Hearing His Voice Changed Everything

I never knew my father. Did he know me?

The first time I heard my father’s voice he had been dead for 53 years. It all started when my cousin, who lives in Jerusalem, gave me 25 audio reels in round metal cans. She had found them while cleaning out her parents’ home there.

“They’re of your father singing opera,” my cousin told me on one of my infrequent visits to Israel. “I also found his sheet music, negatives and photos. You and your sister should have them.”

After my father died in Canada in 1965, his family clung to these remaining possessions; the clinging forestalled having to give him up completely.