"Is that how long it's been?" - he might ask me, if he was here in this world.

I feel like it's been a long time since I did what I consider a conventional personal blog journal style post here.  There are reasons.  I'm always hiding and seeking, and at this moment that brings me back here.

Shabbos was the 6 month anniversary of the passing of my dad OBM. It was sudden. And he was 87.  He was sick.  And he was completely fine. He was starting to slide cognitively.  He was sharp, sharper than many people of that age, still checking his stocks, reading several newspapers and magazines regularly, going to Shul for minyan 3 times a day, playing cards and still winning once or twice a week, on the board of his assisted living facility, dating a lovely, kind, sweet woman (who told me after dad passed that "we'll always be family"), watching Jeopardy and getting the answers right, loving the Big Bang theory, following pretty much every sport, on top of the daily and nightly news and the Sunday morning news focused shows, watching stock related TV, watching Shark tank though h was tired of the reruns because he had seen them all, talking to his best friend and his 2 sons every day, talking with his 2 nieces from his beloved sister on a regular basis, shmoozing and kibitzing with other people in the place - both residents and workers, getting and reading and following up on his daily mail, attending simchas, and more.

Sometimes when people would ask me (often with a sad and sympathetic voice) "How's you're father doing?" I'd say that I think he's doing better than me. A few months ago someone from a publication reached out to me about submitting to them and we agreed that writing about dad's passing made sense.  They told me that if it was on a blog it couldn't be published by them.  For that and other reasons I'm done with this topic for here, for now.