Cherishing a Life

Picture: Ricki and my faher two years ago.

My Dad died a year ago today. On one hand, I feel very keenly the length of this year. Perhaps it feels long because I had not seen my father for the year and a half preceding his death. And besides, there is that part of me that almost denies that he is gone. But all in all, I do not feel sadness over his passing, but rather a cherishing of the time and life that we shared on planet earth.
My father introduced me to the wonders of G-d’s world (though HE would never have included G-d in this). We shared walks around the local lake in the autumn, multihued leaves spread all around us, and the same walk along with my Collie in the foot-high snow. We shared the trek to the summit of Long’s Peak, from where we could see the face of the land extending all around. Our many summers in the Rockies gave me memories of stands of birch, majestic waterfalls, and boulders set along the trail. For a few years I was my Dad’s “diving partner”. We Scuba dived in the Florida Keys, experiencing the largely unviewed beauty of the coral reefs, and the delicate exquisite beauty of a sea shell.
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On my recent visit to Colorado, I saw an ad for hot springs in Colorado, and was a bit sorry that I would miss the opportunity to visit such a spring. I remember how the family visited such a pool more than once in my childhood, and I had thoroughly enjoyed the experience. However, today I would never visit a mixed-sex bathing pool, so visiting the hot springs was out of the question. So imagine my surprise when my city sponsored a chance to visit a hot springs in Israel (I didn’t know we had any, thinking that the mud baths of the Dead Sea were the closet thing here......). So a few days ago I relaxed in the warm waters of a thermal spring, remembering the wide range of opportunities that my father gave me, and thanking G-d for this wondrous world.