I WAS SO OVER THE MOON WITH THE PANTHERS WINNING THE STANLEY CUP SO WHY DID I FEEL EMPTY?

Just over 30 years ago I became landed gentry. By that I mean I entered the ranks of nobility. You see I grew up in Toronto Canada in the 1950’s and that meant I was a hockey fan, totally devoted to the Toronto Maple Leafs. I went to sleep listening to Foster Hewitt broadcast the games over the radio and I developed the ability to picture every play, every save and every goal as he described them. If they won I was excited, if they lost I was despondent. I developed amazing cognitive dissonance skills to explain why a loss was not the end of the world and I became absolutely superstitious when it came to the Leafs. I believed if they won a game while I was wearing a certain garment or hat then I needed to wear it for the next game and the next, until they lost when clearly the luck had departed that shirt or chapeau. When TVs got bigger, I could actually see the action and when we got color I was over the moon. The only thing I could never get was season tickets. No one in my life or my neighborhood had season tickets or even a partial share of a season ticket. We were a Jewish suburban shtetl made up of rising middle class families and no one had money for such an extravagance. Increasingly families became successful, and many moved up and out of our community to more luxurious developments but still no one had season tickets.

Simply put if your grandfather or more likely great grandfather did not have them, you did not have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting them. (Please note the Canadian influenced idiom)

It seemed to us that the only people who had season’s tickets were Gentiles and in my Jewish shtetl we didn’t know any gentiles let alone wealthy established ones who had these generationally inherited seats.

Many years later I moved to South Florida and something magical happened that I never saw coming. South Florida was awarded an NHL team and applications for season tickets were available for anyone who wanted them. I got my tickets and entered the previously dreamt about status of nobility.

For thirty years I have lived mostly in a state of disappointment and frustration. Yes, my team made it twice to the Stanley Cup Finals but in the end never won more than 1 game in the final. Those were the great years. Most of the time we never made it into the playoffs. My “nobility” turned out to be of such little worth that while we paid full face for tickets thousands of my fellow South Florida residents got free tickets, or BOGO specials or my favorite; 4 tickets,4 hotdogs and I think 4 drinks for $100, and still the arena did not look full. But I persevered. “One day”, I dreamed. Years later the dream turned to a recurring solemn prayer; “ Please God let me live long enough to see them win the Stanley Cup”.

This year the dream came true. My prayer was answered. We played 4 series, accompanied by nail biting, extreme superstitions and unlimited amounts of single malt scotch. I slept well and joyfully after a win and tossed and turned after every loss, and then a 30-year dream came true. A 6 year old Toronto Maple Leaf fan jumped out of my 74 year old’s body and went crazy. There was screaming, yelling, jumping and shouting, ending as I crashed onto the couch singing,” we are the champions…”

It was appropriate to sing Queen, as I was finally a true nobleman. (This hilarious scene was unknowingly recorded by my vising granddaughter and is on my Facebook page and if you send me a request I will forward it to you ).

I saw every postgame interview, I cried tears of joy, I finally had a celebratory drink of scotch instead of the previous medicinal shots. I was a very very happy camper. I slept like a baby and then something weird happened as I woke up.

I awoke to a strange and unfamiliar feeling. Instead of joy I felt something was off. I felt lighter, as if something was missing. I wasn’t sad or depressed, but there was emptiness, and I had no idea what it was. It felt like something had fallen out of my pocket but for the life of me I didn’t know what.

I think and feel somatically. My kishgas (gut) often are the first indication that something is off and I have learned to listen to them and to explore with a kind of biofeedback to find out what is bothering me. It took a while as I could not believe that after the previous night there could be anything that was out of balance. Then I realized I had felt this before.

It was after my youngest daughter’s wedding. Weddings are wonderful occasions that are full of activities, and planning, and stress, and then the glory of marching your daughter down the aisle and to the Huppah. But the morning after, when it was all over I felt the same sense of something missing and then realized what it was.

All her life at Jewish milestone moments like baby naming and Bat Mitzvah we chant a special prayer that wishes for many things and one was to go to the huppah, i.e the wedding canopy for a Jewish wedding. And my job was to escort her there.

From the moment my girls were born there was a dream that I would bring them to that huppah. After the youngest was married and I awoke, that solemn obligation and thrill was over and the more than 2 decades of waiting was done. There would be no more anticipation of that moment when I as a father would fulfill that privilege. All that was left was fulfillment and the emptiness.

Now after waiting almost 10 years longer then I waited for the weddings, that empty feeling was back. I would never again wake up with a sense of expectation, anticipation, or the unfulfilled dream of winning the Stanley cup. I hope we win many more but there is only one time to have a first time, and while they can never take it away, that dream is over.

Being me, I needed to understand why I felt this way and what it said about me or others who had the same feeling. I discussed it with some people. I shared it with a 96 year old friend and asked him what he thought. Was it that in my advancing years I had removed a major item from my bucket list and that bucket was getting considerably lighter? Was I feeling the loss of something that had been a part of me for 30 years?

He thought it was that we cannot allow ourselves to have an empty bucket list. He said, “without something to look forward to, life is not worth living”.

I understood what he was saying but I wasn’t buying it. Just living and doing good things and helping others and enjoying regular life should be enough, especially in old age. I kept looking for an answer and for anyone who has read my book will know, wisdom comes in dreams.

This morning I was in-between sleeping and waking when I found my answer. The lightness I was feeling wasn’t because I lost something but because I was rearranging the furniture of my psyche.

Yes there was lightness in the immediate part of my brain, but nothing was lost. It was moved from the hectic moment by moment of my brain and put into the trophy case of my brain. It is not lost, it is on the shelf waiting to be taken out, to be remembered, to be toasted and savored not in the heat of the moment but for all time whenever I want to relive it.

I got lighter not because I lost something but because it was elevated from the active immediacy to the revered, the sacred, the savored section of my brain waiting for me to visit to take it out for a walk, much like the players took the Stanley Cup out to celebrate with them. This accomplishment cannot be taken away from me.

If I am having a hard day I can go visit it in the trophy room, along with the greatest single day of bass fishing in my life. It may end up sitting next to the invocation I gave at a Dolphin game when 70,000 fans cheered my celebrating Don Shula becoming the winningest coach of all time. It might bump into the area where I store the feeling of becoming a grandfather for the first time 20 years ago this coming Monday.

You cannot sustain real life by always living at the edge of fear, or joy, or an adrenaline rush. The heart cannot sustain it. There will be emotional letdowns, but also unsustainable highs, but we never lose anything. We keep the lows to remind us of necessary lessons, and we store remarkable moments to savor whenever we want or need them.

Thank you Panthers for the ride and even more for the newest trophy that will stay on the mantle of my mental trophy box, for as long as I live.

Please share with family and friends and especially with fans of teams that have never won the cup, to give them hope. If you want to join this blog and receive my missives please send your full name and email to ravpp1@gmail.com

Please check out my new book, Wisdom Grows In My Garden available at Amazon.