs and crime by his faith in God and Jesus.
In his last days of physical life in which the pain increases as well as liquid morphine and methadone dosages, Noah Biorkman is excited by his new Transformer toys which he thinks are the “best EVER!” He is also transformed by his desire to be with his father, Scott, to have corndogs with him and to spend time with him. According to Diana, Noah was so excited to be with his dad that he asked her to give him an “extra dose of liquid morphine before he left so he could make it through.”
She writes that “when he’s awake, he talks non-stop” and walks in circles, just talking and circling, telling her he loves her “every five minutes.” They share “adult conversations that no five year old should ever have,” including what he wants to be buried with and who will get what after he dies. He decides that his Uncle Mark will get his urinals and which Diana can only react with “LOL!!”
Noah talked about Carson and says he’s waiting for him and wants to play and that he was sad that a girl he once knew “had her angel wings.” Diana wrote that the crazy thing was she “never told him that she had passed away.”
“The end is coming,” she writes, “and it’s coming fast.” It’s hard to watch, she says, knowing that there is “absolutely nothing you can do about it.” But like Rabbi Albert Lewis who believed absolutely in God and accepted that whatever happened to him was okay, Diana knows that, though it will be the “hardest thing I have ever done,” she will make it because Noah has made her strong and given her faith.
Noah’s mother knows her life will be transformed after Noah is gone, when the house is so quiet that she “wants to go crazy,” when she looks at his pictures, when she “finally opens the door to his room,” and when she “distributes the items that he has willed to certain people.” She is terrified of the finality of the transformation: “what I am going to do without him.”
I can only remember the absolute grief of my parents and the parents of Miles Levin. I imagine the grief of Rabbi Lewis and his wife when they lost their 4-year-old daughter, Rinah, and Henry Covington and his wife when their baby boy, Jerell, died.
The transformation Diana and Scott will face is the hardest one imaginable. They will need to have more than a little faith. They will need the ultimate faith that Noah is still out there somewhere, playing with his friends, covering them with his everlasting spirit.
“I was on the road to nowhere. You know the road? It’s a nowhere road, it goes nowhere. You’re on it. You don’t know it. It’s a nowhere road. It just goes around in a circle.” Albert Brooks as David Howard, Lost in America, 1985, The Geffen Company
In the October 19th edition of Business Week, Peter Coy writes, “While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can’t grab onto the first rung of the career ladder….In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16-to24-year-olds has climbed to more than 18% from 13% a year ago. For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of ‘lost generation.’”
When you look at Dictionary.com, the definitions of lost include “no longer to be found,” “having gone astray,” “bewildered,” “not used to good purpose,” “wasted,” “ending in defeat,” “preoccupied,” and “distraught; desperate; hopeless” as in “the lost look of a man trapped and afraid.”
That’s what is ravaging so many people today and especially young people who feel lost, trapped and afraid. When I think of lost, I can’t help but think of one of my favorite movies, Lost in America, in which David Howard (Albert Brooks), a successful advertising executive from LA gets a job disappointment and convinces his wife, Linda, that they should quit their jobs, liquidate their assets, and emulate the movie Easy Rider, spending the rest of their lives traveling around America...in a Winnebago!
Unlike so many today who don’t get to choose their career paths, Howard’s idealized, unrealistic plans soon begin to go wrong, as their “sacred nest egg” is squandered in Las Vegas and David begins to look for any job he can find, including being a crossing guard in a small town. It’s just another American dream gone to waste, lost.
For the youth of today, the American dream may already be a long lost wasted dream. “Are we condemning our children to downward mobility? Good question,” says economist Robert Samuelson (“Health Spending Condemns Youth to Future of Downward Mobility,” Robert J. Samuelson, IBD, October 14, 2009). “Considering how health spending could threaten future living standards, it ought to be center stage in the ‘reform’ debate. Instead,” he argues, “It’s ignored.”
What does Samuelson mean? He argues that rising health spending will grow far in excess of per capita GDP and consume most dollars earned by 2030. “Expanding health spending would raise taxes (to pay for government insurance), lower take-home pay (to pay for employer-provided insurance) or increase out-of-pocket medical costs.” Other drains loom as well, including higher energy prices, higher taxes, underfunded pensions, repairing aging infrastructure, and higher federal taxes to cover deficits and payments to retirees (much of it health spending). “The young’s future,” according to Samuelson, has been heavily mortgaged.”
