....adrift.....

Master of the Universe....we were doing so well.....at least that is what I thought.

Lisa, Adam, Danielle and I ....our little ship....we were putting in the effort....like so many others....It is not for me to know your ways...but we were each working hard....all at our own pace....I was trying to be sensitive to the fragile and most delicate balance needed to maintain shalom in our home....all the while trying to steer the tiny craft that is my family towards you.....That is why it is so difficult to wrap my arms around this....

It is not for me to be angry....and as my grandmother Fannie Birenbaum of blessed memory would at times caution me...."don't be a chuchum"....in other words ....don't be a "wise alec"....this of course is not my intent.

I never wanted to take anything for granted....we have been so blessed by your munificence and kindness..... I have wept tears of joy on my long walks to shul for many years now.... hoping to one day earn the right to live b'emzah...in the very center of "the community" at the right time and not before.....

Cold...rain...snow...I never cared...my heart soared on these long journeys to and from Shul...at other times my heart ached a bit, (and at times a little more than a bit), as my beautiful son Adam silently soldiered on by my side....Adam never complained Hashem...he never wavered....no one else I know would do it...could do it?!?! ...anyone who might taste it would think it unthinkable...meshuganah....I fully understand that....I do not say this brashly cofsah shalom...G-d forbid....its just....

And Lisa and Danielle.....we were all moving closer to you....at our own speed.....Shabbos and Yom Tovim were beautiful..... And then this thunderbolt ...this blast from heaven...it has come at us without warning....and it was such a direct hit....we we were woefully unprepared...the tiny craft that carried my family has been destroyed....in its entirety.

I see now that we will have to learn to navigate anew..... We are physically scattered now....not in the same way as when you send off a child for a summer program....a year abroad....university studies.... We WANT to be together ......we had been together....our small and humble team....yet we are now adrift.....longing to be as one....

If my memory serves me correctly Hashem.....you used the word teva only twice in the entirety of your holy Torah. You used it first as this was the basket moshe rabbainu was floating in when he was lifted from the Nile.... the second time was when Noah's family set sail with your precious animals....

I am heartened by this as neither of these tevas had a system of navigation other than...You... The Ribbono Sh'Olam. I surrender to you Hashem....I beseech you to hear us and please help us....my family surrenders ourselves fully and completely to your most awesome navigational skills....we know they are like no other. This is well beyond the medical emergency that has brought me here.....we thought we were sailing in placid seas....but you wanted for us to sail higher.

I am again heartened by what Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler of blessed memory has said in his magnificent work Strive For Truth.... Rabbi Dessler says that it is at exactly these moments ....at exactly these times that we are given the gift of our greatest potentiality..... Rabbi Dessler says that "in the falling is the rising"....that "in the darkness is the light".....absent our old small ship...we are swimming towards you Hashem all the same... the tears that have been streaming down the faces of my family.....these are not tears of sadness....well maybe some of them are.....but mostly all of them are the tears of the love we have for one another....the raw and real desire to be closer than ever before....I dream to be a more elevated ezer kenegdo...a more elevated helper who is my equal to the love of my life...my precious Lisa....

I dream of being a more elevated father....the best father to my fine and most special son Adam the world has ever seen......and of course I dream of being a more elevated father to my precious Danielle....the best father since the beginning of time.

Lisa, Adam, Danielle I love you with every part of my being. We no longer have a ship but the sparks within our neshamas are the same so we still sail together. Sleep well in Philadelphia my precious children....sleep well in NYC my most blessed Lisa.

I love you VERY much,

sleep well
papa