Eulogy for my father Nathan Steinfeld by Alan  Steinfeld
Delivered on June 20, 1998                  

       I want to thank everyone for being here.  I think this is a great testimony to my father’s humanity, that even after being out of commission-- basically (ill) and away from any social gatherings for ten years, that so many people have come to pay their respects.

    My father was a beautiful man. I don't know how many people can or would sincerely say that about their father. He taught my brothers and I many things, just in his being; his generosity, his hard work, his strong determination and most of all his great capacity for love of his family and beyond that to everyone he met.  In his high school year book they wrote:
               Nathan Steinfeld, liked by all,
               smart, cute, but not so tall.
    Maybe it is because he always felt short and coming from a very poor childhood, growing up in the Depression, that drove him into a business at 16, where he never quit working until he was no longer able to work.
     He always said his happiest days were those when he was a boy back in the school yard in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, playing basketball; where he loved using his size to his advantage, to steal the ball and make a driving lay-up to the basket!  That was his Glory!  And it was what he would often think about in his final years when he sat alone for so long.
    I think it was that training, on the basketball court, that made him so successful in business.  Because it was that same determination that kept him going even after being diagnosed with a terminal illness and having 3 major strokes.  He was a fighter. Here is some of his philosophy about fighting to stay alive, that I recently found among his writings.
".....the beauty of it is that in the fight is the victory.
It's not at the end.  
It's not at the beginning.  
It's in the fight, the involvement, the concern, concentration.
A fight, a fight--That's how we win.
We fight until we die.  We have no choice.
If we don't fight we die.  If we do fight we die.
The difference is: --The fight breathes life into us all.
So even when death comes, at least we lived and didn't live death."   
 
      Yet at times he still doubted himself, but everyone who met him saw what a good loving person he was.  He used to complain though about business, that the business world were a bunch of crooks.  He would say, "everyone thinks they are a genius with money, if they have a contract with you and don't pay their bills."  I think that is some of what contributed to his illness. This frustration at work, because he was a decent man.
   This was evident even away from business.  I remember, one time, when someone came to our door, whose car had broken down outside the house.  In suburban Long Island you would never let a stranger in your home.  But my father welcomed him and made sure he was taken care of.
     As I said before, he was very successful in business.  His Taurus nature loved making money, but he didn't care so much about spending it (he had my mother to do that) because he was more than a businessman.  He was someone interested in the deeper questions of life.  He was a seeker of truth and inspired me greatly in my own spiritual search.  He saw through the veil of the society we live in and the way you are suppose to behave.

He wrote:
It's All A Farce

"It's all a farce
Force a smile
       and beguile
The enemy within
       If you can.  If not
Without will do
       For a while
And with your smile affixed
     Go forth.
And play your little game of
      Charm and disarm
Dance to the tune of
      Interest, passion and lust.
Whistle to the song of
       Silly, merry and content
Rock to the rhythm of
       Excel, applause and acclaim
Do all you must.

But - never - I say never
       Wonder why.
Suffice it to say - 'why'  begs Reduction.       
  Reduce - reduce - reduce it bellows.
The smile comes down
   And the cellos cease.
Your dance and whistle loose
  Their flow.
And you begin to think
    You know
It's all a farce.

    He investigated many various disciplines: Group therapy, transactional analysis, Arica training and Zazen Buddhist meditation practice.  I use to like telling people, before it was fashionable, like the Jewish American Princesses I went to high school with that my father was a Buddhist.
       But beyond that practice he did have his own mystical experiences, which I think initially did lead him to look beyond his orthodox Jewish upbringing and into other spiritual disciplines.   I remember, he told me about this dream he had, where he felt a powerful force was after him.  And he felt a lot of fear and was trying to resist and fight this thing, Then he got the idea to stop fighting and just surrender, just give in.  When he did that he said he felt himself being lifted out of his body and into a euphoric state, where he felt like he was floating.  He said he was having a great time flying around, but it was only when he reflected on what was happening and said to himself , "Wow, this is great," that he then found himself back in his body
     In that experience I feel the fear that he ran away from then turned around and embraced, was the great lesson.
   
Sometime after that experience he wrote this poem:
Look at Fear as the Great Preventer
    Try to circumvent her
No matter what her face.
   And all space
Will be yours.
   And Earth's shores
Will give you her oars.
   And this freedom
Will not succumb.

He was also a great artist.  He would often sit at work and turn his doodles into the most interesting, intricate mandalas of form and color, sometimes with little hidden faces in them.
     And he as you can see he was an inspired poet. His writings was something he was very proud of.  He worked at trying to give the sublte meaingings he wanted to express:
I'm not jok'n,
Written or spoken
If it's not succinct
chances are it stinks.
 
Poetry can not be forced
The feeling must be sourced
And if you try to force it
Just turn away and toss it.
It won't fly
Just lie low for a while
And the stuff will come
… to suit your style.