He says the health debate has deemphasized controlling runaway spending, “much of which is ineffective.” “The chance to reorder the medical-industrial complex to restrain costs and improve care have been mostly squandered,” Samuelson states. “Some call this ‘reform’; no one should call this progress.”
“The road to downward mobility,” Robert Samuelson concludes, “is paved with good intentions.” We focus on insuring those who can’t get insured but forget what the impacts will be for our children and grandchildren, who may likely face a future of lost opportunities, as they swim in the darkness of huge costly burdens. It’s already bad for my generation to get a handle on the ever expanding health care, college, and insurance costs that are swallowing up almost everything we earn.
What’s it going to be like for our kids?
Luckily for Albert Brooks playing David Howard, he was able to come back to find another ad agency job that paid close to his magical $100,000 level. But the Reagan Mid-80s are long gone. Ad agencies are like the days from the TV show, Mad Men, a thing of the past, as are the days when one American generation lived better than the last. Now, you need to work on your computer and come up with new Google Ad Words and hope someone finds and pays for them on the Internet.
Maybe the upward mobility of dream jobs will be true for the youth of China but in the United States of America, the dreams of financial stability and success for the young may be nothing more than pipedreams.
Noah is now preparing for the day he can be an angel, playing with his friends, making sure his mother can live without him, and helping Brandon during the next baseball season.
In the bottom of the 9th inning in a historic one-game playoff against the Minnesota Twins, Brandon Inge made a diving stop of a sharp line drive off the bat of Orlando Cabrera and threw him out, possibly saving the game. In the 10th inning of the game which would determine the championship of the American League Central Division and a chance to play the New York Yankees in the MLB playoffs, Inge hit a double down the leftfield line, driving in Don Kelly and giving the Tigers a 5-4 lead and a chance to win the game. But after the Twins tied the game 5-5 in the 10th after both a poor play by Ryan Raburn and then a great throw by Ryan Raburn, Inge had another chance.
It was bases loaded with only one out and Brandon Inge was at the plate in the 12th inning. Like Tigers fans everywhere, I was rooting for a gland slam, a base hit, or just a walk. When a ball glanced against Brandon’s shirt, Inge began to walk to 1st base, thinking he was “hit by a pitch.” Even though the video replay showed the ball did hit his shirt and Brandon later said, “It hit my shirt--period,” the umpire disagreed and then Brandon hit a ground ball which turned into a fielder’s choice out at home plate. Then, Gerald Laird struck out and the Twins won the game in the bottom of the 12th inning.
"No matter what we did, it seems like it wasn't meant to be,” Inge said after the game (“Twins Complete Comeback, Beat Tigers in 12th, AP, Dave Campbell, Oct. 6, 2009). Yet, he admitted, “This is the best game, by far, that I've ever played in, no matter the outcome."
“After the devastating Tiger loss last night,” Diana Biorkman wrote, “I was restless and couldn’t sleep. Noah came and got me and told me it was time to snuggle. Then he asked me if the Tigers won. I told him that they lost and he said it was ok. I told him that Brandon was really upset on the news. He said that he was sad Brandon wasn’t happy and that he loves Brandon. I told him that Brandon loves him too and he smiled and told me that he knew that. I told him that they can go for it next year. He looked up at me in the dark and said that he was going to have fun watching Brandon from over his shoulder. I asked what he meant by that. He said that he’ll have his angel wings next year and will be able to watch over Brandon and his other friends. I told him that Brandon might need it. He told me that he already knew that which was why he was going to watch over him. He said that Brandon’s knees won’t hurt next year. He’ll be there to help.”
