The Passing Of My Father
Months ago, I wrote a farewell column, planning to embark on a new adventure in my career. And now here I am hoping that you will all welcome me back with open arms.
It's been a rough few months. The good thing is that I came back home to South Florida. I am home where everything is familiar. I am home, close to the people I hold so dear to my heart.

All but one that is.

I am dealing with the loss of the best man I have ever known - my father. Seymour David Moed passed away on January 7, 2006. As I write this, it is not yet two weeks since he is gone. Sometimes it already feels like he has been gone for an eternity. Other times I feel like it's only been a few moments.

It amazes me how much my mother's, siblings', aunt's, and my lives changed within seconds. The world now seems empty somehow. And the truth is that I don't know how to deal with it. I'm not sure that any of us do.

I am left with this feeling of guilt for leaving my father behind. It was especially hard to leave him there the day of the funeral. It was so unfair that the rest of were going back to be with family and friends, and leaving him alone in the ground. I was told that his soul is not there anymore, and that what is buried was his shell. I am trying to grasp that idea, but it's not working out so well. All I keep thinking is that the rest of us have each other, and my father is all alone.

It was also so hard for me to see my mother, who is always the strong one of the family, break down and cry. What it must feel like to lose the man she shared 46 years of marriage with is something I also cannot grasp.

While we were sitting shiva two people told me that they saw my father there, in the home he and my mother shared for the past eight years. I looked at the places they said they saw him, but much to my disappointment I did not see him there. I also did not feel him there. I wanted to. I still want to.

I think that's what makes all of this even harder. I don't feel him anywhere. I feel like he is so far away. I don't feel his spirit close to me. And I want to so badly. I am hoping that when the time comes that I am permitted to visit him in the cemetery that perhaps I will feel his presence there. It's not that I want to feel him there - it's just that I want to feel him anywhere. I want to feel like he is not so far away. I want to talk to him. I want to feel him next to me.

But it does make sense that if his spirit is anywhere on this earth, it is in the home he shared with my mother. I'd like to believe he is there with her, making sure she is OK.
When I wrote my weekly column, my father was my biggest fan and most loyal reader. He would call me every week when it was published and tell me that this one was my best column yet. My aunt - his younger sister - has requested that I send her, in New York, my column every week. She said that after she reads it she will call me and tell me that it was my best column yet.

At my father's funeral, I wrote and delivered a eulogy. It was the hardest thing I have ever written. And now I can say now that this column is the second hardest thing I have ever written.