On Sunday evening I completed my eleven months of saying kaddish. Fortunately, as things worked out, I was able to be the chazzan for each service on that final day. I forced myself to “keep it together” and did not show my emotions publicly. I am still trying to take it all in and get accustomed to not saying kaddish. Many friends have confided in me their feelings when they reached the end of their saying kaddish. I am still contemplating what this latest “end” in a year full of “ends” means to me and I am not yet ready to discuss what will at some point be the subject of a future blog post.

I write this post from Boca Raton. I flew here this morning for the annual meeting of the American Bar Association Construction Industry Forum where I will be speaking on Friday morning. This is my first post saying kaddish trip. While in D all week I have been able to keep my “I can’t miss a minyan” schedule. This morning I attended the rocket minyan and then drove to the airport. I can tell, though, that it will be a challenge to ‘never miss a minyan”. Whether rightly or wrongly my attitude when saying kaddish was that I could not miss. Saying kaddish was always the priority and other considerations – including business requirements – had to accommodate my saying kaddish. Thus, there were meetings, events and trips that I just avoided because I could not make them work with saying kaddish. I don’t think I can now maintain that same approach to the same degree. Time will tell how successful I can be – especially when traveling.