During the evening on the first night of the playoffs, TBS added a story filmed a few weeks ago about Brandon Inge, Noah, and some of the other critically ill children that Brandon has helped to smile. You can click on the seven minute video which is both touching and inspiring: http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7018401
Brandon Inge might have been sad about the loss but he knows which losses are most important. Losing a baseball game is no comparison to losing a child. On the same day as the Tigers game against the Twins, Noah’s friend, Carson, was buried. Diana didn’t tell Noah about it until the day of the funeral as she was wrestling whether to go to the funeral. When she asked Noah about it, he asked if Carson got his angel wings. Yes, his mom said, God gave him the wings and then, according to Diana, Noah “smiled and told me that I didn’t have to go to the funeral because Carson was watching over him right then. He asked me if I could feel him in the room. I told him that I couldn’t and he said that it was ok. He smiled again and said, ‘Mom—Carson’s waiting for me. He doesn’t have cancer anymore and wants to play.’”
When she asked if Carson’s mom should come to his funeral, he asked, “When I die soon?” She said yes and he said, “Mom—I’ll be dead so I don’t care if she comes or not.”
Noah is now preparing for the day he can be an angel, playing with his friends, making sure his mother can live without him, and helping Brandon during the next baseball season.
“Everyone wants to know where my strength comes from,” Diana wrote. “That’s an easy answer for me. It comes from Noah. If he can handle the dying process this well, then I can suck it up and help him through it without being a blubbering mess. He deserves that. He makes it easier. He makes it bearable.”
“And the world will be better for this/ That one man, scorned and covered with scars/ Still strove with his last ounce of courage/ To reach the unreachable star. “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha, Music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion
I must have been stuck in a daydream on the last day of September. As I often do when things don’t go my way, I got flustered and frustrated when I couldn’t focus, jumping from one thing to another at work. When I learned on an email from my health insurance provider, Aetna, that blood tests taken at Henry Ford Hospital were out of network and not covered, I nearly lost my mind and called my insurance rep to help.
I was more focused on the last day of September being the last day of our company’s fiscal year, a day to ship out everything we could and collect every past due invoice possible. I forgot that September was also Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month until I got an email update about Noah’s “serious decline.” Diana, his mother, wrote that Noah became almost unconscious as his methadone was increased because of the severe pain in his right leg and foot. Steroids were increased to three times a day and Noah’s doctors started giving him liquid morphine as well. “This has been ridiculously difficult to watch,” she admitted. “Last week, he was up and walking and talking everyone’s ear off. This week, he can’t hardly get out of bed.”
Noah’s hospital, C.S. Mott, was the setting for more heartbreak in the last few weeks: Shauni, a fellow Neuroblastoma child with Noah, died two weeks ago and Alissa, a 9-year-old with a brain tumor, passed away last week. And Carson, another Neuroblastoma patient, “is declining at a more rapid pace than Noah,” according to Diana. She wrote, “Can anyone ever truly prepare you for the loss of your child?”
Who can be prepared for the worst, especially if we live our lives, hoping for impossible dreams?
I was skeptical of hopeful fantasy after reading the news about Noah and his fellow kids with cancer. Then, I read about the Michigan legislature once again ready to shut down because they couldn’t agree on a budget. How do I stay positive after reading about the demise of GM’s Saturn brand and the loss of more jobs? How do we stay hopeful in the midst of trillions of dollars wasted by the federal government while 500,000 people a month lose jobs?
“Have a little faith,” Ken Brown told us while introducing his partner in radio, Mitch Albom, later that evening. Judy and I were fortunate to get tickets for the charity book-signing at Detroit’s Fox Theatre, introducing Mitch Albom’s latest book, Have a Little Faith. During the hours before, I was frustrated, sad, angry, and had very little hope for anything. Then, Mitch Albom walked up to the mike with one-legged Anthony “Brother Cass” Castelow, and his daughter, Myracle. Cass told us in a soft voice, when he was a petty thief and homeless, he was given a home and fed by Henry Covington, also a former drug user and thief, and how his life completely changed since then. My troubles earlier in the day seemed to disappear and became unimportant.
Judy and I went with friends Tony and Holli to get a signed copy of Mitch’s book, hear Ernie Harwell and other guests, listen to Anita Baker, laugh with Dave Barry, and contribute to some worthy causes as well. We got backstage passes which allowed us to get a few appetizers, a goody bag with a signed book and two Anita Baker CDs, and allowed Tony to walk up to Dave Barry and tell him, “I am a big fan and have read most of your books” to which Dave quipped, “I have written most of my books.” Quicker than a speeding punch-line, I thought.
