I was lying down, resting. I felt my tongue in my mouth and it was dry, so I got up to get a bottle of water from the fridge to quench my thirst. As I got up he came in, my dad, my Abba, he was gone for so long on his business trip. He was gone so long that I had thought he died. First thing I did was give him a giant hug, squeezing him while his beard poked me in the neck. We caught up. I told him about the Jewish Day School, Shalhevet, that I was going to because that’s what he wanted, talked about my bar mitzvah, and about all my friends at school. There was something I needed to remember. When I finally realized what it was I started crying but I didn’t care. I knew it was a dream, but I stayed with him as long as I could because I didn’t know how long I had or if I would ever see him again.

I was twelve when I said goodbye. I was the last person from my family to see him. I’ve had to cope with this pain for five years. When I say cope I mean it, because when you lose someone you don’t get over the pain, all you can do is miss him or her less. The hardest part of this tragedy was that I barely knew him. I was not close to my dad; in fact it was that year, 6th grade, when I began to know who my dad was.

This college application process has brought many things in to the light for me. There were questions about my parents and I could answer most of them for my mom just fine, but when it came to my dad I couldn’t even fill out his name because I didn’t know it. This is not a case of repression or memory encoding failure, the fact was plain and simple, I didn’t know my father.

The easiest part for me was the time right when he passed. In hindsight, I realize what I did was extremely unhealthy but I developed some of my best ideas during this time and since I entered high school I haven’t been able to tap in to that part of my mind until recently. The time after his death, I shut down. I, almost literally, became a robot. I developed a logical standpoint on everything in my life. The way that I dealt with my pain was with a simple mantra: “He had to die so that I could reach my full potential.”

I know that I have not reached my full potential, yet. I am still discovering who I am. I am growing, maturing, learning and I owe it to the stranger I called Abba. He was the toughest person I knew, my role model. I love him even now and thanks to him my life will never be the same. This isn’t anger or sadness, but this is acceptance and gratitude because I would not be the person I am today without him, MY DAD.