12 years

Today is the 12th anniversary of my Dad’s, Peter’s, passing, according to the Hebrew calendar. He died on 13 Tammuz 5763/12 July 2003 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. Today is our yahrzeit.

So much has happened in my life in the last 12 years that I wish he could have shared with us. Here are some of the highlights:

I met Gina just a few months after my Dad passed away and she became my wife on one of the happiest days of my life.

I left the firm I was working for, started my own law firm which evolved into two businesses which didn’t go quite as I had hoped. In the meantime, we started a small furry family …

… and, soon after that, we started our human family and I became a Dad myself early one morning.

A few challenging years later, our family expanded with our little girl’s arrival and, wow, what a difference in personality.

Time went on (as it does, inevitably) and our family grew and our kids developed their ever-changing personalities and challenge us daily …

I made many mistakes along the way and wanted to be able to talk to my Dad about them, get his advice. All I could really do was think about what he would have suggested and done the best I could as a Dad and as a husband to my very patient and loving wife.

Our next big change was our move to our new home in Israel last year. It was probably one of the best decisions Gina and I have made for our family. People outside Israel sometimes don’t understand why we would want to move to a country with such a difficult history (and an uncertain future) but Israel feels more like home to us than South Africa ever really did (and South Africa was still a good home for our families for a long time).

I only understood why our South African friends who had spent time in Israel kept telling us they wished they could return, after we had been here for a short while. It is an amazing country even with all the challenges it faces.

I think my Dad would have liked Israel if he had the chance to visit. My Mom told me once that he thought about moving to Israel many years ago. At the very least, he would have loved to visit us in our new home.

I met with an Hospice therapist after my Dad passed away and she told me that when a person dies, they leave a big hole in your life. You never fill that hole but you learn to live around it. I miss my Dad more each day because there are more and more experiences I would have wanted to share with him.

My family is somewhat scattered at the moment. My sister and her family are in Australia, my brother and his wife in Cape Town and my Mom in Johannesburg. Being roughly on the same time-zone as my mother and brother makes it easier to keep in touch and we’ll hopefully be able to share some of our new home with my Mom if she has an opportunity to visit us here.

Days like today usually seem like any other when they begin and as the day goes on, I realise that they are anything but. I try use days like today as reminders to be a better Dad to our kids. I’ve also learned that being a Dad is a full-time occupation in which you are constantly faced with the choices of being more loving and attentive and getting caught up in petty, generally unimportant crap that gets in the way of being a better Dad and husband.

You’re never “done” being a Dad. You never reach some sort of relationship milestone where you can sit back and tick the “Dad” checkbox. Being a Dad is a journey and I often take the wrong route (you know, men and directions …) but I like to think I am heading in the right direction. That is something my kids will have to decide for themselves when they have children of their own some day.

In the meantime, today is a little sadder than usual. I miss my Dad.

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