After we got to our seats, we heard Ken Brown and then Cass Castelow followed by Mitch asking Pastor Henry Covington and Rabbi Harold Loss of Temple Israel questions about faith. Have a Little Faith is a book about Mitch being asked to give the eulogy for his childhood rabbi as well as the story of a former drug dealer and convict who “preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof.” As the book jacket describes, “Albom observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat.”
Another man of faith took the stage and received a thunderous standing ovation. Former Detroit Tigers radio broadcaster 91-year-old Ernie Harwell, now with inoperable cancer, told stories about his early days. He mentioned Jackie Robinson stealing home for the first time and his favorite all-time moment in Game 7 of the 1968 World Series in which the Tigers finally scored and beat Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals. He also talked about his faith, his love for his “Appalachian American” wife, Lulu, and his appreciation of his long life. “I don’t know how many days I’ve got left, but let me say this,” he said in his unforgettable tremulous voice which we heard for most of our lives, “I praise God because he’s given me this time.”
The lights came on so Ernie could see just some of the thousands of Detroiters who loved him. As Ernie spoke, I looked at my cell phone to see that Detroit took a critical lead in the battle against Minnesota, 4-2 and then 7-2. I could picture Ernie calling the game but when Ernie said, “I can really know…whose arms I’m going to end up in, and what a great, great thing heaven is going to be,” Mitch Albom wrote, “a shiver spread from my chest to my fingers” (“Ernie’s words still make a night magic,” Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press, October 4, 2009). “It is one thing to read about belief, but it is another to witness it in the face of death, spoken in a calm, serene voice….when delivered that way, how can faith not be a beautiful thing?”
How does anyone follow the most loved man in Michigan? You don’t, which sportscaster Bernie Smilovitz who subbed for Joe Dumars, admitted, wondering why Nelson Mandela wasn’t called instead of Bernie. Yet, he was a breath of humorous air, as both Mitch and Bernie told about their love of Detroiters. They also told stories about Bernie’s parents, both Holocaust survivors, and how humor has helped them survive. We could imagine Bernie’s mother with her thick eastern European Yiddish accent criticizing a restaurant’s food, saying it was worse than in Auschwitz. Oy vey. Don Rickles would have been proud of her.
Another example of someone who personifies faith is singer Kem, once homeless, drug-addicted, and destitute, who has been clean for 19 years. A complete unknown, he self-financed his first album in 2003, “Kemistry,” which became certified Gold. After Kem sang a song and talked to Mitch, Mitch’s friend and comic author, Dave Barry, was brought out for some more laughs and talk about their band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, and the night that Bruce Springsteen joined them onstage and told them if they’d get any better, they would just be “another lousy band.” After they played with the help of the “I am my Brother’s Keeper” choir from Henry’s Pilgrim Church, Anita Baker closed the night by singing an unbelievably breathtaking, no-instruments-no-back-up-singers rendition of “The Impossible Dream” from the Man of La Mancha.
The Tigers had just won the game and were one or two wins away from winning the American League Central Division. This turned out to be one great night, the night that brought a full house and raised money for S.A.Y. Detroit, A Hole in the Roof Foundation, I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministries, and the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit’s Jewish Assistance Project (more info for all on www.mitchalbom.com). It turned out to be one of the most moving, funny, and inspiring nights I have ever witnessed.
After listening to the amazing journeys that Henry and Cass went through from homelessness to sacredness, it’s hard to see the homeless of downtown Detroit the same way again when walking from the Leland Hotel to Comerica Park or Ford Field. Mitch, Henry, and Cass mentioned how everyone is perilously close, especially in a struggling economy, to becoming a man without shelter, lost on the streets. It is our obligation to look at everyone as one of God’s children, all worthy of respect, and kindness.
The next day before work, I read on the 1st page of the USA Today that regulators have found high concentrations of acrolein, a chemical once used in weapons that is a byproduct of burning gasoline, wood, and cigarettes, outside 15 tested schools around the country (“EPA finds toxin in air outside 15 schools,” Blake Morrison and Brad Heath, USA today, October 1, 2009). Although the average school has levels at least 100 times higher than what the government considers safe for long-term exposure, the worst school was Spain Elementary School in Detroit.
