“Sweet dreams”

I was on my way to my room at Garden Crest when some guy I didn’t know said to me, “Morrie, you are a national treasure.”

Very flattering. I thought about what he said and what he meant. I am not an egotist, but not blind to my accomplishments that are wide-ranging. A kid born in a vermin, rat infested tenement in East Harlem, New York, a multi-national neighborhood replete with warring gangs and crime.

I am no angel. I participated in activities with my gang that I’m not proud of. I sometimes shudder when I think of how close I was to becoming a murderer.

I was on the roof of my five-story tenement building when looking over the edge I saw a guy leaning against my building. I went to a half demolished chimney, pulled loose a brick, went to the edge of the rooftop and with two steady hands ,aimed it at him and dropped it. It landed with a crash and disintegrated.

Fate had stepped in. At the last second, the guy moved away. It is a certainty my good aim of the brick would have hit him on the head and killed him. I would have been a murderer. 

People on an adjoining roof saw me. Denying it would have been stupid and futile. It was a thought out and deliberate action. I would have been arrested, tried and found guilty.

Because of my age, I would not have been executed in the Sing Sing electric chair, but placed in some corrective institution not eligible for parole until the age of 21, a long time in the future.

Is it any wonder I have nightmares? I am one lucky “dude.”

At the age of 106, I am still functioning and have all my “marbles.”

I miss my late wife Betty very much. I have so many memories of the 80 years we spent together. 

We traveled the world, we saw man strange lands, but happy to come home holding hands.

The two children we had, Judy and Steve, that we are proud of. Every morning I wake up, look at her picture beside my bed.

She is smiling at me. I look at her often, holding back tears and often say, “Betty Doll, I love you.”

Thanks for the memories. I think of you often and always will as long as I live.

Good-bye my love.

“Sweet dreams”

August 5, 2020