As the last episode ended, I was beginning my return to normal life after the unexpected death of my father. The unanticipated event had turned my entire world upside down. After remaining home for a one-week mourning period, when I returned to normal life, everything was exactly the same as it had been when I left it. Same classes. Same teachers. Same friends. Everything was the same. Except nothing was the same and it would never be again. It’s a terrible feeling and everyone who has experienced the early stages of deep grief is painfully aware of it. However, there was one thing that was radically different in my new daily routine, which was that I was now going to synagogue every morning and every night and would be doing it for eleven months. The same held true for my brother, who was eight years older than me. It was a big eight years at that age because while I was in the middle of high school and living the life of a teenager, he was in his last year of law school, had been married for a few years, and his wife was about six weeks away from giving birth to their first child. But even so, we had always done everything together. We even lived in the same room in our house until he moved out for college. So naturally, we started attending the daily service together. Very early in the process, I came to understand that while the ritual of saying the mourner’s prayer is ostensibly to honor the dead, in reality, it provides a tremendous benefit for the living survivors. It was an enormous help to me on several key levels, and the most important one for me was that the rabbi of this particular synagogue was truly a spiritual giant. We got to spend an enormous amount of time with him and became extremely close. So, that new way of life began for me in the second week of December of 1965. Let’s jump ahead almost six months later to the end of May of 1966. As I’ve said, we have an enormous amount of resiliency at that age, and even with all the trauma around the death, I was still having a great year at school. My brother, Mike and I had been attending services every morning and night. We never missed a service and we intended to keep it that way, but suddenly something came up that was going to be an insurmountable problem for him. His last year of law school was coming to an end and soon, it would be time for him to take the bar exam. A two-day cram course was being offered that went until nine each evening and he was going to have to miss services for two nights. It was upsetting to him but there was no away around it and it absolutely had to happen. The first night came and I attended the service without him. It really was no big deal and I didn’t pay any attention to it. It was a normal night. I ate dinner with my mother, went to the synagogue and said the prayer, came home and did my homework and eventually got washed and went to bed. Then, one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me took place For some reason, I didn’t feel tired at all and thought I was going to have some trouble falling asleep. I was just lying there, and the next thing I knew, I suddenly found myself back in the chapel of the synagogue once again. It was a strange sensation because I felt like I had actually gone back in time. The events that had just happened a few hours earlier started happening again. It was like watching an instant replay, but instead of just watching it, I was living through it. Everything happened exactly as it had, just a few hours earlier. Services ended, and I walked out of the chapel. But this time, when I entered the main lobby, I heard a sharp sound. “Psst! Psst!” It was clear to me that whatever that replay had been was over. I knew I was in new territory because nothing like this had happened earlier. The sound came from my left. I looked over at the dark corner near the sanctuary doors and suddenly, my father stepped out of the shadows. Amazed, I walked right over to him. As I got closer, he gave me a warm smile and I was struck by how great he looked. He was wearing a gray suit with a purple shirt. The collar was opened, and he had a dark, healthy suntan like he had been in the Caribbean or Hawaii for a few months. He also seemed a little younger, with slightly more hair, which was slicked back. In short, he looked tremendous. “Where’s Michael?” he asked, as soon as I got close. “Oh, he couldn’t come tonight,” I said. “He has to study for the bar exam. They’re having a cram course, and tonight’s the first class.” “Oh, right, right. That’s good,” he said, sounding like he knew exactly what I was talking about. “He’ll pass it. He’ll do fine. He’s going to become a lawyer, and he’ll go right into the firm. Everything’s going to work out well for him.” Then he got a little serious. “But, watch out for your sister, though,” he said soberly. “She’s not doing so great.” “Sybil?” I wondered. “...
