On the Boardwalk for My Mother

I spent part of this past week up in New York for the sad event of my mother's funeral. She passed away Monday after a long period of illness. The funeral was held Tuesday, which therefore started the official mourning period. The rituals and restrictions associated with mourning in Judaism are many, particularly during the first week, or shivah period. If you follow all of the rules you're pretty well forced to spend the week focused on the grieving process, since you basically are discouraged from doing much else. You're prohibited by tradition from leaving the house, bathing, shaving, engaging in any form of entertainment, wearing leather shoes (I have no idea why), and more. However, Reform Jews do some picking and choosing from among these rules. I refrained from wearing leather shoes for the first three days (said to be the most intense part of shivah), won't shave for the week, and am avoiding TV and radio, but I have left the house. In fact, I drove home from New York on day three - with the radio/iPod off, of course. My brother and I joked that it would be hard for him to adhere to the restriction on attending entertainment (which some people continue for up to a year) as he is by a Broadway musician by trade.

What does this have to do with an outdoors blog? Well, the morning after the funeral I found myself in my hotel room in Sheepshead Bay wondering if going running was acceptable within my personal set of shivah rules. Drawing upon the concept that applies throughout Jewish law that health takes precedence over all required observances, I decided it was. I further decided that I'd go running on the boardwalk at Brighton Beach as a tribute to my mother, as she loved the boardwalk - so much so that she and my father retired to Brighton in order to be able to stroll the boardwalk and enjoy the ocean. It had been years since she'd been able to make it the 3 blocks from her house to the beach, so I was making this visit for her.

Coming from the sleepy and straight-laced Northern Virginia suburbs, I'm always struck by the variety and quantity of life in Brooklyn. I hit the boardwalk about 7 AM by which point it was pretty crowded with people. Russian senior citizens strolling and young hispanic teens hanging out. I passed a couple of people doing strange calisthenics - things they must have learned in Soviet schools, or in mental institutions, or perhaps Soviet mental institutions. There was the guy standing in one spot wiggling his whole body like JelloTM. There was the fellow high stepping down the boardwalk like a storm trooper on ecstasy. A young Orthodox Jewish woman jogging, decked out in properly modest Orthodox attire. An older man in white support hose and bright green shorts: equal parts Gorbachev and leprechaun.

I ran from Brighton to Coney Island and back, about 30 minutes total. At the end of my run I took my shoes off and walked down the beach to the ocean. As I did some cooldown stretches by the water's edge, I noticed that there were some swimmers in the water on this cool, grey September morning. The beach maintenance guys were still out with their heavy equipment finishing their daily sifting of the sand. For some reason there were paramedics about.

My mother always reveled in the eccentricities of Brooklyn. I don't think she would have minded my morning run at all - in fact I like to think she was along with me that morning.