An open letter to my GDX brothers...
...I want to thank all of you for keeping me, Jocelyn and our family in your thoughts and prayers. Means a lot to me.
Missing the reunion this past weekend was the last thing I wanted to do, as you all know, but I had to be in Texas, to see my mother-in-law for the last time. She is weak, unresponsive, has congenital heart failure, is in hospice care and yet, is hanging on somehow.
Still, when I am one-on-one with her, she sits up, eats a bit of soft food and sips some water into her otherwise once lively frame, now reduced to maybe 90 pounds. Maybe. She can't walk. Can hardly breath. Is on oxygen. You can barely hear her speak.
When my own mother passed 14 years ago, she became my pseudo mother. I knew it because she was always busting my chops like my mom always did.
In Albany, meanwhile, I've had pictures forwarded to me (love you, Joel Lustig) from around the events of the weekend. I so wanted to be a part of it, especially after being part of the planning process since March, if not before.
It was a bitch to plan this. Post-pandemic, venues and caterers were hard to schedule. Really hard. All booked with parties, reunions, celebrations, weddings and bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs postponed for two years, some for 15- and 16-year olds, put off because of COVID. Thank you Fran Altshuler of Woman's Club, Betsy Manware of Healthy Cafe and Brittney King of 4imprint (T-shirts), the vendors I dealt with, for all coming through for us.
There was a time I wondered if we'd pull this off. Our usually cozy planning committee meetings of years past because snarly disagreements this time around. They too often degenerated into f-bomb sessions with threats to quit the committee abounding.
We could never decide how to split up our responsibilities this time around. And sadly, as brothers dropped from commitments to attend, so did our projected revenue and our ability to pay vendors and venues. We barely had enough.
I think.
At one point, we were almost at 60 attendees. After changes of circumstances for some guys, illnesses and family emergencies for others, we were down to about 38(?). We guaranteed the caterers 45.
For a while there, I was afraid that this reunion would become better known for who wasn't there. But seeing this picture, forwarded to me by Joel Lustig, reminds how much of a close-knit family we still are, 50 years later.
Yes, there were disagreements in the family. And make no mistake, we are a family. One of the nicest things about these reunions is the ability of the brothers, after years apart, to pick up conversations like they had never stopped from so long ago.
And some of my favorite memories of reunions past still stand out. There was Jim Keenan reminding everyone that of all the successful professionals we've become, only one of us became a college professor. And, in his words, "Who ever thought it would've been Berg?"
And my conversation in 2015 with Joel Lustig, a freewheeling, save-the-world and figure-out-the-meaning-of-life chat that both of us still treasure to this day.
Anyway, when I got down about the process, I could always count on, out of nowhere, a note about nothing and everything from Gil Avery to lift my spirits. He is Mr. Positive. And Larry and Wayne to reach out and cheer me up.
Bottom line: through everything, my personal heartache, our committee fears on finances as commitments to attend fell off and the great cost so many of you were willing to burden to attend, I remembered why this is the fourth one of these I've helped plan.
Because you guys are worth it.
Love,
'Berg
