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From Dan Reines, Associate Editor:

Roughly two years ago, I received a rather long letter from my grandmother. It was a wonderful letter — perhaps the most beautiful thing I've ever read. The letter was not written to me, but that was no bother. It was written for me.

The letter had been written by Grandma's father — my great-grandfather Abraham, who died long before I was born. It was written to a Christian gentleman he had met on a train, and with whom he'd apparently engaged in a long, thoughtful discussion about religion, God, and the meaning of it all. Grandpa Abe, himself a religious man, had followed up this conversation with four typewritten pages describing his beliefs, and explicitly laying out his definition of religion. He ended the letter with his desired epitaph:

"Here lies a man who tried to do some good among his fellow men and tried to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. And he brought a flower to one when he was able to see and enjoy it, instead of at the funeral."

Interestingly, he sent a copy of the letter to his second child — my grandmother.

I shivered when I read my what great-grandfather had written. It was us — my entire family — all there in uneven, carbon-smudged type. He described religion as more than just "believing in God and praying, and let life take care of itself." Religion, he wrote, is about "deeds, not ... words. The silent prayer is the most powerful and potent." Don't just say the right thing — do it; the lesson has been taught me a thousand different ways, and though I don't always succeed, it's become a part of me. Grandpa Abe never knew me or even of me, but he may as well have been writing with me specifically in mind. As it turns out, he was.

Grandma explained that the letter, written just a few months before his death, was essentially what is known in Jewish tradition as an ethical will, a coda written "to set down as a heritage one's philosophy of life, one's true beliefs, and one's ethical code, as a guide and testament to one's values in life, that one wishes to pass on to one's children and future generations."

Bingo — that's exactly what the letter was, and there's little doubt that Grandpa Abe intended it to be such. It was an honest, eloquent inventory of his soul, a historical record for his four daughters and their children to read, that they may better understand themselves.

It worked. I wrote my own ethical will — coming from a 23-year-old you'd have to call it a first draft — which read like a '90s adaptation of the same document. It was neither as eloquent nor as well-informed by experience as Grandpa Abe's (he, for instance, never wrote, "I believe with all my heart that they just don't make Saturday morning cartoons the way they used to..."). But in its underlying tone and theme, it was nearly identical.

And in the end, that's what fascinates me more than anything about his letter: its remarkable irrelevance. As a family heirloom, it's priceless; as a practical guide, it's moot. The values my great-grandfather willed to his descendents had arrived, intact, years before the letter ever made it into my hands. He had recorded the transaction for posterity, but it was little more than a shipping receipt.

Grandma's 84-year-old heart gave out last October, and we buried her in Queens, New York, right near Grandpa Abe. I miss her. I miss them both, actually, even though I never knew Grandpa Abe. But it's nice to know they're still with me, every day, in every thought, every action.

I already knew that. Now I have the paperwork to prove it.

Take care,

— Dan Reines (7/4/97)

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.

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