Dear Everyone,
I hope this
note finds you as well as possible. For some, this year has given my circle and
me reason to celebrate: New jobs and promotions. Pregnancies and births. Romance
and weddings. Travel. Connection. I have enjoyed some deepening connections with
longtime and newer friends and travel to various places, often primarily to see
them: Berlin. Boston. Chicago. Copenhagen. Culpeper. Denver. Portland, OR.
Savannah. Seattle. Many trips to NYC to visit friends and family, and my annual
trip to Lubec, ME for Summer Keys.
Unfortunately,
this year has also given people in my circle reason to grieve: Physical and
emotional health problems. Fractured relationships with partners, parents, and
children. Job losses and career frustration.
And losses.
So many losses. For a while, about every week a friend’s parent or elderly
relative was passing. A dear friend’s mother just passed away a few weeks ago. A
colleague lost his brother last week. And some loved ones, such as spouses and
siblings, lost much too soon.
In my broader
community of Washington, DC, to date over 250 homicides, a third more than
last year (more on that, below). And in the larger world, violence just inciting
more violence. My thoughts with all who are grieving.
As most (if
not all) of you know, I lost my own sister, Emily Hoffenberg, this past
January. It was also too soon: She was fifty-eight. For the first time in my
life, I became all too acquainted with the lonely and strange journey of grief
that the loss of such a close relative begins.
One friend noted,
soon after Emily passed, that my sister was now in a better place. My friend
was right. Emily had been a troubled soul from when she was young. Naturally
pretty, she struggled with her weight from an early age, descended from stout
women on both sides of the family. She had difficulty getting along with peers,
and, while no one likes getting teased, she held grudges against those who had
teased or mistreated her far beyond what seemed merited. She was not interested
in school. She had volatile relationships with boyfriends which usually ended
with drama.
As she got
older, she developed behaviors consistent with obsessive-compulsive disorder: Vacuuming
the carpet to a pulp; taking multi-hour showers; and engaging in other bizarre
rituals to manage her anxiety. Into adulthood she continued having trouble
getting along with others and worked only for a few years after barely graduating
college. She spent the better part of her adult life indulging her compulsions
and watching TV.
My mother,
her husband, and I all tried to caution her about the impact of her behavior.
Unfortunately, she would not listen and had a defiant, perversely libertarian
attitude towards her rituals and lack of employment. I can still hear her defenses:
“Why should I change just because society says I should?” “You’re my younger
brother: Don’t lecture me.”
Years of multi-hour
showers, and who knows what other behavior, had worn away at Emily’s skin, and
left her vulnerable to infection. And given her excessive tendency towards
doing things her way, she usually waited till the last minute to seek medical
care. After Emily developed skin rashes covering much of her body in October 2022
(not the first time in her life), two doctors told her she needed to go to the
emergency room. She refused until the pain became intolerable.
After that, Emily
spent the few months left of her life between stints at home, bedridden, and trips
to the emergency room and hospitalization. Her body, after years of self-abuse,
began to shut down. She became unable to walk and her throat closed to the
point she couldn’t swallow food. Doctors were preparing to insert a balloon in
her esophagus the days before she passed at Long Island Jewish Hospital, with
her husband and sister-in-law by her side, on January 18, 2023. I take some
comfort in that I had been able to take my parents to visit my sister, one last
time, a few days prior. It was the last time we saw her alive, and the four of
us were together.
In her last
few months, Emily acknowledged the damage she had done to herself, yet even
then, it was not around getting the mental health care she long had needed.
Alas she talked about needing “try harder” to stop her compulsive behavior.
Unfortunately, she never got the chance.
My mother
(still here in mind, if not in body), my brother-in-law, and I are left with
some guilt. (My father, not so much: I’ll save him for a future holiday letter.)
My mother took Emily to counseling when she was younger, yet Emily was not engaged,
and it was ineffective. My sister carried that skepticism of counseling into
adulthood.
In hindsight,
I could have sought guardianship, yet even that outcome was uncertain,
especially as she was married, and her husband, even with his own illnesses and
limitations, had rights over me. At best, she would have ended up
institutionalized, medicated against her will, a quality of life different yet
not higher than the one she achieved left to her own devices.
The way my
sister thought and behaved, I couldn’t have as close a relationship with her as
I would have liked. Yet we spoke on the phone a few times a month, and my
parents and I would visit with her and her husband when I was in Queens. Childlike,
she mostly wanted to talk about movies and our favorite animals. I miss those
conversations, and the prospect of a sibling, however troubled, for company in
old age.
