Goodbye Dad
I am sitting here in the airport for a very long layover (9 hours) and trying to describe my feelings, yet unable to find the right single word or even a phrase, which would capture how I feel. I am definitely sad, and I feel a huge loss, an emptiness. I also am somewhat confused and an array of other feelings and words. On Sunday night, I said my final good bye to my father. For 88 years, he was very healthy, did not take any meds and was fully functional: driving, going out to eat every day, bowling in a league, going to movies and shows; a full range of life’s activities. And then, he started to get sick: a combination of congestive heart failure and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), the smoker’s disease. Even though he quit smoking in 1989, he had been a heavy smoker for nearly 40 years and the damage was done. Over the last 2 years, the frequency of my visits (Israel to Florida) increased and the time between visits decreased from once every 3 months to every