Prayer for My Father

Prayer for My Father

After the death of a parent, some observant Jews follow the mourning tradition of avelut, which involves going to the synagogue every day for eleven months, to say the prayer for the dead. After my father died, I wanted to honor his death by committing myself to go to temple every day to say the kaddish. The kaddish is the prayer for the dead, but it never mentions the dead. It is just another thank you prayer to a very needy and uncaring god. I went to one Saturday service, but the rituals and language felt so alien to me that I never went back. 

The time in that musty old, stucco Palm Springs temple left me feeling totally disconnected from my father and my heritage. And yet I had a strong urge to memorialize my father in some manner. On my way home I drove by a desert swap meet that my father had visited many years ago and talked about until the day he could no longer speak.

I parked in the sandy lot and went looking for a particular vendor. My father had bought a knock-off Rolex from the “Beverly Hills Watch-Man” and when the minute hand dropped off a few weeks later he went back and the man gave him a new replacement for free. He wore his “Rolax” with pride and enjoyed showing it to friends, particularly during harsh Detroit winters, when he could tell how he bought it on a sunny and hot January morning from a man in the desert, at a steal of a price.

I found the Watch-Man, although it was his daughter who was now selling the “Rolaxs,” and bought one for myself. Then I found my father’s favorite hot dog vendor and got a hot dog and lemonade, his usual swap meet meal.  

Sitting in the sun with my lunch. I could imagine my father sitting at the picnic table, looking at the snow covered, San Jacinto mountains that border Palm Springs and enjoying the perfect blue sky, 70-degree December afternoon. It was such a beautiful day, one could almost believe in a god. I didn’t, but I said my own little prayer for my father. And for the first time that day, in a world without gods or monsters, I finally understood the prayer I was saying and why I was saying it. 

ERIC BARR taught acting and directing at University of California, Riverside.  He was the Founding Director of the UCR Palm Desert MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts.

 

Barr has written in a number of different genres, from screenplays to poetry.  His work has appeared in Connotation Press, The Journal of Radical wonder, Twenty–two

Twenty-eight, and Worthing Flash. He was a co-writer on the feature film, A Thousand Cuts.  In 2025, his chapbook, striking back, a collection of post-stroke poetry was published by Arroyo Secco Press

 

In addition to his writing, Barr worked as a theatre director and acting coach.   He was the Artistic Director of the Porthouse Theatre in Cleveland, taught movement for actors at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in Los Angeles, and worked as an acting coach with the National Theatre of the Deaf. 

 

Since surviving a series of strokes Barr has written and performed his one-man show, A Piece of My Mind”, about his surgeries, hospitalizations, and rehab, around the country, His podcasts on stroke recovery can be found at http/www.apieceofmymind.net