About a week ago we got a call from Reno from an advertising agency.
It was a woman, a very nice woman and in the course of conversation she asked if we were related to Harry Copelan.
‘He was such a nice man,’ she said. ‘We had such wonderful conversations.’
She was truly sad when we told her that he had passed away some 16 years ago, 16 years ago May 8th in fact.
Our father did leave an impression on people and we can think of no better memorial to him or indeed to anyone than years after he has gone people still think of him with kindness.
This May 8th we will say Yizkor, the special prayer of remembrance as we have done every year but this one will be said with perhaps a bit more feeling.
We are awaiting our second grandchild who is due any moment.
He will be our father’s 7th great grandchild and we think he would have been pleased.
We almost wrote how we would have liked him to be at all the family events of the past 16 years. The births, the bar mitzvahs, the weddings and the graduations.
But then we realized that he was.
In the hearts of his children and grandchildren, he was thought of.
With kindness.