After the Time cover story about The Tragedy of Detroit this week (“Detroit—The Death—And Possible Life—of a Great City,” Daniel Okrent, Time, Sept. 24, 2009) which mentions that Detroit’s unemployment rate is 29% compared to New Orleans’ 11%, it’s hard not to feel “unbearable sorrow” about the city of my birth. After reading about the toxic chemicals outside Detroit and other cities’ school children and knowing that a five-year-old son of a friend is in agony, soon to lose his life, all I felt like doing was to “right the unrightable wrong.”
It’s wonderful to lose oneself in a daydream, imagining Brandon Inge hitting a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th in the World Series, leading Detroit to an incredible upset win, while his biggest fan, Noah Biorkman, watches on TV, miraculously healed, the tumors all gone from his body. It is great to imagine the Motor City returning to greatness and the unemployment rate cut in half. But we can’t live on impossible dreams.
When Anita Baker sang, “To be willing to march into Hell for a heavenly cause,” I realized that what I normally worry about and think is important is really nothing and that what’s important is “to bear” the awful truths “with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go.”
We don’t need miracles. We just need to care about the strangers we don’t know. We need to give and help charities that are dedicated to making the world better. When Mitch Albom gave a plaque to Ernie Harwell, dedicated to the new Ernie Harwell Playroom at the S.A.Y. Detroit Family Clinic, how could you not feel overwhelmed and wanting to help? When he displayed photos of the first-ever free medical clinic solely for homeless children and their mothers which included all of Ernie’s sports memorabilia which he donated, how could you not feel grateful?
“This is my quest,” Joe Darion wrote for Don Quixote, “To follow that star, No matter how hopeless, No matter how far.” The stars aren’t that far away now. We can just take a few moments and give our time and money to help the homeless and the needy and the young children who, sadly, soon “will lie peaceful and calm.”
It is not impossible and it is not a dream. “The world will be better for this that one man, scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable star.” With the help of life-givers such as Mitch Albom and Henry Covington and Rabbi Loss and Ernie Harwell, we can still reach out to the unreachable stars.
After lowering our arms down to our sides, we should not turn away from those who need us. When someone is reaching out to us with his outstretched hands, all we have to do is give a little help.
It takes one little mitzvah to make a big difference.
Even though the cancer has spread throughout Noah’s body and he is on methadone and twice-a-day steroids to lower the pain, his courage and joy and exuberance and perseverance are miracles to witness.
September is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month. If you click on the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital website (www.mottchildrenshospital.org), you can’t help but read that “Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among U.S. children between infancy and age 15.” Approximately 11,000 new cases of pediatric cancer each year are expected to be diagnosed in children 0-14 years of age.
Noah Scott Biorkman, a patient at Mott Children’s Hospital, was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma in February 2007. According to the National Cancer Institute, “Neuroblastoma is a form of cancer that starts in certain types of nerve cells found in a developing embryo or fetus. This type of cancer occurs in infants and young children. It is most often found during the first year of life.”
Noah was 2 ½ years of age in February 2007 when the neuroblastoma was first detected, only after x-rays taken when he complained of pain in his legs. After an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy, Noah went into remission in August 2007 but in September 2008, Noah relapsed with lesions in his right arm and right leg.
Noah has spent as much time at C.S. Mott Hospital at the University of Michigan as he has at home. On June 4th, during an autograph session at the hospital, Brandon Inge, 3rd baseman for the Detroit Tigers, signed a picture for Noah and that night, Noah saw Brandon on TV during a Tigers game and became an instant fan. Noah watched every Tigers game after that and one day after his fifth birthday, during a fundraising for Mott Children’s Hospital, Brandon gave him a signed ball.
“Then came the pain,” Noah’s mother wrote on her www.carepages.com website, “the bad scans, and the realization that Noah wasn’t going to make it.” Diana Biorkman admitted, “I asked him what he would like to do. His answer was to see Brandon again and ask him to hit a home run for him. I asked if there was anything else and he said that he would like to go to another game.”
The hospital contacted Brandon’s wife, Shani, to tell her that Noah’s health was “rapidly deteriorating” and of Noah’s wish. When Brandon was told about Noah, he wanted to come and see him and a few hours before a Tigers home game, Brandon and Shani Inge stayed at the Biorkmans’ house for over two hours.
