It is always hard to accept the fleeting movement of time. We mark our lives by taking note of life events, major moves, births and deaths.  These events shake us and cause us to stand up and take notice the passage of time.  The kids are the quintessential time marker for parents - when they are young, we see them every day, but don't have the perspective to actually see them doing the growing.  Suddenly, at a birthday or school graduation, it dawns on us that the young adults are no longer kids, the kids no longer babies and thus we mark the passage of time.  

Throughout the last year, I have felt a much more marked passage of time.  It is now a year since Dad died and no year has ever gone by with such a specific counting.  Morning, noon and night, I have said Kaddish in synagogues in different cities and continents.  Through dark, cold snow-blown mornings and hot, sweaty summer afternoons waiting for a 10th to make the quorum, I have lead the prayers and said the kaddish prayer thousands of times.  The days and weeks were counted until the eleventh month when we cease saying kaddish and the days and weeks until the official year of mourning is over and traditional mourning practices let us go. 

This past year is ripe with change, challenges both physical and emotional and growth. I sense a shift from being primarily a son to being a father.  I cease to look primarily forward and begin to take more notice of what is going on at my sides, I sense the shift in viewing the past and those behind me who represent the future.  A milestone has been passed, one that cannot be regarded with indifference, the date is forever chiseled in stone and year-by-year will present itself to us and require us to reflect.  Exactly a year has been counted and there is a new word in my lexicon - yahrzeit.  Life has changed.