A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-And-Fifty-Five

Today was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and the holiday has me thinking of my dad.  It is not as if Rosh Hashanah had any specific or special meaning in my relationship with him, as though he had shared some personal connection to the holiday.  In truth, the service I most associate with him is Kol Nidrei, the evening service that begins Yom Kippur, the second of the two High Holidays that mark this portion of the Jewish calendar.  Kol Nidrei is the service my father told me he loved the most and found the most beautiful.  I am certain that will hit me, as it has each year, in another week and a half, when Yom Kippur begins.  Tonight, though, it is more general, is just the reminder that another year has come, carrying me farther in time from the moments I shared with him.  I miss him and that growing distance always hurts, but this is how the world goes, pulling our lives ever forward to the future.  He is not here any longer, and that will always be devastating, of course, but I know, as well, that he provided the lessons needed to live a good life even when he could no longer be here to offer further guidance.  

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