Dad died this morning

There is a God. He was so sick, and so ready to go, and I was so afraid he'd hang on for weeks more in needless torture. This is--accepting and getting past the inevitabilty of it all, knowing that there was no chance for it to go any other way--a good thing.

I got The Call from my sister about half an hour ago. When there's a terminally ill family member and the phone rings at 6:30 am on a Saturday morning, you don't have to ask what's up.

I was up until 2 this morning, waiting for Em and Baroy to get back from some Harry Potter-related festivities and then getting Em into bed. I suppose that I should refrain from making some bad joke about how I now know who dies in the end, huh? Because that would be inappropriate, and it would make you all uncomfortable, and...Yeah, I know. Too late.

I know there are no 'should's in mourning, but I really wish I felt more like crying. Or at all like crying. A man's death--my father's death--really should be worth a few tears. Maybe they'll come later. Maybe they won't. Maybe I'll mourn in other ways, in my own way.

I also wish I knew more about him so that at some point--not right now, because while I'm not crying, I am too raw to do much in the way of 'real writing'--I could do a bloggish eulogy for him, to tell you all a little bit about him. Maybe at some point I'll dredge up some of the less-painful memories of him to talk about. Maybe I'll just let him rest in peace. Time will, I guess, tell.

Sometimes, on Saturdays, I go to my synagogue to attend Shabbat morning services. This is not something I talk a lot about to people. It seems to weird them out, and rightly so, since I spent approximately 41 years being either neutral or outright anti-religious. And I don't talk about it that much here, either, because I'm not quite sure myself what to make of it. But there you have it. I go, and because I'm not yet comfortable with the idea of doing an aliyah, I usually get called up to dress the Torah--I'm becoming an expert Torah-dresser--which is probably making my mother wonder who the hell this person writing is...

But I digress. Let me start again. Sometimes, on Saturdays, I go to my synagogue to attend Shabbat morning services. I go alone, because Saturday services are no place for boisterous 6-year-olds. When we were at services last night--it was the monthly potluck and one of the two Fridays each month we try to attend as a family when and if possible--I said I'd try to be there. But then it got to be so late last night, and I didn't go to bed, and I was thinking I'd probably just sleep in instead. Until, that is, the phone rang this morning with the news. My first really coherent thought after I hung up? Well, that decides it. Someone needs to go say kaddish for my dad, and that one might as well be me.

Like I said, maybe I'll mourn in my own way.

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba...