Yesterday (11/2/2023) was the thirteenth anniversary of Dad's death. His Yahrzeit will be next Friday (11/9) which corresponds to 25 Heshvan 5784. I will be lighting a candle for him, per Jewish tradition.

After years of religious school, I still don't really understand what the Jewish belief / narrative is of an afterlife. My own is that there isn't one ... if I am wrong, someone will tell me when I get there, wherever "there" is. However, I can imagine the world Dad would see if he were cognizant of things as they stand today.

I titled this "Part 1" because this might become something longer and more circuitous than a single-part story. It also has the potential to become a very broad thing ... other family members and friends may choose to add a piece to it. Dad was a very warm, gregarious man. He was a "people person" and he derived a lot of joy from his connections with other people: family, friends, even casual aquaintances. What I am thinking is to share some of the stories of his family and friends and where we are now. If there is an afterlife, maybe they have Internet access, and he can catch up by reading them.

So my first bit is about myself, and Paula, and beekeeping. Paula looks at the way I interact with people today, and says "there is a lot of your father in you." That's new ... I used to be much more shy and afraid to engage with people ... known or unknown. Some of it does come from the memories of Otto. Some comes with age and contentment.

I think that Dad would be very happy to see that Paula and I are still married, very happily. His family life growing up was difficult. His parents separated when he was two years old. His relationship with his wife was also fraught with turmoil and difficulty. My parents loved each other, but they had a really hard time living with each other. The details and reasons are unimportant now. I am sure that his life after he married and had children was not as he had imagined it. So, hopefully he knows that at least one of his children did find a really excellent partnership in life.

I attached an image of our back yard from earlier this year. It is filled with bee hives (full of bees) and stacks of beekeeping equipment. I took up beekeeping in April, 2017 ... long after he was gone. He would have loved the honey. I am sure that he would have had many dozens of questions about bees and beekeeping. I would be spending hours telling him about honey bees, and other bees, and wasps and flowers and trees. His eyes would probably roll back into his head when he realized that I would not stop talking about them if he gave me an opening. I think he would be pleased, though, that I found a hobby that really gave me a lot of pleasure. It is also a business that puts me into contact with hundreds of other people and has helped me to develop some of my "Inner Otto Guttmann."

Dad enjoyed going back to Hamburg in his later years. He took advantage of the opportunity to tour the city and enjoy the hospitality of the city when he was invited to join a reunion / return group of Holocaust survivors. I'm not sure what the term is for those things.

On his last trip to Hamburg, Paula and I accompanied him. Dad was having some foot problems, and his walking speed was somewhat slowed. We were being shuttled around the city by tour bus, and the group leaders approached me a few minutes before it was time to get on the bus. They asked if we could start him toward the bus early because they were always waiting for him to catch up. So we got him heading toward the bus, at his pace.

They must have announced for everyone to board the bus because soon everyone else in the group was walking along us, and then past us. Everyone else was on the bus, and we were still a long way off.

I asked Dad if it was possible for him to walk a little bit faster. He looked at me and said "I have two speeds. That is my thinking speed. Walking through the city brings back all kinds of memories and makes me think. Here is my other speed." And he took off, like a shot, ambling at a very respectable pace, to the bus. He was never late for the bus for the rest of the trip.