My, how 2 years flew by.....

Today is my dad's 2nd yartzheit. two years ago today, according the Jewish lunar calendar, my father died.    In some ways, it feels like just yesterday and in other ways it feels like it was ages ago.  I suppose, as I've said (and written) before, that must be what eternity is like, timeless.....not time bound.....

I am filled with so many emotions on this day of commemoration, but the predominate one is a feeling of profound existential loneliness.  I guess that's the status of someone without parents, being existentially alone......

Today, there are so many wonderful memories that are flooding in, and they almost feel like a soothing salve.  Yet,  I can't seem to be able to smear that salve on fast enough to soothe the grief and pain that still linger two years later......

There is the memory of my daddy and me in Washington, DC when I was about 5.

And there is the memory of us together at his synagogue's 100th anniversary dinner.  I cherish this picture, because it is the last one we have of us together before his health started to fail.

I am no longer someone's daughter.  I am existentially alone, yet the wonderful life lessons he taught me, along with the wonderful memories of him, nurture and cradle me and I am deeply grateful for those lessons and for those memories.  I have taken his lessons to heart and have become a strong and independent woman with fierce intuition and I know he would be proud of me.  Thank you for everything daddy!  May your nishamah (soul) have a complete aliyah (return to its eternal resting place).  I love you, always. 

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