‘Live to the Max’: A tribute to Max Gold Dwares

Feb. 18, 2022, marked the 18th anniversary of the death of our son, Max Gold Dwares, who left the world way too early, at the age of 20, from complications related to a bone-marrow transplant to cure him of chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Losing a child is an unbearable feeling. No parent should ever bury a child before they themselves take the final journey home to God.  Max’s loss was and remains a crippling episode in our family.  However, it has also taught us a valuable life lesson, which is to continue to live your life to the Max (fullest), and to also give back to those in need in the community.

I want to tell you a little about how Max lived his life to the fullest each and every day. I am not telling you for sympathy, but rather to show how an individual can truly impact not just his family, but everyone around them during and after a loved one passes away.

As you know, the Hebrew word for life is “chai,” which has a numerical value of 18.  I know you are probably wondering how I can equate the number 18 with life when this is the 18th anniversary of my son Max's passing away.  I will tell you how.

Max lived “life to the max” each and every day.

Max attended Hebrew school at Temple Torat Yisrael, and then became a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13. While in his teens, he participated in Midrasha at the Bureau of Jewish Education, in Providence, along with a group of similarly minded Jewish youths studying and doing good deeds for the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.

Max participated in Trevors Place, going to Philadelphia to hand out clothing and jackets to those less fortunate.

Max continued his Jewish learning, and was a member of a Temple Emanu-El group affectionately called “the Jew Crew.”

He also participated in “March of the Living,” which brings teens and adults from around the world to spend a week in Poland visiting the concentration camps, followed by a week in Israel.

Max called me one night from Poland, after visiting Auschwitz, and asked, “How could man treat other people with such brutality?”

After Max returned home, he became a strict vegetarian since he felt that it was inhumane that humans could slaughter innocent people or kill animals.

Max came back from his trip with strong convictions about mankind, friendship and equality. These convictions would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Max continued to participate in activities that benefited less fortunate people. He organized his friends to get together to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to bring to Crossroads Rhode Island, in Providence.

After Max passed away, a family friend of ours organized “Max’s Lunch Bunch” at temple to teach students the meaning of helping and giving back to the community. Max also volunteered at The Tomorrow Fund at Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

Max loved movies, Coca-Cola, reading books, photography and his pets.  Max had once decided to become a rabbi since he loved reading the Torah and living its principles.  Max was a mensch in the true sense of the word.

Both my wife, Barbara, and I continue to continue Max’s legacy of good deeds. Weekly, year-round, we collect donations of food, clothing and non-perishable items and bring them to the  McAuley House, 622 Elmwood Ave., Providence.

Barbara, along with her good friend Paula Goldberg, collects, bakes and brings up to 100-plus desserts a week to Help the Homeless Rhode Island, which distributes the goodies in bag lunches.

We continue to this day to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to give out to members of the community. We collect coats every November to give to an organization called BND (Buy Nothing Day). The coats are brought to the Rhode Island State House the day after Thanksgiving to be distributed to people who are homeless.

Max had the passion to change mankind, if only one step at a time.  During 11th grade, he seemed to take on an added urgency for accomplishing things. I always wondered if Max sensed that his future would be cut short. He became a charitable young man, always willing to lend a helpful hand to those in need.

When people ask me how many children we have, I say two. I say that our younger son, Jake, is an IT professional, and he and his wife, Maria, have a beautiful 10-year-old daughter, Maya, who is named after Max. And then I tell them about Max and his short but extraordinary life, which he lived to the fullest.

In conclusion, I will borrow a line from the movie “The Last Samurai.” When the Emperor asked Nathan Algren (played by Tom Cruise) how a famous warlord died, the reply was: “I will tell you how he lived.”

When people now ask me how Max died, I tell them that I would rather tell them how he lived.

And I just did!

KEVIN DWARES lives in Cranston. If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, feel free to contact him via email at:  Kevindwares@gmail.com.