Honor your father and your mother

Tonight between Mincha and Ma'ariv, the Rabbi spoke about the commandment of honoring one's parents.  As he noted, no time of the year is more redolent with parental duty as is Pesach, the only holiday whose obligations are fulfilled inside one's home.  The question was why there is no blessing attached to this mitzvah (commandment).  Several answers were proposed with the most logical one being that this obligation had no fixed time element.  May we be blessed, he continued, to still have the opportunity to fulfill this commandment.  And as for those who have no parents (a truly frightening thought), may we be blessed, the Rabbi concluded, to be the recipient of our own childrens' honor and love.

I don't have my mother.  But I do have my father.  All my child-to-parent feelings are now directed solely toward him.  The mitzvah can still be fulfilled, even if in an incomplete way.  I have not yet been stripped of all connection to the two who (with God) created me.  With my father coming to my home for the first time to celebrate Pesach, it falls upon me to honor him in a more profound way than ever, and through that honor, to honor my mother and her memory.