I am scheduled to fly to Houston tomorrow night to teach a power industry course on Tuesday and Wednesday. My flight selection back and forth is minyan determined, as always. Thus, I am scheduled to leave on the last flight out tomorrow night so that I can drive back to Silver Spring in the afternoon to make mincha/maariv and then rush back to DC to make my flight out. On Wednesday my course ends mid-day but I have to stay to make mincha/maariv there and so I will be returning on the last flight back Wednesday night. I am not sure what I will do in Houston for 5 hours waiting to daven but I will figure that out on Wednesday.

Now to the added complication – snow. A snow storm is predicted to hit the east coast tonight. While the total accumulation for the DC area is predicted to be relatively light who knows what impact the snow storm will have on air travel. If I change my flights to an earlier flight I will definitely not be able to say kaddish at mincha and probably not at maariv unless I can find a late maariv in Houston. Of course, there is no way to predict whether I am more likely to get off on time on my late flight out – when by all predictions the snow will have passed for several hours or whether I will do better on an earlier flight.

What is an aveil to do?

Obviously it is all in G-d’s hands. I don’t know yet what I will do.

One thing is for sure the stress of saying kaddish continues all the way through the year of aveilus!