We would be remiss if we did not mention two dates in this week’s editorial.
The first being of course the Jewish New Year Rosh Ha Shana begins Sunday.
It is on this day that G-d opens the Book of Life and begins to decide who lives another year and who dies.
Which brings us to the second anniversary we should mention.
On Rosh Ha Shana one year ago we were operated on in kind of Hail Mary Pass (sorry for mixing religious metaphors) to cure us from Toxic Shock. It was the surgeon’s best guess, but even he was not taking any bets. Few if any men our age survive Toxic Shock and the infection had been spewing poison into our body for about a week.
It was a trillion to one shot.
Yet we survived.
Our religious friends suggest that we made it because G-d has something for us to do.
That we find a little presumptuous we like to think of ourselves as good, but we ain’t that good. And surely there is no task or challenge ahead of us that could not be done better by someone else.
Frankly we credit our wife, who scared off the Angel of Death probably more than once and sang us out of a coma.
Still living through what was essentially was unsurvivable threw us for a loop.
We are not that special and yet our very presence here and now suggests we are.
Kind of awesome and humbling.
From Sunday night to the next ten days we will be busy repenting our sins of this year and previous years.
And while we are heartfelt sorry for our transgressions we cannot also help but feel joy.
Joy in seing our wife, our daughter, our sons and our grandsons this wonderful year.
We came so close to losing them all yet we didn’t.
Praise G-d.
Baruch Ha Shem.
Happy New Year.