Efraim Blum - My Father

I want to focus on just one aspect of my father that I think is particularly noteworthy. My father was very quiet, very introverted, plus being that he came from a small, Jewish village in Poland, he never quite mastered the English language. He was truly an anachoronism, not at all of this modern world but of some virtuous age of the past. Contrast all that with my mother, who was very outgoing, modern, with endless friends, was born in Chicago, and not only spoke perfect American English, but also had quite a literary writing style and even perfect handwriting. She also seemed very independent, and unfortunately with her rebellious personality did not always show respect for my father, and yet when my father died, she fell apart. I had no idea what was going on at the time; in my naivette, I thought that since he was so quiet, almost invisible, that his passing would not make much of an impact at all on my mother or even family life in general. How wrong I was, and deadly so, for it cannot be a coincidence that exactly one year after my father died, my mother went into a coma from which she never woke up. What I have come to realize since then is that for my mother, my father was a source of inner strength for her. Yes, she appeared to be a free spirit, yet the fact is that that feeling of freedom could only take place because my father's inner strength gave her the security she needed to feel free. I realize that sounds like a paradox, but unbridled freedom results in pure chaos, in living the kind of messed-up life that the Hollywood crowd is all too guilty of, but with my father providing her with a psychological and moral anchor, she did not have to worry about her life going asunder. I will say that to this day, I have yet to meet anybody, even the greatest of Rabbis, who is as truly morally upright as my father was. To say that he provided me with a good, solid, unbreakable moral paragon of virtue, would surely be the understatement of the century. Daddy, I am truly sorry for not always respecting you, and for not adequately appreciating you when it mattered, that is, when you were still alive, but one thing I know, is that I will never forget you, nor would I ever want to.