Maurice Sendack died in May of 2012 at the age of 84. What an extraordinary ordinary life he lived. I was 10 years old when he published Where the Wild Things Are, but I would not learn of it until raising my own child over two decades later. And I did not really begin to fully appreciate him until recently.

He lost many of his closest family members in the Holocaust. He spent 50 years with his beloved partner, Eugene. But what strikes me as most remarkable is to hear him talk about how much he loved his life, how he valued the love he had and the work he enjoyed. A simple man, a simple life, a sacred life. As he says here, a transcendent life. May we all find that we do not need to be “earth shakingly important…” and have the peace and clarity to clear the decks, and to learn not to take ourselves so seriously.