Dear Dad,
It's been almost seven months since you died. I can't believe it. It seems like seven minutes, seven hours, seven days. Maybe -- maybe -- seven weeks have passed, but not seven months. It just doesn't seem possible.
There's so much I've wanted to tell you, but couldn't. That's not why I'm writing, though. I'm writing to let you know about seven very special people you may be meeting soon. They were astronauts, one was the first Israeli to travel into space.
This Israeli, Ilan Ramon, was a father. He left behind a little girl, much younger than I am, but I feel her loss, nevertheless. Her mother says the little girl had a premonition that her father was lost to her, even before the shuttle broke into pieces, shattering seven families and several nations.
I didn't have a premonition, I was told you were going to die, and then four days later, you did. I wonder if she suffered, waiting for her father to return to her, sensing he wouldn't.
Ilan means tree in Hebrew. Funny that a man who soared so high had a name so rooted in the earth.
Gravity isn't holding Ilan Ramon back anymore, and it isn't holding you back. It's not causing clumsy falls or worse.
Nothing can hold you back. I wonder what it's like to be so untethered.
Sometimes I feel like I'm floating, adrift. Your presence kept me grounded, a force as strong as gravity. Since you died, I've sometimes felt like I was alone in the atmosphere, floating around unattached to the umbilical cord that reaches to home, to you.
If I thought you were out there, in the cosmos, I might become an astronaut myself.
I've never really understood the desire to journey out into the great unknown, but it's starting to make sense to me, now. I think space is where science and religion meet. There is something sacred about all that is unexplored.
When I picture Neil Armstrong taking those first steps on the moon, what strikes me is the purity, the near-holiness of that moment.
I was four years old when he said, "The Eagle has landed." Where were you when Armstrong took his first steps, Dad? I'm afraid I'll never know.
It takes tremendous confidence in man and God to journey to the outer limits. And yet a part of me resists the idea that there are answers "out there."
I've always believed that peace, wisdom, love, are all inside us, gifts that we receive when we share them.
Although I have faith in forces I cannot see, I am painfully aware that sometimes they fall short. Although nature is perfect, science -- our knowledge of nature -- is not, and maybe that's as it should be.
Gravity disappointed me when it let you go, dad. But I hope it is lifting you up, all of you.
I miss you. We all do.
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.
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