As you can see in his poetry he loved his ability to rhyme, always coming up with a deeper message. Like a modern day rap artist he wrote things like:
Vanity
Humanity's
Insanity.

 But many of his poems were about self investigation.  Like this one:
               "Ego, Ego shining bright,
       Won't you let me go at least once tonight.
             Out of your vice I'd like to be
      Wouldn't it be nice to once simply be free   
           And surely feel safe just to be me."
 Also:
           Complaining and blaming
           seems to be our forte'.
          Isn't it better to be wooing and doing,
                day by day.

The following poem especially demonstrates his desire to look at his own nature and dark side:
"A score ago-who could know
But a battle left undone can never
Be won, and I must begin a new
To view the forbidden road I closed
upon myself as I chose to be meek
and afraid.  Delayed as might it be
 I choose now to fight, and I set
My site upon the worst in me, so
That the thirst in me can finally
 be quenched. And I can get off
The bench and take a healthy
Cut, as I look at my guts."
 
   But even more than his poetry, I think what he probably liked to be remembered for most is his great sense of humor.  He loved joking around.  He never actually told jokes, but his quick wit always added an extra depth to any situation.  I remember once he said to me, knowing my taste for travel and exotic adventure:
           "Do me a favor, just marry someone from our own species."
    Another time, this is a story my mother tells:  He had just had his second stroke and was laying on the floor in the living room when the Para-medics showed up. They asked his medical history and my mother said, "Well, he had a previous stroke, he has cancer and he has a  pacemaker."  
   They said," Is there anything else?."
And my father laying almost unconscious on the floor looks up and says," Isn't that enough?"
    
   But it was his belief in me and my brothers that I think most effected my life.  I remembered when I wanted to buy  my first video camera and  I thought maybe it was too expensive and I was standing around in the store deciding if I really deserved it.  And he just bought it anyway.
  One time when I felt his belief in me the strongest was when my 7th grade Spanish teacher called up to tell him I was cheating on a test.
My father got very angry and he said, "My son doesn't cheat!" and he hung up the phone.  
A little later I said, "Dad, you know I was cheating."
He said, "It doesn't matter."  At first I didn’t know what he meant and then I got the message of his love.
     And it was that belief and encouragement in me that I tried to give back to him when he became ill and I presented him with alternatives to chemotherapy.   And I felt proud and honored when he embraced macrobiotics totally, which I think kept him alive ten years longer than any doctor expected.  He loved Michio Kushi (the founder of macrobiotics, in this country) and went with him on atrip to Japan.  In a sincere and humorous reference to his name he often called him "the Meshiac of the new Kosher."
    He also wrote:
Macro food is not only good
it keeps you from turning to wood
or even becoming a hood.
On this my case stood.

“Macrobiotics is Dispotic”, cry the doctors
As they mix their chemical solutions
Disregarding the body's pollution.
  As they search--
 
Rice and beans, rice and beans
are the means
To getting well.  
You might think that's not too swell
Chemo could get you right to hell.
Where your radiated palate would not smell.

While sitting and waiting to eat
I sit and think of something sweet
But since sugar is not on my diet,
My expectation is rather quiet.
 
"Macrobiotic eating
    in lieu of a chemo beating.
An alternative approach
     to forestall the cockroach
From knocking you out.
     A very tuff bout.
For fighting the gout
   try doing without."

   I also took him to every kind of healer I could get my hands on. And he went willing and openly and it was that trust in me that I feel very honored by.  We tried Chinese Chi Kung masters, Filipino psychic surgeons, Indian gurus, Baptist faith healers, Native American shamans, psychic healers, hands on healers. Actually he said that the Baptist minister healed him.  I don't know what worked, but I do know it was his openness to everything that kept him alive.
    Here, I also want to acknowledge my mother, whose heroic efforts kept my father vital and happy for so long and she sacrificed so much keeping him at home when so many other people would have done something else a long time a go.  This equaled my father's heroic will to live despite all adversity.  This is because the love between them was heroic and very beautiful.  In 1990, my father wrote this to my mother:
"Of all the choices
    a man may make in his life
The most important of all
   is the proper choice of a wife.
Blessed am I 'cause
   I chose right.
And everyday my love grows
   with all my might."
      He also wrote once a Valentine Days card that said,
 "You are more than my wife, you're my life!
     and you'll always be mine
My Valentine.
      Love,
      Nate

   However, what is most interesting is that as he got sicker and sicker, and as his personality started to slip away more and more there was still that essential part of him that remained, his essence, was very much there.  Like the intelligent look in his eyes, that mischievous humor and wisdom and that same loving kind presence.
    I remember once taking him out after he could no longer speak and he could only write as a means of communication.  I took him outside the apartment building in front of a pond where with a beutiful fountain in the middle and begged him to write something in a poetic form.  He came up with this simple haiku, that and that same irony of perception:
       "The fountain flows
       The birds fly.
       I always forget."