In Memoriam

As our plane lands I am reminded of the poet's words, "Death is not extinguishing the light. It is turning out the lamp because the dawn has come." Yes, for Ruth Storms, "the dawn has indeed now come."

My grandmother's picture was featured on the cover of the sheet music for "Once In Love With Amy," and the story goes that late one night, my grandfather brought home dozens of copies of the sheet music and hung them up all over their apartment in Forest Hills to surprise her.

When someone you believe you know, and think well of, is at the center of the most horrible act you can imagine, the pieces don't come together. There is no making sense of an incomprehensible action.

Some nights, after working fourteen hours a day in his grocery, my father would sit, his pale blue eyes somewhere as far away as the Black Sea, and speak their names: Chaim, Yossi, Leib, Schmuel.