That was a question that came my way yesterday from a very thoughtful and well-intentioned man.

Ah, well, uh, oh. I didn’t know what to say. I think I stuttered a bit. Talking about love, sex and money is one thing. But talking about G-D? That’s private.

My friend persisted. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the soul?

It was an interesting pop quiz about that which is most on my mind right now. What does the end mean? Where did my father go? What about his soul?

Right now, I told this friend, my father is more present than ever. I am not feeling his loss yet because I am obsessed with him. He is everywhere as I piece together the last year; as I piece together our life together.

And then the lack hits. The sense of something missing. Yesterday I cried quietly reading the ad he wrote for National Library Week. I cried realizing that I would never see him rub his hands together when he embarks on the punchline of a joke or the crux of a good story.

I even cried that I wouldn’t get to hear his reaction to the current financial crisis. There is still so much about his childhood, his years in Los Angeles, his college days, advertising and more that we never got around to.

There is so much to come that I won’t hear his reaction to. News. Articles in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books. Music. Movies. Theater. American Idol.

Yeah, American Idol.

I’m even going to miss the calls we exchanged during American Idol. "How’d you like that?" or "That was pretty awful." or "Did you hear Simon?"

Do you believe in life everlasting my friend asked again. All I could think of was what that old boyfriend of mine said to me last week on the phone. ""I think we have memories because it’s so hard to vanish from one another," he said quietly.

Yeah.