Don Kiem
Change of plans for the week.
Laurie’s sister, Debbie’s husband Don died last night in St. Louis. So we have a funeral probably on Wed. Don battled colon cancer last year, but it spread. He went quick since Friday night.
My reflection:
Don is Jewish (and a New York Jew at that!), and he and Debbie (agnostic?) raised their two kids Jewish. Don taught me a lot about god, Judaism, and myself as an evangelical. I learned Jews fully understand Grace with the capital G (what a big duh for me - just where did we Christians get this theology anyway?). He helped me understand Davkah = “we blame you god, but who else do we turn to?” And he constantly proselytized me, in the best way: he was just in love with being a Jew, which he didn’t fully embrace until later in life. He treated his faith, his tradition like stolen fruit — he didn’t feel like a good Jew, like he didn’t deserve it… like someone made a mistake and somehow he got in without a ticket. Don loved the underdog. Don was the underdog, and he leaned into it.
His father was an European immigrant and a staunch Zionist (and atheist because ‘god has abandoned us’). But Don Davkah’d his way back to god, despite modernist rationalism, Zionism, liberalism, the mistakes and the hits of life. He disdained my conservative Christianity, mostly on the basis of prejudice and politics in my opinion. He was offended by Jesus and Christian claims on his god. I felt tradition-thin around him. He loved his son Stephen and his family; and then his wife Debbie and the two kids, Hannah and Ben, and every time he spoke of them he cried, and immediately turned to the kindness of god to give him such a blessing. I think he felt like Abraham - Don was told he couldn’t have kids early in life, but he did!
A few times Don and the family came over to our house for Christmas. Don loved our church’s Christmas Eve candlelight service - he loved the sensate richness of it, and he never tried to castigate the incarnation and the obvious affront it was to his identity. Then, then… after the kids and everyone else was asleep, I brought Don into my richest tradition of the year, my soul, my ”mikdash me’at,” my little sanctuary: we’d watch A Christmas Carol, the best version, the 1951, Alister Sims version, black and white, grainy, so Dickens. I’d pour two scotches and Don would give running commentary, repeating choice lines, “Are there no prisons? Are there no poorhouses?” Remember, Don was the underdog. We’d watch the unhuman Ebenezer Scrooge change before our very eyes into a caring compassionate brother. And sure enough, we’d cry at that scene of all scenes, where Ebenezer asks for forgiveness from his estranged niece. I’d keep a good civil moist eye, but Don, Don would blubber.
Eighteen years running, we’d sit up at Kirksville MO’s 1000 Hills State Park at the annual family get together, late into the night, on the cabin patio and Don would wax on about how wonderful life was, how blessed he was, how incredible the moment was - the night, the family, the fire, the stars, and tell about his political conversion from American cars to Honda cars. “I shouldn’t have it this good. I don’t deserve this,” he’d declare with the spit of a used-car salesman who just walked through the bone-dry bottom of the Red Sea, emancipated. ”Debbie puts up with me, I’ve got wonderful kids - they’re so smart. Did you know…?” then he’d tell me something fantastic about them that I did know, we all knew. Upon conversion, Ebenezer danced and sang, “I don’t know anything, but now I know I don’t know anything! …I don’t deserve to feel this good!” This was the music ringing in Don’s soul. It played non-stop.
Then he’d begin to preach to me about Judaism, his tradition - because I am a holy man, because I didn’t move fast enough - and everybody else did. And in good Jewish fashion, when one talks about the Hebrew god it always leads to a joke, a bad Jewish joke: “Once a young man came to his rabbi and asked, ‘So why do you rabbis always answer a question with a question?’ The rabbi replied, “So vhatz whrong wid a kwuestion?” I’d laugh - I really thought it funny — even though he’d told it countless times. He told it again and again because humor for Don was a theological statement.
Those late summer nights Don would say maudlin cheesy syrupy things about life, drinking it in and not lying to himself. He’d say things the rest of the family would never say, couldn’t say, couldn’t articulate, too embarassed to say. Don was alone in his sense of the moment, this LIFE. But these past few years I began to understand: I am converted. I now believe in Donism; I’m a Donite.
To me, Don, you are my Solomon. To Don Kiem! Lah Kiem!