My beloved father was shot and killed in a robbery on April 5, 1966. After all these years, I still cry. He was 60 years old when three young men with guns entered his small store, where he worked long hours. He had been planning to retire and enjoy his grandchildren, who were too young to remember him.
It was the first day of Passover. The last time I saw my father was at a seder the night before. It took me five years to sit through one. Now, every year, before the seder, my family does a short service so that my sister and I can say Kaddish, the mourners’ prayer. What should be a joyous holiday about freedom has become one of painful memories.
The night of my father’s last seder, I got my 9-month-old son out of his crib and put him in my father’s arms. I will always be glad I did that. My father never saw my daughter.
At 16, my father, with his family, had fled pogroms and the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. A decent, hard-working man, he was shot down while earning a living in the capital of the United States of America.