In the last episode, I had recounted the painful experiences during the days after my father's sudden death. There was a massive funeral for him, and after a one week mourning period, I had returned to my eleventh-grade world. And it was really difficult trying to navigate my way back to normal life. The whole experience had been such a shock and I was still so overcome with grief that it seemed like it was never going to end. My father had died on Dec. 3, 1965 and it had begun a really dark time for me. But then, fifty-five days later, on January 26, 1966, a little light began to break through when my brother's first child, was born. It was a boy and of course, they named him Isaac. I came to visit the day they brought him home from the hospital. He was sound asleep, but they let me go in the room as long as I didn't disturb him. I walked over to the crib and put my hand on it. He was just a few days old and I had never seen a baby that young before. His brand-new, innocent face was unmarked by any traces of emotion or thought. It was hard to believe that we all start out this way, and the innocence of it moved me. As I stood there with my hand on his crib, it felt oddly familiar, and I soon realized that I had been in the same position at my father's funeral, just six weeks earlier. Only then, I was standing next to a coffin, looking at death. Now, I was standing next to a crib, looking at birth – the sadness of the end of one life, followed by the joy of the beginning of another.           For the first time, I got a real sense of the beauty of the cycle of life. The triumphs and tragedies, the beginnings and endings were like a wheel - one following another. As I looked at the purity of the newborn's face, I got a feeling of continuity that helped soften the blow of finality.  Still, I felt sad that the new baby and his grandfather would never know each other. Then I remembered that my father had told me he would never be the grandfather to this child. It had only been a few months earlier, but it hadn't occurred to me until then. His comment had sounded so strange at the time. Now it was just one more prophetic piece of the mysterious puzzle surrounding my father's death.   *** A few weeks later, my aunt called my mother with a problem. My Aunt Hommie was my father's younger sister. All her life, he had been her protector and confidant, and his sudden death had devastated her. She was also my mother's best friend. After my parents' marriage, they had moved into my father's parent's house above the store with the rest of the family, and they had become as close as sisters. She said that several months earlier, she had given my father some money to hold for her—about $4,000—and was wondering if my mother knew anything about it. My mother had no idea. My father had never mentioned it to her and it wasn't in any of the papers he had left behind. Now, $4,000 was a pretty significant amount of money back then, so it was kind of serious. Regardless, they promised each other they would not let it become an issue between them. My mother said she would start looking into it immediately and see what she could find. The first thing the next morning, she went into my father's office to go through his papers again. As soon as she walked in, she noticed that one book was sticking out from all the others on a bookshelf, clearly separated from the rest. She went right to it, opened it up, and a paper fell out onto the floor. To her amazement, written in my father's handwriting, it was an exact accounting of Hommie's money, with all the details - the amount, what bank it was in, and the account number. My mother was certain the book had not been there when she left the office, just the night before. She called Hommie. They had a good, long cry and happily resolved the situation. The whole thing did them both a lot of good. In fact, it did us all a lot of good. *** Finally, two months later, something very profound happened with my grandfather. It was Passover and my mother had both Seders at our house, as always. The first one was April 5, 1966, exactly four months to the day after my father's funeral. Our family was closer than ever. Not only had we all gone through the death trauma together, we had also closed ranks around my father's parents, who were still struggling. Supposedly, nothing is worse than the death of one's child, and losing my father had clearly drained the life out of them. They were both completely devastated. About forty people came. Passover is a happy, festive holiday and we all behaved like everything was normal. Nobody even mentioned my father, whose absence was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room everyone was ignoring. We all sat down for the Seder. My grandfather's seat was in the center of the head table. The service starts with three blessings. He stood up and cleared his throat. We all joined him as he sang the first one, over the wine, and then the one over the bread. We all said, "Amen," and waited for him to begin the third one, called the Shehecheyanu. It's a particularly momentous two-thousand-year-old prayer, said only on certain special religious holidays. Simply translated, it means, "Blessed art thou, o Lord our God, king of the Universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us and brought us to this great day." It is sometimes invoked on non-religious occasions as well. For instance, at the stroke of midnight on May 14, 1948, when the State of Israel gained its independence, the Government's first official act was to recite the Shehecheyanu. As Zayde stood there getting ready to sing it, something seemed to be bothering him. He began, but his voice was shaky and weak. When he got to the actual word Shehecheyanu, he choked up and couldn't go on. He just stood there for a moment, then sat down, burst into tears, and buried his head in his hands. He obviously had been holding back his feelings all night, but when he got to that word the damn broke, and the pain in his heart came flooding out through his tears. He was crying from the depths of his soul and it was one of the saddest things I'd ever seen. My Uncle Ray, his youngest child, came over to him and put his arm around his shoulder. "OK, Pop, it's OK. Come on, let's do the prayer together. We'll all do it with you. Come on." "No," Zayde responded, with his head still buried in his hands. We waited another minute for him to regain his composure. He finally stopped crying, but he didn't budge. He just sat there, crumpled over. "Pop, we have to do the prayer," Uncle Ray said. "We can't go on without it. You just have to do it. Now, come on. We'll all do it together." Zayde finally sat up and wiped his eyes with his napkin. "No," he said, recomposed, but firm.  "No. Not this year." He turned the page of the book and cleared his throat. My uncle stood there, but after a moment went back to his seat. Zayde continued the Seder and we all turned our pages and followed along. There was nothing else to do. But as he sang, a noticeable change came over him. His old confidence seemed to be coming back and his voice got stronger with each prayer. Everyone noticed it and soon, the whole room was elevated. And as he kept going, he kept getting stronger.  It wasn't like he had been miraculously healed and the pain had gone away. No, the pain was still clearly there. But now he seemed to be on top of it instead of under it, and that was a huge difference. I could see the light returning to his pale-blue eyes. They had been vacant for so long; I had forgotten the sparkle they used to have.  I've often wondered what actually happened to him that night. We never discussed it, but I knew that in my grandfather's world, the world of the true cantor, when you prayed, you prayed from the heart. You meant it. And he couldn't sing that prayer for real. He just couldn't thank God for keeping us alive, when his son had been ripped away from him, only a few months earlier. So, he refused to follow the form and instead of faking it, he just moved on. At first, I thought it might have been a statement of doubt or anger, but it didn't look that way. He had just hit a personal impasse and had gone around it. And as he did, his spirit kept strengthening.  Could the sincerity in his heart have created an inner bridge that had actually brought him closer to God?  Had he gotten to the essence of the prayer by refusing to follow the form? Who knows?  According to the mystics, there are profound inner experiences that transcend rites and rituals. Well, he certainly was a mystic. And without a doubt, something profound had happened to him.  So, three small, but significant events – my experience with the birth of the baby, the resolution of Aunt Hommie's money, and my grandfather's transformation, each had a deeply positive effect on me and opened my eyes to more light. But they were nothing compared to what was coming next. Well, that's the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let's get together in the next one.

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