Cards

I am folding cards, "Thank You" cards for all those people, relatives, friends, who have come to my father's funeral, shown their respect, sent e-mails, flowers. It is hard to lose a parent, no matter how old they are. But doing this is a healing process. Every time I fold a card he smiles at me, as if saying: it is alright. You are doing fine. I am okay, don't worry. And instead of feeling sad, I start smiling back at him, at his picture which we have carefully chosen for this card, because it represents who he really was. That is how we want to remember him. He seems content with the way we have handled things. It is a very soothing and satisfying process, selecting a picture, writing words which seem appropriate for him, designing a card, no matter how simple. He would have appreciated it, was very creative himself, far more so than any of his children. What was condensed in him in one package, he distributed piecemeal among his children, just giving each of us some of his genes, his talents, and those often diluted in the process. No one can paint as he could and some of us can't draw the simplest thing. The Christmas cards and birthday cards he sent were always handmade, sometimes painted on scraps of drawing paper, always different. Not every one of us is musical, or has a passion for photography, a love of travel, a hunger for knowledge, an eye for nature and its wonders. None of us ever built our own telescope, our own photo-printer out of waste material. We do not all go with the times, accepting innovations. Not all of us can write or make a coherent speech. We are not all as erudite as he was, although we have had much better opportunities, and are not self-taught as he was of necessity. But that never mattered to him. He accepted us the way we were, encouraged us to use our talents to the full. Neither do we possess his strong and almost childlike faith, his devotion to what he believed in, his disarming honesty when he talked about his conviction, his beliefs. That was one of the things which worried him, that not all of his children shared this faith. That some of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren grew up without any biblical knowledge or religious awareness. The last months of his life, when he was no longer able to go out, or read, he said to me that there still was a task for him, that his life had not become totally useless: the need to pray for his offspring, each and every one of them, that they might come to believe in God. For him it was the most important thing in his life. Every time I put a card in an envelope, fifty, sixty, even ninety times, he looks at me, smiles, approves. And  I am happy.