It Happened Again ...

I am torn. I want to be there more often, but it happens whenever I am that I am overtaken by melancholy. Both this morning and afternoon, I felt it ... as always, unlike how I feel anywhere else-even his room from which I write these words tonight.

I am grateful each time I take my seat in shul-no matter the occasion: be it the somber yet joyous lessons of Purim, the simcha of Simchas Torah or the trepidation of Yom Kippur, my son is with me.

Now other fathers have their sons sitting next to them, and I do miss that! Woulds't that I had him back, but I've something they do not. My son is ... well, I was going to say "within me" but that somehow just does not ring true.

Seems more like a caricature than a true representation of how I feel. I look over to his yahrzeit plaque on the wall and what I realize every time is, as if it were for the first time, that here am I still-time inexorably moving forward pausing for no one. I remember thinking this afternoon so much time has already passed, and there is nothing I can do about it, but there is one thing of which I am certain. I'll never say that I once had a son named Ben.

I sit down in the same chair in which I've sat many years ... lamenting that another day has passed.

Yet I won't tell you I'm not glad to be alive.

Still ... know that there are moments when I am filled with guilt that it was he and not I.

Note to readers: Pictured is one of Ben's leaves on the Etz Chaim in my shul-not his yahrzeit plaque to which I made reference above.