Behind the Lens, Inside the Mind. The Life of Frederick Eberstadt.
Part 5: One of a kind
Frederick Eberstadt passed away on July 29, 2023, a Saturday, at his home in New York City. One of his family members was kind enough to contact me when it happened.
During the end, she told me, he was peaceful, comfortable and surrounded by his loved ones. A few days earlier, she and other members of his family had celebrated with him the 97th anniversary of his remarkable life.
I was naturally saddened when I received the news, as I still am while I hastily write these words late into the night.
This grieving feeling, however, made me conscious of how much Freddy helped me achieve. Years ago, an event of this significance would have become the trigger of another emotional fall, bringing me to my knees and leaving me longing for nothing but death.
Today, I mourn the loss of a great man and dear friend. Yet, I am not defeated.
The will to live life, at its best and at its worst, is ultimately what he helped me achieve. He would want me to keep taking the challenge. And I plan to do exactly that.
Every so often, my brain still attempts to drag me down into hopelessness. On those occasions, I remember Freddy. I am again in his living room, curled up in the chair, describing to him my dark thoughts. And then I hear him talk, with his ever affable expression, sympathizing with me, telling how sorry he is I am going through such deep pain.
His polished instincts, built on years of therapeutic experience and sincere empathy, allow him to choose the right words, at the right time. He gracefully dances between expressions that bring me comfort and observations that force me to think about what I am saying. He paves a smooth path that leads me into the gradual realization, and ultimate acceptance, that my self-deprecating beliefs are baseless, that the absolute darkness that I feel trapped inside of is but an ethereal bubble, one of my own making.
Even after I stopped meeting Freddy as my therapist, many years ago, and started visiting him every so often as a dear friend, that mental scene never left. To this day, it is the setting that materializes in my head when I begin feeling emotionally unstable. I see him telling me that it is fine to feel anxious — depressed even. That, as real and excruciating as my pain feels, it is but an illusion, one that will eventually fade away. And I know that is the truth. And I know he taught me how to prove it to myself.
That is the legacy he left me, and probably countless others.
My heart and deep appreciation go to the Eberstadt family. I lost a dear friend, but that is incomparable to losing a father, uncle, grandfather and great grandfather.
Borrowing the words of somebody who knew him deeply and intimately, Frederick Ebestadt was “one of a kind.”
