Mitch Albom: Have a Little Faith: A True Story

I shrugged. It wasn’t my home anymore.

Is it okay, I asked, to tell these stories, when I…you know…do the eulogy?

He stroked his chin.

“When that time comes,” he said, “I think you’ll know what to say.”

Life of Henry

When Henry was fourteen, his father died after a long illness. Henry wore a suit to the funeral home, because Willie Covington insisted all his sons have suits, even if there was no money for anything else.

The family approached the open coffin. They stared at the body. Willie had been extremely dark-skinned, but the parlor had made him up to be an auburn shade. Henry’s oldest sister began to wail. She started wiping off the makeup, screaming, “My daddy don’t look like that!” Henry’s baby brother tried to crawl into the coffin. His mother wept.

Henry watched quietly. He only wanted his father back.

Before God, Jesus, or any higher power, Henry had worshipped his dad, a former mattress maker from North Carolina who stood six foot five and had a chest full of gunshot scars, the details of which were never explained to his children. He was a tough man who chain-smoked and liked to drink, but when he came home at night, inebriated, he was often tender, and he’d call Henry over and say, “Do you love your daddy?”

“Yeah,” Henry would say.

“Give your daddy a hug now. Give your daddy a kiss.”

Willie was an enigma, a man with no real job who was a stickler for education, a hustler and loan shark who forbade stolen goods in his house. When Henry began smoking in the sixth grade, his father’s only response was: “Don’t never ask me for a cigarette.”

But Willie loved his children, and he challenged them, quizzing them on school subjects, offering a dollar for easy questions, ten dollars for a math problem. Henry loved to hear him sing-especially the old spirituals, like “It’s Cool Down Here by the River Jordan.”

But soon his singing stopped. Willie hacked and coughed. He developed emphysema and tuberculosis of the brain. In the last year of his life, he was virtually bedridden. Henry cooked his meals and carried them to his room, even as his father coughed up blood and barely ate a thing.

One night, after Henry brought him dinner, his father looked at him sadly and rasped, “Listen, son, you ever run out of cigarettes, you can have some of mine.”

A few weeks later, he was dead.

At the funeral, Henry heard a Baptist preacher say something about the soul and Jesus, but not much got through. He kept thinking his father would come back, just show up at the door one day, singing his favorite songs.

Months passed. It didn’t happen.

Finally, having lost his only hero, Henry, the hustler’s son, made a decision: from now on, he would take what he wanted.

Spring was nearly over, summer on its way, and the late morning sun burned hot through the kitchen window. It was our third visit. Before we began, the Reb poured me a glass of water.

“Ice?” he asked.

I’m okay, I said.

“He’s okay,” he sang. “No ice…it would be nice…but no ice…”

As we walked back to his office, we passed a large photo of him as a younger man, standing on a mountain in bright sunlight. His body was tall and strong, his hair black and combed back-the way I remembered him from childhood.

Nice photo, I said.

“That was a proud moment.”

Where was it?

“ Mount Sinai.”

Where the Ten Commandments were given?

“Exactly.”

When was this?

“In the 1960s. I was traveling with a group of scholars. A Christian man and I climbed up. He took that picture.”

How long did it take?

“Hours. We climbed all night and arrived at sunrise.”

I glanced at his aging body. Such a trip would be impossible now. His narrow shoulders were hunched over, and the skin at his wrists was wrinkled and loose.

As he walked on to his office, I noticed a small detail in the photo. Along with his white shirt and a prayer shawl, the Reb was wearing the traditional tefillin , small boxes containing Biblical verses, which observant Jews strap around their heads and their arms while reciting morning prayers.

He said he climbed all night.

Which meant he had taken them up with him.

Such ritual was a major part of the Reb’s life. Morning prayers. Evening prayers. Eating certain foods. Denying himself others. On Sabbath, he walked to synagogue, rain or shine, not operating a car, as per Jewish law. On holidays and festivals, he took part in traditional practices, hosting a Seder meal on Passover, or casting bread into a stream on Rosh Hashanah, symbolic of casting away your sins.

Like Catholicism, with its vespers, sacraments, and communions-or Islam, with its five-times-daily salah , clean clothes, and prayer mats-Judaism had enough rituals to keep you busy all day, all week, and all year.

I remember, as a kid, the Reb admonishing the congregation-gently, and sometimes not so gently-for letting rituals lapse or disappear, for eschewing traditional acts like lighting candles or saying blessings, even neglecting the Kaddish prayer for loved ones who had died.

But even as he pleaded for a tighter grip, year after year, his members opened their fingers and let a little more go. They skipped a prayer here. They skipped a holiday there. They intermarried-as I did.

I wondered, now that his days were dwindling, how important ritual still was.

“Vital,” he said.

But why? Deep inside, you know your convictions.

“Mitch,” he said, “faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”

Now, the Reb didn’t merely practice his rituals; he carved his daily life from them. If he wasn’t praying, he was studying-a major part of his faith-or doing charity or visiting the sick. It made for a more predictable life, perhaps even a dull one by American standards. After all, we are conditioned to reject the “same old routine.” We’re supposed to keep things new, fresh. The Reb wasn’t into fresh. He never took up fads. He didn’t do Pilates, he didn’t golf (someone gave him a single club once; it sat in his garage for years).

But there was something calming about his pious life, the way he puttered from one custom to the next; the way certain hours held certain acts; the way every autumn he built a sukkah hut with its roof open to the stars; the way every week he embraced the Sabbath, breaking the world down to six days and one day, six days and one.

“My grandparents did these things. My parents, too. If I take the pattern and throw it out, what does that say about their lives? Or mine? From generation to generation, these rituals are how we remain…”

He rolled his hand, searching for the word.

Connected? I said.

“Ah.” He smiled at me. “Connected.”

As we walked to the front door that day, I felt a wave of guilt. I’d once had rituals; I’d ignored them for decades. These days, I didn’t do a single thing that tied me to my faith. Oh, I had an exciting life. Traveled a lot. Met interesting people. But my daily routines-work out, scan the news, check e-mail-were self-serving, not roped to tradition. To what was I connected? A favorite TV show? The morning paper? My work demanded flexibility. Ritual was the opposite.

Besides, I saw religious customs as sweet but outdated, like typing with carbon paper. To be honest, the closest thing I had to a religious routine was visiting the Reb. I had now seen him at work and at home, in laughter and in repose. I had seen him in Bermuda shorts.

I had also seen him more this one spring than I normally would in three years. I still didn’t get it. I was one of those disappointing congregants. Why had he chosen me to be part of his death, when I had probably let him down in life?