“After Noah showed Brandon his room and his basement full of toys, they played,” Diana wrote. “Brandon signed a jersey for Noah and they exchanged friendship bracelets that Brandon is still wearing. Then, they built a pillow fort with every pillow in my house. Brandon sat in one end and Noah sat in the other. They hung out together, just the two of them” and Noah offered to share his superhero tattoos with Brandon and Shani’s two kids.
That night, Brandon hit a home run during his first at-bat. Noah’s mom wrote, “Noah jumped up and down and yelled—He did it for me! He did it for me! Then he heard his name and he gave the look of wonder and turned to my mom and said, ‘I never thought I would hear my name on TV.’”
In the moments after he homered, Brandon Inge broke down into tears in the Tigers dugout. “I lost it,” Brandon said. “I was crying. That’s never happened to me during a game before.” (“Tigers’ Brandon Inge gets emotional after HR,” John Lowe , Detroit Free Press, August 30, 2009) Lowe wrote that Inge’s 25th homer of the season and 121st of his career “seemed to have ascended near the top of his all-time list because of Noah.”
The home run hit for Noah was not the first hit for an ailing child this year. On June 23, Inge visited Tommy Schomaker while he was recovering from heart-transplant surgery and that night, with “Tommy” written with a black marker on Inge’s arm, he hit a home run. “I got out of bed and jumped up and down,” Tommy said. (“Tigers’ Inge develops bond with pediatric patients,” Associated Press, September 2, 2009) “Disney couldn’t have written a better script,” Tommy’s father admitted. According to Mike Schomaker, “Kids were coming into the room with IVs, ‘Tommy, did you see your name? You’re on TV! You’re on TV!’ Then in the seventh inning, down 2-1 with one man on, Brandon hit a home run.”
Brandon Inge has made more wishes and brought more joy to kids than he can imagine although he admitted, “My wife and I don’t do any of this for the publicity.” Because of the time and money that the Inges gave to help fund a $750 million, 1.1 million square-foot hospital for women and children, the hospital at the University of Michigan proclaimed September 2nd “Brandon and Shani Inge Day.”
After the memorable home runs, Noah’s wishes continued to come true. He went to a few Tigers games, visited the Tigers clubhouse, gave 45 friendship bracelets to the entire Detroit baseball team, had his name announced on TV, was given the signed home run ball by Brandon, was featured with his mom and dad on ESPN, had a helicopter ride over Comerica Park before a game, spent more time at his home with Brandon and Shani, and was baptized a week before the golf outing in his honor.
Even though the cancer has spread throughout Noah’s body and he is on methadone and twice-a-day steroids to lower the pain, his courage and joy and exuberance and perseverance are miracles to witness.
Noah survived to make his Make-A-Wish golf outing on September 18th in Northville, Michigan. Although Brandon was in Minnesota with the Tigers that day, his wife, Shani, golfed with 103 others, all there to raise money for the Noah Scott Biorkman Foundation and Make-A-Wish. Raffled prizes included a Chris Osgood playoff hockey stick, signed jerseys from Miguel Cabrera and Brandon Inge, and the 2009 All Star bats signed and donated by Detroit Tigers All Stars, Curtis Granderson and Brandon Inge.
Diana said at the golf outing that Noah understands his body is sick and that he will die and “become an angel.” Yet, she and her family know what a gift that they have been given and what a miraculous life Noah has led.
Because of heroes like the Inges, the doctors, nurses, and aids at Mott Hospital, because of the courage of Noah’s parents and family and the support of friends, the tragedy of a little boy struck with terminal cancer has become an incredible lesson about giving and love and making wishes come true.
We don’t have to wait for the end of a boy’s life to know that angels are everywhere.
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aggman said:
Thank you but unfortunately, the family has asked everyone to stop sending Christmas cards as Noah can no longer get... read more
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Paulette said:
[this is good]I would like to send out a Very Merry Christmas to Noah and his family. I believe everything happens for... read more
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Rhapsody said:
Thank you so much for sharing this update (perhaps with a tissue warning), I am thinking of Noah & his... read more
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Jen said:
[this is good]I heard about Noah on Facebook. I bought a BIG Christmas card that talks! hehe I thought to myself, what... read more
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