SOB (sister of blogger)!!!!!!!!!

Yes, SOB wins for endurance beyond the mortal realm.

[POB (partner of blogger), SOS (our son, source of sanity) and I were in various states of contagion and nursing various infections and maladies, so we really couldn’t risk getting DOB (dad of blogger and SOB) sick.]

Yesterday, SOB sat with DOB in synagogue for the last 3 hours of Yom Kippur, enduring his endless commentary while trying to shoosh him because he no longer whispers and has old-person-yell-in-quiet-places syndrome.

SOB even sat with DOB through Yizkor (the service remembering dead loved ones) as DOB flipped through the prayer book and pronounced the service (using his old-person-yell-in-quiet-places voice) “a bunch of crap”.  (In truth, he mourns my mother every day and says Kaddish for his parents and brothers, so he doesn’t really need a special service to remember.)

I get DOB’s point.  I can’t sit through Yizkor because it doesn’t reach my abiding pain.  I am a little like DOB that way. Except I don’t go to the service and whisper at the top of my lungs.

After three hours of DOB containment, SOB, together with HOSOB (husband of SOB), took DOB out for Japanese food.  He complained about the food and the service.  In his later years, he has become even more impatient about service, and his previously polite manner has become rude when trying to get the attention of the waitstaff.  SOB is the picture of calm in these moments, as I have witnessed in the past.  I am not.

I know, I know, he is 91.  But this is not his last glass of wine or piece of sushi.  I have faith that he will be at SOS’s Bar Mitzvah in 4 years.  And at the very least he will hang around for POB’s and my wedding in 2012.

How do I know all that happened yesterday?  Because SOB and I spill our guts to each other and give each excruciating play-by-plays so that we have a collective memory.

But the real reason that SOB gets the Best Daughter Award?  Even though she was pushed to the limit of sanity, she did not yell, “Ok, Dad, if you don’t like dinner or the service AT THE RESTAURANT YOU PICKED, either be quiet or stick a crow bar in your wallet and pay for it!”

And SOB had lunch with him today, too.

Yes, she is a saint.