“I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us,” Mona Simpson writes for The New York Times. “Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.”

“Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me,” Simpson writes. “For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.”

Simpson writes, “What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died… Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

Read more in the full article – with the highest recommendation – here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Fred Mertz," "Jubei," "Edward Weber," "Tony W.," "Alan Dodds," "Citymark," "goddess," "Lava_Head_UK," "night healer," "Ellis D.," "Dale S.," "Hg Wells," "Lynn Weiler," "Mike_D," and "Whit D." for the heads up.]