My mother tells me my father has cancer

Sometime after dinner, my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and she asked me to walk down to the Pharmacy on Orthodox street and pick up a prescription.

I guess I was a little puzzled as my father does all the errands---at that point, she told me my father had prostate cancer.

I didn't really know what to think---I didn't even know how to spell it (prostrate, prostate) and there was no Internet.

As I walked the two blocks to the Pharmacy and the two blocks back, I sensed that my childhood had just ended.

A little less than 2 years later, my hero, the man to this day I still refer to as the most saintly person I ever met (my mother is saintly too, but her temper and language are a bit stronger), was gone.