Is There Someone in Your Life You Still Miss?

It was December 23, 1943. “Where’s mommy?” I asked my father upon awakening that morning so long ago, and yet at times it seems like yesterday. I was a big boy, all of five years, six months, and twenty days old. But I wanted my mommy. “She had to go back to the hospital,” were the words I heard my father speak. He could not bring himself to tell me that I would never see her again. Nor could anyone in my family tell me. For those were the days when children were shielded as much as possible from grief, and from mourning. After a month of being told daily that my mother was too sick for me to visit her in the hospital, I looked at my father and told him I knew she had died. He didn’t have to say anything. His tears told me everything.

She was buried on Christmas Eve at 2 pm, on an icy Atlanta afternoon.

Sixty-eight years have come and gone since her death. And I still miss her.

Is there someone in your life you still miss…?

Rabbi Alvin Sugarman