I am
continually appreciative of the support I received right after my sister
passed: The phone calls. The texts. The donations. The shiva visits, both in
New York and in Washington, DC. The food -- SO much food, and the food sent to
my parents’ home, especially appreciated. My mother and I sent thank you notes
to all who we could, yet I wanted to acknowledge this kindness again.
Still,
outside my friend circle, part of my own, undeclared journey has been finding
myself in professional and social milieu with people who largely come from more
affluent and less troubled families than mine, and who could not relate to my
situation. I remember, once over a meal at Cornell, a friend asked, “Why didn’t
your sister go to Cornell?” I didn’t imbue her with bad intentions, and frankly
don’t remember how I responded. Yet the question left me feeling embarrassed.
Years later,
at lunch one day at the Census Bureau, the subject of families arose. A young
woman in my lunch group asked about my sister, and this time I remember I was
more forthcoming about her condition. My colleague paused, uncomfortably, and
changed the subject to the song playing in the cafeteria.
Over the
years, I came to see that my own sister was not an “appropriate” topic of
conversation with people I did not know well. Indeed, many of my well-educated research-oriented
colleagues at Census would only come across someone like my sister and her
husband in a row in a public use data file, which they might be analyzing using
the latest techniques for a conference presentation or journal article.
As one
colleague observed, many (not all, but many) people with advanced social
science degrees look at life "through a window." For them,
research is not intended to solve the plight of poor or otherwise marginalized
people; rather, the data of troubled people mainly serve as fodder to advance their
careers.
On the one
hand, I can't begrudge others their lived experiences. On the other hand, I
can't help but wonder if many of our larger social problems -- those which, in
theory, our various academic institutions teach students how to address, and
which governments and other helping institutions hire these students to solve
-- remain unfixed, among other reasons, because the people we've hired to solve
them don't have actual experience in the lives of the people they are supposed
to help. And, even when these professionals do create policies and programs, in
the design they may be overestimating the resources and capabilities of the
people of interest, projecting their own resources, capabilities, and
aspirations onto the target population. As I learned from my sister, not
everyone wants or is able to work.
Living and
working in the nation’s capital, I don’t have to look far to see this
obtuseness. Earlier this fall, the Justice Department organized a conference
celebrating "Fifty Years of the National Crime Victimization Survey"
just as Washington, DC was experiencing the highest
level of homicides in two decades and more than twice as many carjackings as last year, often
committed by teens.
This summer my neighbors and I were afraid to leave our homes. Later this fall,
Census organized a two-day conference on “Advancing Research on Race, Ethnicity,
and Inequality”, as if we haven’t been studying these subjects for decades,
with, at best, a mixed record on improvement. Just more admiring problems,
looking at the world through that safe analytic window.
I came to
realize I’m so sensitive to this because I went into public service to solve
problems, not merely to study them, especially coming from a family with such pressing
needs. My concern with those in need is not removed or merely academic. And as
I am squarely middle aged, it's disenheartening to see yet another generation mired in social problems which
only seem to promote another generation of research. I get equally weary of
conflicts, like those in the Middle East, which never seem to get resolved.
People hating and killing each other because of what someone wrote on stone
tablets centuries ago.
I found
myself wading in this sort of futility for much of the year, yet having given
myself the time to stew has helped me recently be more open to light. A blog
by Bill Gates remind of our progress and innovations to reduce carbon emissions,
among other achievements.
On a smaller,
yet no less important scale, a former colleague has helped open a sanctuary for abused and
neglected animals. It won’t bring back the megafauna which I wish we humans
hadn’t killed off – I imagine a giddy world with woolly mammoths and glyptodons
roaming the streets of Manhattan or the Champs-Élysées -- or reverse more recent
species extinction. Yet it's something, and it's refreshing to see an effort
not mired in analysis paralysis.
And I think
of the dedication of the nurses and staff who helped my sister in her final
months. The last time I saw her alive, a few days before she died, her hospital
bedstand was covered in napkins and cups filled with water to the brim. She was
bedridden, barely sentient, with IV tubes in both arms. Yet at least the staff
had given her what she wanted, however bizarre it might seem to others, to
relieve her anxiety.
When I am
feeling at my worst about the state of the world, I try to remember all the
people who are working very hard to make the world a better place, even if not
always succeeding. Things would probably be worse if it weren’t for them. As
George Eliot wrote at the end of Middlemarch, "That things are not
so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who
lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Here's to a
2024 with less loss.
Love,
Rich
